In CBS All Access’ The Stand, Alexander Skarsgård’s Randall Flagg cuts an imposing figure. He’s impossibly persuasive and armed with supernatural powers that make him a force to be reckoned with for those that… Stand against him. While Mother Abigail’s champions of the White will do their best to oppose his apocalyptic machinations, it’s unlikely that their understanding of “The Dark Man’s” true power will ever match that power’s scope and history.
To explain why requires minor spoilers about Flagg’s appearance in The Stand and in subsequent Stephen King novels.
Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg in CBS All Access’ The Stand.
The Dark Man
Flagg’s appearance in 1978’s The Stand sees him assume control over the dark-hearted survivors of the Captain Trips superflu that wipes out 99% of the world’s population. Many in this growing army of miscreants marvel at The Dark Man’s ability to keep order through a combination of wish-fulfillment and intimidation, but few seem to know much about his methods for achieving these ends (other than the occasional public execution of dissenters.) As Mother Abigail imparts onto her own followers, Flagg’s power of persuasion is pure evil in its origin. This goes back to Mother Abigail’s conviction that in this final battle, she is God’s representative, while Flagg is “the devil’s imp.” This Biblical interpretation makes sense coming from a devout centenarian fighting for the soul of the world, but the thing is, Flagg’s malice is not limited to just one world, one denomination, or even one name.
That’s because Randall Flagg is just one of many identities assumed by The Man in Black, the dark wizard who famously plagues Gunslinger Roland Deschain in King’s Dark Tower novels. As The Dark Tower books establish, all of Stephen King’s novels take place in one interconnected multiverse, and those various worlds are all bound together through the power of the Dark Tower itself. Roland’s quest to reach and defend the Tower is opposed by The Man in Black, who wishes to claim it for himself and become the god of all reality. But hey, he’ll settle for one reality at a time, too. Case in point: the Man in Black’s first appearance as Randall Flagg in The Stand, where society teeters on the brink of extinction; Flagg is happy to be the one to push it over the edge. As his various appearances in King novels confirm, the Man in Black thrives on the chaos he sows wherever his travels take him, and they’ve taken him all kinds of places.
Here are all the times the Man in Black has been confirmed to have appeared in a King novel (or novel co-written by King), and the names by which he goes in those stories:
The Stand (1978) – Randall Flagg, Richard Fry, Robert Franq, Ramsey Forrest
The Eyes of the Dragon (1984) – Flagg, Browson, Bill Hinch
The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition (1990) – Randall Flagg, Richard Fry, Russell Faraday
Hearts in Atlantis (1999) – Raymond Fiegler
The Dark Tower series (1982-2012) – The Man in Black, Richard Fannin, Marten Broadcloak, Walter o’Dim, Walter Padick
Gwendy’s Button Box (2017) – Richard Farris
As you’ll notice, the Man in Black often goes by the initials “R.F.” which, prior to King individually confirming his various appearances in canon, was the easiest way to follow the path he cut through the multiverse. That may be useful information to have in your back pocket going forward, especially if The Stand and Skarsgård’s Flagg end up being a big hit.
Randall Flagg in the Multiverse of Madness
King fans had a whirlwind of a month at the movies back in 2017. A hotly anticipated but ultimately misfired attempt at adapting the Dark Tower novels bombed critically and commercially, despite A-listers Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey starring as Roland and the Man in Black respectively. Luckily, IT: Chapter One swept in just weeks later and cleansed the palette for King movies, ending its record-breaking theatrical run with a staggering $702m at the box office. That’s seen numerous King adaptations move forward at breakneck speed, including The Stand, which had been in development hell for more than a decade up to this point. What ends up happening to Flagg in The Stand miniseries is an open question, especially considering King himself penned a new ending to the story just for mini, but whatever the case may be, there’s a lot of potential for Skarsgård’s Dark Man to reappear. After all, audiences are getting much more comfortable with characters and franchises intermingling these days.
Watch the trailer for The Stand below:
Thanks in large part to the MCU, cinematic universes where storylines persist and heroes appear in each other’s movies are now widely understood. Cinematic multiverses, where storylines and characters are largely separate from each other while still technically co-existing, are the new kids on the block. The Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths saw a number of disparate DC properties from decades past all converging for a reality-bending, series-spanning event. Warner Bros. are going to take a crack at a similar event on the big screen with their upcoming Flash solo movie, which by all accounts is going to see Barry Allen use the Speed Force to zip through reality and run into non-DCEU heroes like Michael Keaton’s Batman. Marvel themselves may be moving in this direction, with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness potentially softening the MCU’s hard borders between non-Marvel Studios projects (J.K. Simmons’ J. Jonah Jameson notwithstanding). This may be the way forward for King adaptations and we may already have an idea of how it could work.
