Few successful horror franchises ever truly die, and Scream is the latest series to be rebooted. The fifth Scream movie has now been given a confirmed release date, and the first teaser has been released.
Scream 5 will hit theaters on January 14, 2022. The film has been steadily adding cast members over the last few months, but it is yet to start production. As a result the teaser is very basic–literally just the movies’ iconic Ghostface mask emerging out of darkness. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to see it again–check the teaser out below:
Scream 5 hasn’t got an official title–although given every movie so far has just been a numerical sequel, it might just stay that way. It’ll be directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who helmed last year’s highly entertaining horror comedy Ready or Not.
In terms of the cast, original stars Courtney Cox and David Arquette have confirmed they are returning as Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley respectively. The movie will also star Melissa Barrera (Vida, the upcoming In the Heights) and Jenna Ortega (Insidious: Chapter 2, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous), who were both announced last month in undisclosed roles.
As well as Scream 5, there are also new entries in the Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series on the way. Halloween Kills was originally set to arrive in October this year, but has been put back until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The eighth Texas Chainsaw movie is currently shooting in Bulgaria, although last week it was reported that the movie’s directors had been replaced after a week of shooting.
Xbox Game Pass is getting a whopping 10 new games over the next few weeks, across Xbox One and PC. One high-profile new release is available right now, and the others will be coming within the first two weeks of September.
Then next week, you can grab Star Renegades and Disgaea 4 Complete on PC, Hotshot Racing on Xbox One, and Tell Me Why Chapter 3 on both Xbox One and PC. The announcement also mentions that Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and Forsaken will be available on Xbox One “soon,” but doesn’t give a specific release date. The Beyond Light expansion was also planned for September, but was pushed to November. It will also be available through Game Pass. You can check below for the full schedule of releases.
September also marks a few games leaving the service. Those include NBA 2K20, Red Dead Redemption 2, Gonner, and Jump Force. These can be purchased at a discount before they leave the service for Game Pass subscribers.
Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service offering access to roughly 100 games. The Xbox One and PC versions of the service cost $10 per month apiece, but a combined “Ultimate” subscription bundles them together with Xbox Live Gold for $15 per month. Microsoft also recently announced that an Ultimate subscription will include its streaming service starting this month.
Xbox Game Pass Games – Early September
Crusader Kings 3 (PC) – Available Now
Jackbox Party Pack 4 (Xbox One) – September 3
Resident Evil 7 (PC, Xbox One) – September 3
Tell Me Why: Chapter 2 (PC, Xbox One) – September 3
Touhou Luna Nights (PC, Xbox One) – September 3
World War Z (PC) – September 3
Star Renegades (PC) – September 10
Disgaea 4 Complete (PC) – September 10
Hotshot Racing (Xbox One) – September 10
Tell Me Why: Chapter 3 (PC, Xbox One) – September 10
Destiny 2: Forsaken and Shadowkeep (Xbox One) – Coming Soon
Leaving Xbox Game Pass
NBA 2K20 (Xbox One) – September 1
Red Dead Redemption 2 (Xbox One) – September 7
Gonner: Blueberry Edition (PC, Xbox One) – September 15
Ahead of Ubisoft’s big holiday releases–Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion–you can save on the publisher’s most popular franchises at the Xbox Store. A new Ubisoft Publisher Sale is live now through September 14 with discounts on practically every major Ubisoft game released on Xbox One. If you’re looking to catch up before Valhalla, Legion, or even Far Cry 6 releases, now’s your chance to snag titles from those franchises for up to 70% off.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla releases November 17, so you still have plenty of time to catch up. Valhalla will continue the trend of pushing the series more toward the role-playing side of things, much like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (on sale for $15) and Assassin’s Creed Origins (on sale for $12). If you want to play some of the older titles in the series, a trio of collections are on sale for stellar prices.
In addition to the reveal of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, 2020 will also see the introduction of new GPU architecture from both Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia’s new hardware will be on display very soon: The GeForce Special Event announced a few weeks ago will take place today, September 1, at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET. You can watch the Nvidia livestream right here to see all of the news and announcements it has to share regarding its new Ampere GPUs, including the RTX 3090.
