Month: April 2021

The MCU’s level of secrecy regarding new projects is legendary, even to their stars. Captain America 4 was recently confirmed to be in the works from Falcon and the Winter Soldier lead writer Malcolm Spellman scripting, but star Anthony Mackie doesn’t have any details yet. In fact, according to an interview with EW, he learned about the project just like everyone else.

“I literally found out yesterday in a grocery store,” Mackie said. “The checkout guy named Dwayne [was like] ‘Yo, man. Is this real?!’ I’m like, ‘I haven’t heard anything.’ That’s what I love about working for Marvel. They call you, they’re like, ‘Come to L.A. We wanna tell you what’s going on.’ So, I’m excited to see what happens, but I haven’t heard anything.”

The focus on Sam Wilson as the star of Captain America 4 comes from Sam’s official adoption of the Captain America mantle in the finale of Falcon and The Winter Soldier–or, ostensibly, in the final moments of Avengers: Endgame, depending on how you want to count things out. Naturally, it would be hard to have a Captain America movie without Captain America himself, but given the early stages of development being reported, it’s not surprising that Mackie hasn’t gotten the phone call.

Still, he was quick to joke: “What would be really bad is if the movie [Captain America 4] starts and I get blown out of the sky.”

As for actually taking the mantle and donning a new costume, Mackie says it hasn’t actually set in yet–and the moment even felt a little anticlimactic in the show. “I don’t know what I expected, but it’s definitely not what I thought it would be. I guess I foresaw something that was much more celebratory than just being ‘Anthony with a new Twitter account.'”

With any luck, that ‘new Twitter account’ feeling will go away once Captain America 4 starts production in earnest. Until then, Disney’s next major MCU release is the Loki TV show, which will hit Disney+ on June 11. Following Loki is the much delayed Black Widow, which will be hitting theaters and Disney+ (for an extra fee on top of the subscription) on July 9.

Only a few steps inland from the beach where your ship is wrecked at the start of Boomerang X, you realize some great calamity has befallen this strange place. As you make your way into the interior of the island, you find a ravaged village and the bodies of the giant mantis people who once lived there. Whatever happened here, they tried to fight it. They failed.

But then you find one of their artifacts: a strange boomerang, which looks more like a throwing star made out of bone (or more specifically, the Glaive throwing blade thing from the movie Krull). The mantis people, the Yoran, weren’t able to use this boomerang to save themselves, but you sure can. Just seconds after finding it, you’ll whip the blade through strange monster creatures made of goo as easily as if you had invented the weapon.

Things move fast in Boomerang X, as we discovered with a hands-on preview of the game that lasted about an hour. The game is actually a series of wave-based arena fights where several brands of these goo creatures appear, and you need to cut them down to size with the boomerang. You play Boomerang X from a first-person perspective, so these fights have a platforming and shooter feel, with the caveat that you only have this one weapon to defend yourself with. The handy thing about your boomerang is that it always returns to your hand (as you’d expect), but that delay in shots means that every throw is a tactical decision.

The arenas are quickly filled with different brands of monsters, like bugs that crawl on the ground and flies that buzz in the air. Some of them are marked with a yellow icon, and you know ahead of time that you need to kill a certain number of these marked enemies to complete the wave. There are always more monsters than the ones that you must kill, so if you’re strategic, you can just drop the important baddies–the rest vanish as the next wave starts.

The thing is, these fights quickly become overwhelming, and you learn very quickly that mastery of the boomerang goes hand-in-hand with mastery of movement. You can throw the boomerang through enemies at close range or hold the throw button for a second to get much more distance, and if the blade takes too long to bounce back to you, there’s a second button dedicated to recalling it. You can also bound through the air at huge distances. You don’t necessarily get much height, but you do get a ton of distance, so in the first few fights of Boomerang X, you’re constantly repositioning to avoid monsters streaming toward you in order to get better angles and slice down the creatures that need destroying.

Your need to stay mobile and keep slicing only gets more intense as you advance through Boomerang X’s arenas, but you quickly learn that the Yoran civilization had more going on than its destroyed huts and spear-filled armories let on. Soon, you start to add new properties to the boomerang–the coolest being the ability to return yourself to the boomerang, rather than the boomerang to you. That effectively means you can huck the boomerang into the air and then zap yourself to its location, sending you flying and giving you aerial combat capabilities.

After that, Boomerang X becomes a fast-paced, ludicrously vertical experience, where you’re just whipping around arenas, taking down enemy after enemy with precision glaive throws. Right after getting the ability to use your boomerang to rocket through the air, you also gain the ability to focus and slow down time for short bursts while you’re charging the boomerang’s longer throw. With that, never touching the ground becomes an incredibly viable strategy because you can zero in exactly where you want to go or carefully target the tougher enemies’ red ruby-like weak points.

