Month: April 2021

The first trailer for the upcoming action thriller Those Who Wish me Dead has been released. The movie stars Angelina Jolie, and it hits theaters and HBO Max on May 14.

Jolie plays a firefighter named Hannah, who is stationed near fire-prone woods in the Montana wilderness. One day she encounters a young boy is on the run from some deadly assassins, who have already murdered his dad and now want to finish the job–and are quite happy to kill Hannah in the process. The movie is directed by Taylor Sheridan, who previously wrote Sicario and created the show Yellowstone, and knows all about staging exciting neo-western action. Check the trailer out below:

Those Who Wish me Dead also stars Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max Fury Road), Aidan Gillen (The Dark Knight Rises), Jon Bernthal (The Punisher), and Tyler Perry (Gone Girl). It’s written by Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt, and Sheridan, and is based on Koryta’s 2014 novel.

Sheridan has also written the screenplay for the thriller Without Remorse, which hits Amazon Video on April 30. The movie is based on the Tom Clancy novel, and stars Michael B. Jordan as vengeful NAVY Seal John Clark. The final trailer was released this week.

For more, check out GameSpot’s guide to the biggest upcoming movies of 2021.

The AK-47 is one of Call of Duty’s most revered assault rifles. In and out of the series, the gun represents all things villainous and badass. The assault rifle has been featured in several of main series’ entries including the entire Modern Warfare saga. In later games however we see less of it within the Black Ops’ futuristic titles. Its return to Modern Warfare 2019 and Cold War were no surprise because love it or hate it, the AK47 is legendary.

Despite being produced in the late 40s, we didn’t see much of the AK in early Call of Duty games like 1, 2, and 3. It wasn’t until the WWII craze ended that we saw the Russian rifle popularized in video games. Beginning with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, most enemy forces in the modern-day setting are equipped with AK, while domestic forces like the Army Rangers always carried the M4 or M-16A4. This (and the entire 1980s) popularized the rifle as the ultimate “bad guy” weapon.

In futuristic titles like Black Ops 3, we hear less and less from the AK-47. Instead, most of these titles feature the AN-94 or KN-44 platform series. Over the years, the AK has also been featured in the popular Black Ops Zombies mode. When pack-a-punched for extra firepower, the AK is called “Reznov’s Revenge”- an homage to World at War and Black Ops 1’s Victor Reznov.

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In the announcement trailer for Mainstream, Andrew Garfield’s YouTube personality Link is almost indistinguishable from many of the video platform’s real-life stars. The movie by Palo Alto director Gia Coppola follows Andrew Garfield and Maya Hawke as YouTubers gaining in popularity while they struggle with a messy love triangle.

The film looks like a visually spectacular, totally satirical take on the world of social media personalities, exploring the heights and pitfalls of YouTube fame. The trailer features plenty of recognizable YouTube motifs, with Garfield’s character goofing around in an oversized mansion and engaging in stunts and pranks for the sake of views.

The film also stars Nat Wolff, Jason Schwartzman, Johnny Knoxville, and more, and features a number of cameos from real-life YouTubers including Jake Paul and Patrick Starr.

Mainstream was debuted last year at the Venice Film Festival, and is set to see a release in select theaters and on demand on May 7, after IFC Films acquired distribution rights, as reported by Variety.

The Walking Dead: Survivors is a new mobile survival game based on the popular franchise, which sees players gathering resources and recruiting Survivors to help fortify their stronghold. Announced earlier this year, players won’t have to wait too long to get into Survivors, with the game releasing on April 12.

While The Walking Dead exploded in popularity thanks to AMC’s 10-season TV show, the new mobile game is based on the original comics rather than the TV adaptation. Developer Elex has announced that the pre-registration period for the game has nevertheless been a successful one, with over 1.5 million players registering interest across iOS and Android.

The titular Survivors are key to the game, with the player encountering and recruiting various characters from the comics who will help fortify their defenses. While the developer has promised that over 80 Survivors will eventually be present in the game, it’s unclear how many of them will be present at launch besides the five that have been announced by name– Rick, Glenn, Beta, and Hershel. Other characters previously announced for the game include Maya, Vayne, and Dwight.

Each Survivor has different abilities, which are grouped into two categories as either Combat or Development characters. Rick, for example, is a Combat Survivor who is “focused on fighting off walkers,” according to a details revealed in a press release. “He wields a rifle, an axe and his skills increase damage.” Hershel, on the other hand, is listed as “a Development Survivor who is a medic. He wields a rifle and he increases Healing Speed and hospital capacity while reducing healing cost.”

Sadly, despite its official license, gameplay videos from the Survivors beta that have been posted online look fairly underwhelming, with little to differentiate it from other base-building zombie survival mobile games beyond the familiar skin.

The Walking Dead: Survivors will release on April 12 for iOS and Android. You can pre-register your interest prior to the release on the game’s official website.