Nvidia has spent recent weeks on social media celebrating the past two decades of PC gaming and hardware advancements. During the event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will deliver an update that “highlight[s] the company’s latest innovations in gaming and graphics.” It hasn’t explicitly stated that the RTX 3090 will be among the hardware on display, but it’s a safe bet based on leaks.
News of this event came shortly after a series of short teaser trailers that Nvidia has been sharing on Twitter. This included one that simply reads, “21 Days. 21 Years.” This September 1 date in line with both rumors and previous Nvidia reveals, which typically took place in August during Gamescom ahead of a product release in September. With Gamescom having just concluded its digital event this past weekend, Nvidia will focus now host its own event today.
It’s probable that the event will finally reveal Nvidia’s next generation of GPUs, with its current flagship RTX 20-series line bordering on two years old already. Ampere has already been revealed as the company’s next-gen architecture, but it has yet to be seen how this will be adapted for consumer gaming hardware. It’s likely these will include some of the first cards that support HDMI 2.1, as well as new hardware to make better use of Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS) and ray tracing.
If Nvidia sticks to its previous release cycles, the event will reveal new cards that should go on sale in the next few weeks. This first batch is generally the best cards in the series, with more budget-focused options releasing in the months to come.
Marvel’s Avengers has launched worldwide to those players who pre-ordered the game for early access, with the worldwide launch coming on September 4. The story of how the Avengers reassemble to face the threat of Advanced Idea Mechanics is only part of the full experience, as the game will continue long after the main campaign has wrapped up.
According to a new blog post from developer Crystal Dynamics, these events will be split between weekly and seasonal activities such as missions, faction challenges, and community challenges, and will reward players with cosmetics and gear if they can complete these objectives before they expire.
Missions can be accessed through the war table, and will also feature weekly content and their own unique loot to earn. Modified operations will be playable through Priority Missions and Priority HARM challenges that include several modifiers, while two new mission modes will be activated after Marvel’s Avengers launches. One of these new modes focuses on co-op play and is only active during weekends, while the second challenges you to use your entire roster of heroes to run a gauntlet in solo play.
Factions will also factor into which activities players choose to engage with, with each of the groups having their own in-game vendors to purchase items from. SHIELD and Inhuman vendors will feature daily and weekly assignments to take part in, with your faction level determining which gear and artifacts players will be able to unlock. The higher the faction level, the better the loot and as an added bonus, faction daily missions can also be completed through other missions.
Marvel’s Avengers SHIELD Vendor
Community challenges will be a weekly event focused on the entire global player base and will reward players with unique items if they can work together and accomplish specific goals, such as destroying 500,000 synthoids. PlayStation owners of Marvel’s Avengers will get more than just Spider-Man as an exclusive post-launch character, as a special community challenge will also appear once a month on that platform.
Now that Marvel’s Avengers has released in Australia and other parts of the world, we have learned a little more about the game’s microtransaction system and how much things actually cost.
The in-game currency is called Credits, and, like many other games that use microtransactions, you can buy the Credits in various allotments. From the in-game store you can purchase Credits in groups of 500, 2,000 (plus 200 bonus Credits), 5,000 (plus 1,500 bonus Credits), and 10,000 (plus 3,000 bonus Credits), according to Stevivor.
In terms of pricing, it begins at $5 USD for 500 Credits and scales all the way up to $100 USD for the package of 13,000 Credits.
Credits can be spent on various cosmetics like outfits, takedowns, emotes, and nameplates, among other things. Similar to how it works in Fortnite, the items–which include uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary stuff–will rotate on a regular basis.
Marvel’s Avengers is available from midnight local time on September 1 for those who pre-order the game. The official release date, meanwhile, is a few days later–September 4.
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Koji Igarashi, the assistant director on PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, is widely credited with establishing what came to be known as metroidvania. In a new episode of Limited Run’s Games Behind the Games, he explains how Zelda, and not Metroid, was the primary inspiration for the game that started it all.
The Games Behind the Games is a docuseries digging into some of the industry’s most iconic games by looking at the earlier games that inspired them. During the course of the interview, Igarashi plays A Link To The Past while explaining why it was the key inspiration for the ways Symphony of the Night differed from previous Castlevania titles.