While most recent King adaptations include subtle nods to other works by the author, 2018’s Doctor Sleep includes several direct references to the Dark Tower novels that the Man in Black primarily hails from. Among them are a mention of Ka (King’s version of the Force, more or less), a handful of companies from the novels being represented on signage, and a member of Rose the Hat’s True Knot being known to have “traveled worlds.” With Doctor Sleep laying inter-reality groundwork similar to what some DC properties are doing, and with Amazon’s Dark Tower pilot failing to get picked up to series, any future adaptation of The Dark Tower could bring back Skarsgård’s Flagg to menace the last surviving Gunslinger of Gilead as they duel over the fate of reality (no big shock, but Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan’s dream King adaptation is The Dark Tower series). We’ve already seen Flagg in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Hulu’s 11/22/63, biking his way through a crowd in Houston on the day of JFK’s assassination. And if rights issues get in the way of Skarsgård’s iteration of Flagg returning? Well, it’s well-established that the Man in Black can reincarnate, and not always in the same physical form, so recasting is on the table in a worst-case scenario.
So is Randall Flagg going to be a one-off foe in The Stand, or could we see him assuming a Thanosesque omnipresence through multiple King adaptations going forward? Whatever happens, when it comes to dealing with the Man in Black, it’s always best to expect the unexpected. And having a Gunslinger out there to challenge his evil never hurts.
Miles Morales and his mom Rio just moved into a new apartment in Harlem. There’s still a lot to unpack in their rooms, and you can learn so much about them by looking around and examining their possessions. But the living room and kitchen are all put together, and Rio is going all-out to prepare a big Christmas dinner for herself, Miles, and a few family friends. It’s a heartwarming scene where you have to do a few chores like put on some music, light the Christmas tree, and make sure Ganke cleans up the damn mess he made spilling soup on the rug. What’s most important here is that it’s a rich display of culture, language, and food that celebrates the Morales’ Puerto Rican heritage.
Anyone who has played Spider-Man: Miles Morales will remember this part of the game–not necessarily for the fact that Miles has to get the power back on by using his Spidey skills while no one’s looking, but because it draws you into a cozy winter vibe of a snow-covered New York City. It’s a powerful moment of character building–you hear Miles and Rio speak Spanish to each other and you can see the Puerto Rican cuisine prepared and being cooked. It’s an invitation to see Miles’ Boricua roots first hand, and a striking piece of representation for those who share Boricua roots or relate through other Latin-American cultures, all over a nice dinner for the holidays. And for me, after I spoke to my mom to let her know I couldn’t come home for Christmas this year, these moments in the game became much more bittersweet.
As I walked through that scene, it reminded me of home and my mom, a reflection of the 20-plus years in the past I spent with her during Christmastime. Rio is on the phone speaking Spanish while she’s cooking, just like how my mom would talk chismis in Tagalog over the phone with my aunties, acting like I wouldn’t understand what she was saying. Some of the food you see on the counter and being cooked closely resembles Filipino dishes I always had growing up, too.
Through our collective histories, Filipinos and Latin-American folks of the diaspora share a sort of kinship. Centuries of Spanish colonialism have reshaped our languages, cultures, and food.
Empanadas, which are also a Filipino staple, are ready on a plate. Arroz con gandules, like the number of rice dishes we share across cultures, is ready to serve. Pasteles are wrapped up just like suman, and several more were boiling in the pot–just the sight of banana leaves in food prep gets me hyped up. You also see Rio frying platanos like we would use for turon. A plate of leche flan makes it to the table as well. There is even pernil in the oven, which is essentially lechón for Filipinos–a slow-roasted pork with crispy oily skin and fatty tender meat underneath. I could almost smell and taste everything being cooked. It felt like I had lived in that small apartment before.
Through our collective histories, Filipinos and Latin-American folks of the diaspora share a sort of kinship. Centuries of Spanish colonialism have reshaped our languages, cultures, and food. Filipinos have an odd place within Asian-American identity where we sometimes share more in common with Latin-American cultures than other Asians. The similar climates of our motherlands have also influenced our culinary traditions. The most common Filipino language, Tagalog, integrates several Spanish words and phrases. Catholicism runs deep in the Philippines. It’s somewhat common knowledge for those of us in the United States who have strong ties to our heritage and live in diverse communities, and something I was always privy to growing up in the largely Mexican community of Southeast San Diego.