And the enemies do get quite a bit tougher and more unpredictable. While your first few batches of creatures are usually just slow-moving missiles who charge straight at you and die pretty simply, later creatures are less simple to take down. When you hit the arena called the Poisonous Well, after traveling through the Yoran’s statue-filled gardens and giant colosseum, you encounter what feels like the game’s first boss–a huge, poison-spewing frog that leaps into the air and comes down in an attempt to crush you. The frog monster has its weak points on both its back and belly, so you not only need to shoot up over it to hit your mark, but you also have to brave getting beneath its deadly attack.

Boomerang X does a great job of escalating the situation, though, because the frog is just the first wave. More and more enemies are added to the mix, requiring you to keep your head on a swivel as you try to deal with threats. Every fight in Boomerang X is about positioning and target prioritization. You need to pick the places you want to fly to with your boomerang to get yourself away from things like flying squids and poisonous frog puke, and you need to take out the toughest enemies fast before they overwhelm you. But while it’s a challenging prospect to constantly assess and reassess the battlefield while also flying through the air, Boomerang X makes it pretty intuitive; the time-slowing ability gives you just enough of an edge to let you carefully pick your next spot or make an important throw.

As you move on, you gain additional abilities that are dependent on your boomeranging skills. The Scattershot fires a short-range blast in the area in front of you, allowing you to take out lots of targets at once, but only if you manage to kill two enemies with a single boomerang throw first. The Needle fires off a sniper-like bolt in a straight line, but to access it, you need to drop three enemies at once with one of your special attacks like Scattershot. Both tools keep adding to the things that you need to keep in mind in Boomerang X–every move has to be deliberate if you want to stay alive, and even accessing your tools requires doing the math about what to kill, what to avoid, and where to reposition.

The inventiveness of the enemies helps keep you on your toes and makes those decisions a little easier, though. While at first, it can feel like Boomerang X expects you to think about too much stuff all at once, between enemy locations, your abilities, and your own position on the battlefield, a rhythm develops pretty quickly. And that’s where Boomerang X really gets into the flow and becomes fun and intense.

One early arena, the forest-like Yoranwood, brings in a huge giraffe-like enemy that dominates the battlefield by creating a huge lightning storm around its head. This creature is like 50 feet tall, a giant that just strays around, making huge swathes of the arena extremely dangerous to occupy–if you’re beneath the storm cloud, you’re vulnerable to lightning strikes provided you aren’t moving quickly enough, and passing through it will also damage you. To get all the creature’s weak points, you need to hit its legs beneath the cloud, then travel up and hit the top of its head above it. So most of the fight becomes about staying high over the storm and taking out priority targets, like the demon-like monsters that can generate endless hordes of squids that target you like heat-seeking missiles. Developer DANG! does a great job of marrying your tools with the demands of the battlefield in a way that makes keeping enemy abilities and your own in mind feel natural–reacting to dangers, taking down threats, and traveling around the battlefield gives you lots of opportunities to smartly use everything at your disposal until it quickly becomes second nature.

That fast-paced but brainy take on combat and movement is what makes Boomerang X exciting in fight after fight, while its fascinating level design leaves you with clues about the strange and fascinating world you’re exploring. It seems like an easy game to get lost in, both as you’re uncovering the secrets of the Yoran, and as you enter a flow state of perfectly boomeranging through enemies and around arenas.

Boomerang X is slated to release this spring for PC and Nintendo Switch.

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The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons offer a lot of flexibility in how the system can be played, letting you use them while the switch is docked, in handheld mode, or even propped up on a flat surface. They can also function as a pair of controllers in local multiplayer. But since the Switch launched, there’s been one Joy-Con feature that has been a sore point for players, and no, we’re not talking about drift. The Switch’s Joy-Con controller lack a traditional D-pad and instead offer four directional buttons on the left-hand Joy-Con where the D-pad would be.

For those who prefer the feel of a traditional D-pad, which feels like a must for playing some of the classic SNES games on Switch like Super Mario World and Super Metroid, Hori offers a line of D-pad Switch controllers that simply replace the left Joy-Con on your system. Though they’re available in a variety of designs, there’s a rare deal on one particular version right now at Amazon–you can snag the Black & Gold Pikachu design that’s black with yellow lightning bolts for $20 right now, down from $25.

$20 (was $25)

The Black & Gold Pikachu design is the only one discounted, but it comes with free Prime shipping as early as tomorrow.

The Hori D-Pad Switch controller ranks on our list of the best Switch controllers we’ve tried, and it’d also make a great Mother’s Day gift idea if the mom in your life has a Switch and plays often.

Few video game franchises are as revered as BioWare’s Mass Effect. When the first game launched in 2007 for the Xbox 360, players were taken aback by this bold new sci-fi universe, which was filled to the brim with choice and consequence, intriguing characters, intergalactic politics, and of course, romance. Over the years, it’s certainly had its ups and downs, from the iconic Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2 to the divisive ending of Mass Effect 3.

With the impending launch of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition—a remaster of the original trilogy—we thought it was time to revisit our look back at the franchise, made before the release of Andromeda, and modernize it too. We’ve updated the video to include the fallout from Andromeda, the existence of the Legendary Edition, and the announcement of a brand new Mass Effect, which BioWare is currently working on.