“Back then there were many action games where the goal was to clear the stage,” Igarashi explains. “This game, however, was focused on exploration. It is still an action game with defeating enemies, but it lets you explore the map.” He describes how it seemed like the first game to let you play for a long time–while other action games still held on to the fast-playing arcade formula, designed to part players from their quarters.
While Igarashi explains that he focused on A Link To The Past over other Zelda games because of the standout quality of its game design, he says the elements that most inspired him from Zelda were “the focus on exploration and defining the thing that unlocks the next area.”
While most of the elements that made Koji Igarashi’s games so iconic are now the standard in game design, it’s always worth looking back to remember where those game-changing elements came from. For players wanting to look back, A Link To The Past is available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
Games Behind the Games has also previously talked to River City Girls director Adam Tierney about how 16-bit classic Flashback: The Quest for Identity inspired his games.
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Katamari Damacy Reroll, the remake of the PS2 cult-classic currently available for Switch and PC, is coming to other systems. The game’s Japanese website has announced that the game is coming to PS4 and Xbox One on November 19, 2020.
While the title has only been announced for Japan so far, there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful for an international release–the game has already been localized, after all, and every Katamari title on console has eventually made its way to the west.
The game is a full remake of the first Katamari Damacy game, with redone cutscenes and HD graphics. It was great on Switch and PC.
According to Gematsu, the game will cost 3200 yen ($30), and on Xbox One it will be a digital-only release. Hopefully we’ll have news of a western release soon, too.
Katamari Damacy director Keita Takahashi’s latest game is Wattam, which released on PS4 last year. It scored a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review.
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Hiking in the digital wilderness of A Short Hike is a reminder of the small joys of stretching your legs out on the trails. Its pixelated habitat is saturated with the familiar sights and sounds of the backcountry in real life–like the bubbling of a sluggish stream through the woods or greeting fellow hikers as they trek along the steep edges of grassy plateaus. As a young canary named Claire, one of the first characters you’ll come across is a pint-sized frog at the beach in Hawk Peak Provincial Park, who’s clearly struggling with building a sandcastle. Her problem, unfortunately, is that she’s heaving a full-sized shovel about, a clunky tool unfit for the refined job of sand sculpting. You can hand her a toy shovel, and over time, see her modest sandcastle gradually expand into a sprawling sand empire–simply a charming, heart-swelling sight.
This is just one of the many minute scenes you’ll embrace in A Short Hike, an exploration title about trudging across a park’s hilly terrains and muddy routes. It’s a game with a simple, singular objective: Trek towards the summit of Hawk Peak Mountain, as that’s the only place with any cellphone reception. While this sounds scant, there are plenty of activities you’ll need to busy yourself with in order to get to the top. You can collect seashells and sticks along the way, help other hikers out with their problems, or cast your hook into the tranquil rivers in hopes of snagging a rare fish. Doing these tend to net you some rewards, be it in the form of gold feathers–one of the most essential items in the game–or an assortment of tools and accessories. While some of these are purely cosmetic, others unlock more abilities for Claire, like the capacity to sprint, fly further, or bounce high on the island’s fantastical plants.
It’s tempting to see these as mere side-quests to complete, but that defeats the point of these experiences–the real reward is in enjoying the plain beauty of these mundane moments. That’s by no means a narrative flaw; it’s these small instances that encapsulate the grandeur of traversing through A Short Hike’s large, mountainous landscapes. Interactions with fellow visitors, like following along on an anxious painter’s journey to seek inspiration in nature, an elusive endeavour even in this picturesque landscape, usually culminate in heartwarming conclusions. Other encounters also make for quietly humorous anecdotes, much like a private joke you recall sharing with close friends.
The game’s colourful roster of anthropomorphic characters is a delight too, from the zealous members of the resident climbing club to another mountaineer who has lost his camp permit to a hungry fish. More satisfyingly enjoyable than just these scenes, however, is the discovery of curios that are hidden within the lush forests of oak and amidst derelict structures. There’s genuine, compact joy in chancing upon sights like a deserted pond, an abandoned lighthouse, or some of the island’s wondrous flora and fauna.