Of course, in the case of Rio Morales and her being Puerto Rican, it’s a distinct culture that’s being represented and celebrated in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The parallels on display and connections I made in the dinner scene brought me back home immediately, though. At first, playing through this part was heartwarming. Going back to it now, after cancelling my holiday plans with my mom, it’s different. It made me realize how much I wanted to see my mom, to feel like a teenager again, excited for my mom’s cooking and watching her put it all together like she’s her own superhero.
I had so many emotional moments with games in 2020. My favorite franchises hit all new heights that I did not expect, and to keep it real, this year is probably the most I’ve cried because of games. Persona 5 Royal, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Final Fantasy XIV 5.3, and Final Fantasy VII Remake were all unforgettable and hit me right in my feelings–like, I’d lay down and stare at my ceiling to process my emotions for hours. It’s probably also this lockdown that got me (and many of us) like this. But these specific moments in Spider-Man: Miles Morales affected me on a more personal level, and they hit differently now that I know I can’t be home for the holidays.
I could almost smell and taste everything being cooked. It felt like I had lived in that small apartment before.
It’s a weird feeling. I don’t know if replaying this part of the game made me sad, happy, nostalgic, or comforted–probably all of those things combined. I don’t know if it puts me at ease because it’s such an incredible piece of representation that I can relate to on some level, or if I’m just gutted given the real-life situation. Regardless, I’m glad this game exists and did it for the culture.
I always enjoyed this time of year; the food we’d have and the way my mom would decorate the apartment, and the excitement for even the littlest gifts come Christmas day. We’d sing traditional Filipino Christmas songs in high school and make parol as a class project. I’d be on break from school or take time off from work and binge a ton of games in my backlog. But as a youngin, you just kind of expect it every year. As I get older, I’ve slowly come to terms with the fact that these moments are fleeting and you never know how much time you really have left. My family is all too familiar with medical tragedies, and they’ve loomed even larger under a global pandemic. I know to cherish the time I can share with them, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales was at least another stark reminder of that.
I hope you’re all having as good a holiday as possible. Maligayang Pasko! Feliz Navidad! Happy Holidays!
From volleyball boys to sentient video game villains, these are the anime we loved in 2020.
2020 was a bit of an oddball year for anime, with COVID-19 causing several shows and movies to be delayed while a few others were split into parts, with the first half releasing early in the year and the second half debuting months later. But we still managed to get quite a few gems.
In the following article, we detail the six anime that really stood out to us in 2020. We loved them for different reasons–some, like Great Pretender, left us on the edge of our seats with its fast pacing and dramatic cliffhangers while others, like My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom, provided a welcome amount of hilarity in an occasionally bleak year.
Next, check out some of our other best-of-2020 lists:
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Great Pretender
Great Pretender is a colorful and wacky anime about a group of con artists working together to swindle the wealthy corrupt. The show features a loveable protagonist in Makoto Edamura, a Japanese swindler who’s just trying to find happiness in a normal life, and a great deal of Great Pretender is spent hoping he’ll manage to break free of the charismatic but manipulative Laurent Thierry while silently admitting that Edamura fits in well with Laurent’s crew of outlaws.
To the anime’s benefit, the whole season is split into small arcs, each of which only lasts for a few episodes and focuses on a different heist. So instead of one long drawn-out story, Great Pretender is several different stories, each of which focus on developing a new villain and providing additional insight into one of the members of the crew of antiheroes that the show follows.
This is all paid off in the show’s final arc, which reveals that there’s actually been a narrative throughline for the anime this entire time–looks like you, the viewer, were even being conned. It’s not as mind-boggling a reveal as that seen in the most esteemed of anime dramas, but it is a rather clever bit of meta storytelling to trick the viewer into further emphasizing with Edamura as we see that Laurent has been manipulating and conning us this whole time as well.
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Haikyu: To The Top
Haikyu returned in 2020 for a fourth season, introducing a brand-new subhead and animation style with it. The fourth season played to both strengths of the shonen volleyball series, as it’s split into two distinct halves that are each satisfying in their own way.