For more Mass Effect, including an in-depth look at the creation of the Suicide Mission from BioWare’s Mac Walters, make sure to like this video and subscribe to GameSpot at youtube.com/gamespot. Mass Effect Legendary Edition launches on May 14 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Indie publisher No More Robots revealed its latest title today, Let’s Build A Zoo. The game, which is being developed by Springloaded, is a pixelated zoo tycoon-esque sim but with a pretty major twist. Players can genetically splice together their animals, resulting in adorable new creatures.

A trailer for the game, as well as a gameplay preview posted on YouTube, show that at first it looks like your average zoo tycoon game. Players can create themed areas representing different environments that animals inhabit, and decorate them to match. For instance, a woods-themed section with panda bears and boars shown in the gameplay trailer is populated with sprigs of bamboo and a lilypad-filled pond. According to Pip, the woman showing off Let’s Build A Zoo, there are “hundreds and hundreds of items to choose from that allow you to decorate your zoo any way that you like.”

As it moves to the Savannah portion of the zoo, the gameplay trailer also shows off the variations of animals players can encounter. Each animal has multiple different coats or pelt colors, so your pens won’t all be filled with the same exact animal.

If you’re not interested in running the perfect zoo, it seems that there are also some shadier ways to stay in business. Pip doesn’t detail these extra money-making methods, but the buildings she shows off paint a fairly clear picture. If players want, they can get into the business of making food — chicken and pork plants are shown specifically — or even fashion accessories out of more leathery or scaly creatures.

But if you want to really set your zoo apart from the rest, you’ll have to splice together animals and make your own. No other zoo has a monkey-tiger hybrid or a monkey-hippo hybrid, but yours can. According to the game’s Steam store page, players can make a total of 300,000 different types of animals using DNA splicing.

Let’s Build a Zoo is coming to PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox sometime this year. However, the game’s PC version has a more specific release window this summer.

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With Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead premiering on Netflix in less than a month, a new interview with star Dave Bautista has arrived. In it, he discusses his acting career and compares it to the world of another former WWE wrestler-turned-movie star, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

When asked by JoBlo if his history in the ring and his massive, muscular frame have been an asset as he forged ahead in his acting career, the Guardians of the Galaxy star said no. “I wanted to go against that grain and make everything much smaller, very subtle,” he explained. “I make a living off of subtlety. I want that to be my strength. I want that to be what separates [Johnson and I]. I don’t want to be that guy who walks in that room, I never wanted to be that guy.”

Of course, that’s not to take anything away from The Rock, who is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Instead, Bautista looks at how Johnson has excelled in his career and decided to try a different way.

“I don’t mean that as a dig on him, but you know how he is as a character,” the actor said. “He feels very professional wrestling to me. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be an actor. I want to act, I want people to judge me for my acting, my subtlety. I want to take roles that require that. I don’t want to be a big action guy who just says cool s*** and kills a lot of people and gets the girl. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to [be the] guy that makes people cry, who makes people think, who inspires people. I want to be a dramatic actor. I just love it. I love acting.”

Clearly, both men have found a way to be incredibly successful, while having very different careers. While Bautista, of course, is best known for his role as Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’s also amassed an impressive list of credits that include Blade Runner 2049, the James Bond film Spectre, and the upcoming Dune. Johnson, on the other hand, has roles in the Fast & Furious and Jumanji franchises and is currently working on Black Adam, which will see him enter the DCEU.

As for where you can see each man next, Bautista’s Army of the Dead arrives on Netflix on May 14. Disney’s Jungle Cruise, which stars Johnson, will be in theaters on July 30.

World of Darkness, the series that has spawned tabletop games, video games, and more, is growing its reach with a new movie and TV show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paradox Interactive is working with Arrival writer Eric Heisserer–who earned an Oscar nomination for that movie–to create a “shared universe” that will span a movie and TV show. Christine Boylan, who has worked on The Punisher, is also contributing the project, along with The Witcher production company Hivemind.

“The World of Darkness story universe is deliberately and unapologetically inclusive and diverse,” Boylan said. “It has always made a point of including equal gendered characters, protagonists and antagonists of every race, and representation of all creeds–bringing a female and diverse audience to gaming like nothing prior. Its games and fandom are a place where women, POC, and the LGBTQI community feel welcome and we are very proud to bring these stories to life.”

Heisserer added: “The legacy of these stories is way ahead of its time, inviting issues and perspectives other games ignored. This feels like the next step for genre.”

Hivemind’s Jason Brown said in his own statement that Heisserer and Boylan are “gamers” who have played the World of Darkness franchise since it started in the ’90s.

“It’s a rare opportunity when the connection between storyteller and story runs this deep, and that is the alchemy which has led to many of our favorite and most culturally resonant franchises,” Brown said.

The latest World of Darkness game is Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2, which was recently delayed beyond 2021 after its lead developer was removed from the project.

It sounds like it’s still very early days for the World of Darkness shared universe, so there is no word yet on casting details for the film and TV show.