At the same time, Claire–a particularly dexterous bird–makes wandering about the park a breeze. A Short Hike keeps things simple–the crux of her abilities is dependent on the aforementioned golden feathers, which function as a stamina bar of sorts that allows her to perform her maneuvers with more pizazz. Claire is not only capable of pattering along the tracks with her feet, but can also fly, glide, and swim, as well as climb up even precipitous cliffs as a spry, young bird. Even slipping off a tall mountain doesn’t do much harm to her other than a slightly bruised ego and perhaps a few minutes of wasted effort.
By climbing greater heights and performing double-jumps in mid-air with these coveted feathers, Claire’s enhanced moves allow her to traipse across the rough terrains of the park freely, truly encouraging exploration while allowing you to do so at your own comfortable rhythm. Although getting to the top of Hawk Peak mountain does require quite a number of feathers, these can fortunately be found in a variety of ways–out in the open, tucked away in nooks and crannies, or sold in limited supplies from the visitor’s centre or a suspicious, broody scalper. That said, you’re never punished for not being thorough in your search. Even if you’re not in the mood to explore, it’s possible to gather enough feathers to reach the peak just by carrying out some odd jobs and unearthing them in the form of buried treasure.
To coincide with the release of A Short Hike on the Nintendo Switch, developer Adam Robinson-Yu has updated the game with some new content. One update includes navigating the high seas around the park on a spanking new motorboat. Claire can drive this bad boy with wild abandon, tapping its ultra-advanced, high-revving engine to race around the surrounding waters and dock at nearby islands. It’s a welcome upgrade from swimming great distances from coast to coast and offers another alternative to discovering more facets to Hawk Peak. You also get to spend time with a new friend: a bored, thrill-seeking adolescent who offers to accompany you on your ride across the park. The interactions with Claire are genuinely hilarious and kept me smiling for a while.
Many games often aspire to deliver more, sometimes bartering in dizzying excesses–be it in high-octane action or through big, sweeping narratives that thrust you into a heroic position. But it’s the diminutive tales and everyday experiences of A Short Hike that give the game its comforting, even pastoral allure. It’s about seeking quiet communion with nature even as you make your umpteenth hike towards the peak, or finding contentment in stumbling upon tinier, quaint scenes. It proposes that even the smallest and most mundane of vignettes can be as enthralling as grandiose universes and narratives of more ambitious games. As I embark on yet another leisurely trek after ascending the summit of Hawk Peak, I can’t help but heartily agree.
One of gaming’s worst-kept secrets is the second next-generation Xbox, believed to be the Xbox Series S, and now even more evidence of the console’s existence has emerged.
Twitter user Brendan said they bought a new Xbox One controller and the bundled Xbox Game Pass Ultimate trial code mentioned the Xbox Series S console. Someone replied to their tweet saying they also received the packaging with a new Xbox controller that references the unannounced Xbox console.
I got a new controller for my Xbox since mine was broken. Interestingly enough, the Game Pass Ultimate trial code sheet mentions the unannounced @Xbox Series S. It’s definitely a thing. pic.twitter.com/GX1rOYG5g7
The Series S console is said to be the cheaper next-gen Xbox model, the one known popularly by its “Lockhart” codename. This system is rumored to have 4 teraflops of GPU performance and 7.5 GB of usable RAM. It will reportedly have the same CPU as the Series X, allowing it to run the same games with faster loading speeds but at lower resolutions than on Series X.
It was rumored that Microsoft would announce the Xbox Series S in August, but the month has come and gone with no such reveal.
There are also rumors that the Series S will not have a disc drive, which would put it more in line with the disc-free PS5 that’s on the way. However, that console otherwise sports the same hardware as the disc drive-equipped model, unlike the rumored Series S that is expected to be substantially cheaper than the Series X.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer told GameSpot that it might release additional next-gen Xbox SKUs, and Lockhart is expected to be one of them. “Obviously, in the name ‘Series X,’ it gives us freedom to do other things with that name so that we can create descriptors when we need to,” Spencer said in December 2019, all but confirming multiple next-gen Xbox consoles are coming.
For more on Microsoft’s next-gen strategy, check out GameSpot’s editorial below.
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