The first half of To The Top felt like Haikyu Season 2, in that it slowed down and focused on the internal development of its characters–namely protagonists Hinata and Kagayama. The second half (which focused entirely on a single volleyball game like Season 3) payed off that development in a rewarding way, in that we got to see how Hinata, Kagayama, and the rest of their team had improved to the point that they could take on Inarizaki High School and the powerful duo of the Miya brothers.
Few sports anime are as popular as Haikyu and To The Top is a good reminder of why. The show doesn’t rely on superheroic levels of play to make it exciting, it establishes what each character is capable of and then delivers on a story where the stakes feel very real. And thanks to the new animation style, Haikyo: To The Top implements incredibly detailed facial expressions, which allows viewers to better understand a character’s train of thought or emotional state during the fleeting seconds of a rally.
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Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Season 2
Misunderstandings are usually one of the most annoying tropes in romantic comedies; it seems like many shows and movies in this genre rely on them for the crux of their plot to manufacture drama. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War works so well because it instead relies on misunderstandings for the basis of its comedy. In this anime, student council president Miyuki Shirogane and vice-president Kaguya Shinomiya are both crushing hard on each other, but both believe that if they admitted their feelings, the other would tease them for it.
It’s such a straightforward premise, but Kaguya-sama: Love is War stretches this one misunderstanding out into a collection of some of the funniest comedy sketches in its first season, and manages to do so again in Season 2. The introduction of new characters initially seems counter-intuitive given the charisma of the existing cast, but the newcomers seamlessly worm into the established back-and-forth, creating new avenues of comedy.
The show’s strength–especially in Season 2–is definitely its willingness to slowly build up to a punchline. Though each skit is self-contained, there are occasional throughlines for a few of them, resulting in jokes that have been building all season long. You don’t really notice it until the punchline lands, but when it does it almost always hits.
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Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
Few anime explore the concept of creating anime, and even less manage to do so with the same level of charm and attention to detail as Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken. This comedy sees anime-lover Midori Asakusa, money-hungry Sayaka Kanamori, and socialite Tsubame Mizusaki joining forces to create a club at their high school for creating anime.
Though its plotlines are usually played for laughs, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken excels for leaning into and exploring the creative process behind anime–both the fun aspects that attract creatives like group brainstorming, as well as the less glamorous parts of the business like work crunch and funding. Both Midori and Tsubame dream of becoming professionals in the anime sphere while Sayaka is the realist, typically reigning in the expectations of the other two.
Because at the end of the day, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is an anime about making anime, not an anime about making your dreams come true. Reality is often much harsher than what you’ve imagined. It’s not all doom and gloom of course–this probably wouldn’t have been one of our favorite anime of the year if that had been the case–but Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is special because it’s willing to tackle and discuss the often glossed over hardships of working in the anime business while still delivering a wonderful narrative of why people still want to pursue such a career path anyway.
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My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Before theaters shut down, a few anime movies managed to have their theatrical release. Among them was My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising. And what a movie! Though its ending falls a little flat by finding a way to conveniently erase what would have been an incredibly cool and fulfilling plot development, the movie up to that point contains some of the best action sequences that My Hero Academia has ever had. In Heroes Rising, Class 1-A is sent to an island to temporarily run its hero agency and get some experience in preparation for their futures as professional superheroes. Things are running smoothly until the island is attacked by a mysterious masked man and his followers, who cut off communications. This forces Class 1-A to protect the island and its citizens without the assistance of any adult heroes.
Heroes Rising succeeds where Two Heroes largely doesn’t in that it leans into My Hero Academia’s biggest selling point: it’s an anime about a class of students, not just one person. Two Heroes largely focuses on main protagonist Izuku Midoriya, and incorporates scenes that focus on a select group of his fellow Class 1-A students. Heroes Rising, on the other hand, gives pretty much every member of Class 1-A a chance to shine. Midoriya and his rival Katsuki Bakugo are definitely the stars, but the others participate in some impressive stand-out battles as well.
More than anything, Heroes Rising drives at the underlying message of My Hero Academia that’s been slowly explored in the show since Season 3: That All Might’s ideal of one prominent hero standing as the symbol of peace is fundamentally flawed, and that it would be much better if a group of heroes stood side-by-side as symbols of peace. In Heroes Rising, you begin to see the start of such an idea bear fruit, as Class 1-A bands together to defeat a group of powerful supervillains. None of them could have succeeded on their own, but together they’re a formidable force.
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My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom
My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom is a very lengthy title for a short and sweet anime. The anime follows a young woman reborn as Katarina Claes, the villainess of a video game where the good ending results in Katarina’s exile and the bad ending leads her to be killed. Wanting to avoid both possibilities, Katarina works to befriend the game’s heroine and the other characters, scheming for an ending where she gets to live.
The result is an incredibly wholesome show about a girl who is so laughably dense that she doesn’t realize that she’s managed to make practically all her friends–both the men and women–fall madly in love with her. In Katarina’s own mind, she’s convinced that everyone still sees her as a villain who’s doomed to be exiled or killed one day, while those around her fruitlessly continue to pine for her affections. It’s all hilarious.
This is one of those anime where you can just sit down, start an episode, and know that no matter how bleak things might seem for Katarina, the truth is that she’s overthinking practically everything and nothing but good things are going to come her way. Admittedly, that does mean that the show has extremely low stakes, but in a year like 2020, getting an anime like My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom was a refreshingly funny watch.
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Wow, who would’ve thought that a holodeck-malfunction episode would prove to be the strongest outing to date for Discovery Season 3? Though technically, the holographic environment in “Su’Kal” isn’t malfunctioning because of the usual old TNG-era reasons, but rather because it’s been doing what it was designed to do for over a century and is finally just falling apart from wear and tear.
That the revelation of what caused The Burn is also finally provided to us here — or at least seems to be — and that it wasn’t some evil aliens behind that devastating event, but rather just what must’ve been a lost and scared child, is part of the appeal of this hour. (I’m guessing that it was the death of Su’Kal’s mother that prompted him to trigger The Burn, but we’ll have to wait until at least next week to find out if that’s correct or not.) But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’s a lot crammed into this week’s cold open, including: picking up right where we left off at the Goodbye Georgiou Cocktail Hour; the return of a sheepish Gray (Ian Alexander) — let’s face it, being a dead Trill that no one can see aside from your ex must be a bummer; the reveal that it must be a Kelpien child who has somehow survived on the ship that’s been stranded in the Verubin Nebula; Saru (Doug Jones) almost risking the ship unnecessarily; Book getting radiation sickness while probing the area; and the discovery of a dilithium planet inside the nebula. All before the opening credits!
Yeah, they’re doing a lot in this hour, but it winds up feeling like a true “planet of the week” (or two weeks, as the case may be) Star Trek story that also ties seamlessly in with the season’s bigger arc. One issue I’ve had with the show this year has been its quest-style storylines, where the crew would have to find one clue each week that would get them a little closer to solving the mystery of The Burn. But now, with just three episodes left to the season, we’re finally getting to the nitty-gritty of it all.
An away team consisting of Saru, Burnham (Sonequa Michael-Green), and Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) heads down to look for the “child,” who is certainly not going to be a child at this point. But as it turns out, Su’Kal may be a century old or more, but he has the mind of a child essentially. Played by the great Bill Irwin, Su’Kal has spent most of his life on his ship’s holodeck, which was programmed by his mother to raise him and school him as best it could. Over time, as the ship’s condition has deteriorated in the dangerous environment of the nebula, the holographic babysitters and teachers have become glitchy even as Su’Kal has lost his grasp on what’s real and what isn’t — if he ever had a grasp that is.
Mary Wiseman as Tilly, Doug Jones as Saru and Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham
It’s not that he doesn’t know that he’s interacting with holos, but when confronted by the Disco trio — real, live people — he can’t comprehend it, so much so that Michael must pretend to be a holo. And on top of that, the entire, vast holographic realm is inhabited by ghostly beings which may or may not be real. The environment, the creatures, and even the specific tics of the malfunctioning holograms all combine to make for an episode with a distinct feel and a huge scope.
This holo-framework also gives the Disco team the chance to mix things up on the makeup front, making Burnham a Trill, Culber a Bajoran, and Saru… a human. It’s a fun twist to the episode to see the gang with these looks, and Doug Jones surely loved shooting this episode and not having to put the Kelpien rubber on. But he’s still Saru no matter how human he looks.
Which doesn’t mean that Saru is a great captain, because he increasingly seems to not be. Sure, this mission means a lot to him on a deeper level because of the Kelpien Su’Kal, but his hesitancy at making decisions and his inability to see the forest for the trees on both the bridge and the away mission is damning. Does Burnham become captain by the end of this season at this rate? I wouldn’t rule it out. That said, Jones has some great moments, as when he cuddles up next to the lullaby-singing Kelpien grandfather, or even just the look in his eyes when he first encounters Su’Kal.
Meanwhile, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) takes the center seat as acting Captain, and she does really well even after Osyraa (Janet Kidder) shows up. But when Su’Kal activates his almost-Burn, it messes everything up for the Discovery and the ship is overtaken in no time by Osyraa’s forces. Seeing her actually one-up our heroes makes the Emerald Chain’s leader feel like a true threat, which hasn’t really been the case yet this season, and what do you know? We even wind up with a cliffhanger by episode’s end. Mr. Worf… fire!
I wonder how Aditya Sahil is doing over on that Federation relay station. We haven’t seen him since the first episode of this season. I sure hope Burnham doesn’t forget to loop him in on things.
Admiral Vance: Not a fan of Tilly as Acting Captain.
Stamets’ not wanting Culber to go on the away team makes sense, sort of. They are Starfleet though, and risk is part of the game.
Michael’s advice to Tilly about taking the conn and using that metal burr under the captain’s chair’s armrest is a nice touch. Captain Georgiou’s memory lives on.
Presumably those ghost-like creatures are actually what’s left of the Kelpien crew, right?
Netflix is bringing some holiday cheer with the announcement that Season 3 of Cobra Kai will premiere globally on January 1, 2021, which is one week earlier than originally reported.
Here’s how Netflix describes the upcoming season of Cobra Kai: “Season 3 finds everyone reeling in the aftermath of the violent high school brawl between their dojos, which has left Miguel in a precarious condition. While Daniel searches for answers in his past and Johnny seeks redemption, Kreese further manipulates his vulnerable students with his own vision of dominance. The soul of the Valley is at stake, and the fate of every student and sensei hangs in the balance.”
The streamer also released a clip of Johnny (William Zabka) personally changing Cobra Kai’s Season 3 release date to January 1. You can check out the video right here.
It’s the final episode of Generation Next. And while most of GameSpot is looking back at the year that was in regards to the Best Games of 2020, the Generation Next crew are taking this week to look forward to 2021.
2021 is full of possibility. Both Xbox Series X|S and PS5 will have been out in the wild for a few months by the time it kicks off, so we’re sure to start seeing more and more announcements for games exclusively releasing for the new console generation. Lucy, Tamoor, and Jordan are already looking forward to the year, especially for the release of the sequel to 2018’s God of War as well as the possibility of hearing about more Elden Ring and Hollow Knight: Silksong.
But let’s dream big, yeah? It worked for Tamoor in his prediction that Demon’s Souls would launch alongside PS5. The trio talk through their “it probably won’t happen but like, what if it did” predictions for 2021, including Anthem 2.0 being surprisingly good and Bluepoint releasing a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid.
And with that, Generation Next–GameSpot’s weekly show dedicated to discussing everything and anything about Xbox Series X|S and PS5–comes to a close. Y’all have been a great audience, and we’ll see you in the new year with more original content. Generation Next may not return, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility of something else taking its place. Stay tuned!
If you’ve been waiting for the sweet embrace of a new season of Cobra Kai, and you’re counting down the days until January 8, 2021, then stop counting because that’s no longer the release date for the new season. Netflix has announced Season 3 of Cobra Kai will land on January 1, 2021. To celebrate the release, Netflix has a new video featuring Johnny Lawrence using a computer.
That’s right, you’ll be able to strike hard, strike fast with no mercy as you click “play” as hard as possible on your controller–possibly breaking it. Earlier this month, the first trailer arrived for the new season–which had its first two season premieres on YouTube Premium before moving to Netflix earlier this year. The end of Season 2 left one person in the hospital and a local high school torn apart–literally–as a karate riot saw students from Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence’s dojos at each other’s throats.
In addition to the earlier release date, Netflix has announced that the cast of Cobra Kai will join The Netflix Afterparty on January 2, to discuss the third season with hosts David Spade, Fortune Feimster, and London Hughes.
As for the upcoming episodes of Cobra Kai, Season 3 will incorporate some familiar elements to those who love the original film franchise as Daniel will head back to Japan. The series takes place 30 years after The Karate Kid as LaRusso and Lawrence are adults and they have crossed paths once again, eventually leading to both of them opening their own karate dojos.
The series stars Ralph Macchio (LaRusso), William Zabka (Lawrence), Courtney Henggeler (Amanda LaRusso), Xolo Maridueña (Miguel Diaz), Tanner Buchanan (Robby Keene), Mary Mouser (Samantha LaRusso), Jacob Bertrand (Hawk), Gianni Decenzo (Demetri), Martin Kove (John Kreese), and Peyton List (Tory).
I was quite a young girl when I first got interested in video games. It was something of an awkward transition. At the time, games were largely considered “boy toys,” so moving from typical “girly” things like princess dolls and My Little Ponies into gaming was jarring at times, especially since not a lot of games catered to the cute, colorful things I’d been enjoying at playtime to that point. Sure, I loved the fantasy worlds of Mario and Sonic, but I also wished there was a fun gaming playspace for me that echoed the fluffy-cats-and-rainbow-unicorns aesthetic of my Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers.
Had my third-grade self seen Calico, an open-world animal cafe and social interaction game, she would have lost her mind. Calico embraces an aesthetic and theme that is shamelessly, unabashedly girly in the best ways–a world of happy magical girls living in pastel-colored lands with fluffy, cotton-candy trees where all kinds of lovable animals roam freely. But while Calico’s concept and visuals are a delight, the simplistic, bug-ridden gameplay dragged me kicking and screaming out of the childhood fantasy world I so wanted to exist in.
Calico is very cute (screenshots captured on PC).
Calico starts off with your created player character inheriting a cat cafe in a faraway world where magic is very real and a part of everyday living. Your job is to fill your little cafe with animals, decorations, and cute kitty-themed pastries while exploring the world and helping your new friends with various errands. It’s a very laid-back, play-as-you-please experience in the vein of other life-sim games, but with an air of play and fairy magic baked in: You can buy potions with funny effects to use on yourself and your animal friends, like shrinking down to mini-size to cook, zooming around while riding on giant red pandas and bunnies, decorating your house with clouds, flowers, and cat paws, and collecting basically any animal in the game (that isn’t already someone else’s pet) to be a part of your cafe or your traveling posse.
You’ll meet plenty of new faces as the game progresses, including potion-making witches, nature-loving flower friends, and even a few furry human/animal hybrid folk. Many of them will ask you for help with various minor problems, like rounding up animals or baking a specific treat to give to a pal, and will reward you with money, fashion, furniture, and recipes for the cafe. You won’t find anything in the way of conflict or combat here–the worst that happens is some characters feel awkward talking to each other and need you as a go-between. At certain points, you’ll need to open up a new section of the world, which involves completing a specific quest chain, in order to progress further.
It’s a very basic gameplay loop, but also Calico’s biggest problem: It’s very simplistic. If you’re expecting even a basic cafe-running simulation, you’ll be sorely disappointed, as there’s very little you actually do with the cafe besides set up furniture and sometimes bake things. You mostly run errands and finish simple quests until the ability to unlock the next area opens up, then repeat the process. There’s a decent amount you can do outside of this–there are lots of toys you can use to play with animals, fashion items to collect and wear, and creatures to find and archive in your notebook–but it starts to wear thin fairly quickly, especially because rewards feel so sparse. There aren’t many surprises; you won’t be given spontaneous gifts or hear random weird conversations like in Animal Crossing, and there’s rarely incentive to improve the cafe or run it well beyond the occasional request from a friend for a specific animal or decoration.
An interior in Calico.
Calico is also plagued with numerous bugs. While things like clipping and funny movement of characters or animal friends are forgivable, Calico has a fair few disruptive bugs that can ruin the game flow and, at worst, require a restart. During play, I’ve found myself getting trapped inside objects, starting conversations with characters that end abruptly for no apparent reason, and even get tasked with questlines that I shouldn’t be able to because the area in question isn’t open yet. It’s also worth noting that the Switch version runs quite poorly in comparison to the PC version: I played both, and eventually had to move to PC because the choppy frame rate and visual hiccups in the Switch version became a literal headache.
My eight-year-old self would have absolutely loved Calico to bits, I’m sure. Unfortunately, I am no longer a wide-eyed, curious 8-year-old girl–I’m a game reviewer whose tolerance for bugs and simplistic gameplay has worn thin over the decades. As much as I wish I could view Calico through the eyes of an imaginative youngster, I can’t. Perhaps if you are better at embracing your childlike fantasies, you may be able to overlook Calico’s many flaws and appreciate its imaginative, fairy-dust-sprinkled charm, but I feel that the magic will wear thin quite quickly.