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The upcoming Mortal Kombat film, which releases on April 23, has a lot to live up to. Not just three decades of beloved video games, but one of the most universally beloved video game moves in Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 film of the same name. Getting the game’s massive cast of characters right is one of the biggest challenges, and the new “Meet the Kast” featurette give us a look at the movie’s many characters and gives the actors chance to offer up a few words.

“[Fans] deserve to see their beloved characters elevated to this cinematic height,” said director Simon McQuoid in the featurette, which looks to be a much longer and more in-depth version of the character video released on March 25.

Mehcad Brooks, who plays Jax, is no stranger to playing heightened, superhero-type characters. The actor spent four seasons on Supergirl as James Olsen, eventually becoming the vigilante superhero called Guardian for the show.

“The interesting thing about playing a video game character is, you have to walk this line of being larger than life, but also making that person real,” Brooks said. Jax is a long-time member of the Mortal Kombat cast of characters, and in an earlier trailer for the upcoming film we see him lose his arms in battle, only to come back with much stronger, cybernetic arms as a Mortal Kombat competitor (or Kompetitor, they’d probably like us to say).

The video goes into the focus on believable, grounded combat, and McQuoid’s desire to pair brutal fighting with beautiful scenery.

Mortal Kombat hits theaters and HBO Max on April 23. Ahead of that, see what the director has to say about not deviating from the source material and making sure the movie lives up to its R-Rating. If you’re wondering why Johnny Cage isn’t in the movie, blame Kano. And if you’ve missed a few Mortal Kombat games and don’t recognize every face in the featurette, make sure to check out our rundown of every Mortal Kombat character revealed so far.

In the center of Balan Wonderworld’s hub area lies the construction site of a clock tower. Complete the 12 worlds–the entry points to which are arranged at random around the tower like dial markings on a jumbled clock face–and the clock tower rises further into the sky; an elaborate contraption that stands as a monument to your hours played. Despite a thematic preoccupation with telling the time, Balan Wonderworld feels like something of an anachronism, a throwback 3D platformer whose occasional charms arrive too late.

Balan Wonderworld makes a terrible first impression. It’s a 3D platformer where the primary act of running around the levels feels sloppy. Swapping character costumes to employ new abilities is the key novelty, but the initial batch of costumes fail to inspire, and instead add the sorts of abilities you’d take for granted in any other platformer. Completing the early game doldrums, you’re dropped into levels without context nor any attempt to explain your goals.

The clumsy controls and character movement are the most persistent problem. There’s a weird dissonance in the way it feels like you’re moving too slowly while the choppiness of the simplistic animation gives the illusion of moving too quickly. Your character will float slightly above the ground even when standing on a flat surface. Jumping and judging distance feels sloppy and imprecise, mostly thanks to a stickiness of movement but also because, from time to time, the useful ground shadows cast by yourself and other objects will simply disappear. To put it kindly, mistiming or failing to land a jump doesn’t always feel like it’s your own fault.

Perhaps the core design of Balan Wonderworld was asking too much. Your character can equip dozens of different costumes, each conferring a different (though not unique, as there are overlaps) set of abilities, requiring a different range of animations for running, jumping, and whatever else they can do. One moment you’re controlling a muscular wolf with a spin attack, the next moment you’ve transformed into a spider who can skitter up any webbed wall. Not to mention the bobbing chess rook who turns into a turret when you stand still, or the little lizard who can use its tongue as a grappling hook, or the marching band boy with a drum goofily strapped to his back.

With seemingly so many options at your disposal, it’s inevitable that compromises were made. The sheer number of costumes is remarkable, and the range of abilities they deliver by the end of the game is surprising. And it’s testament to the strength of the design that, for the most part, the levels support playthroughs with varied combinations of equipped costumes. But even so, too many feel too similar. The costume that lets you break large blocks is basically the same as the other costume that lets you break large blocks. And another handful have only limited special-case uses or are sadly under-utilized. You don’t really feel like you’re playing as a muscular wolf when you don the costume, nor do you feel like you’re playing as a skittering spider; you’re just the same boy or girl who can now spin into enemies or climb walls. Greater variety and flexibility, something that beefs up the costume department to feel truly transformative, would be welcome.

Exploring a world is thus less about the sheer delight of physically navigating the space, and more about enjoying how the various costumes and abilities come into play. Admittedly, things take a little while to warm up–the early levels are intentionally quite basic, since you have access to only a few costumes. But by the fourth or fifth world you’ve moved well beyond costumes that merely let you jump a bit further and the level design itself ramps up accordingly, offering a more intricate and sophisticated challenge. The giant tree level, with its vertiginous drops and well-disguised grapple points, is a mid-game highlight. I particularly enjoyed how the warping concavity of the surreal chess world encouraged the use of costumes that could glide long distances. My favorite, though, is the late-game gallery, an Escher-esque maze of rotating stairways and portals that turn the floor into the ceiling.

It’s rewarding to move through a level, thinking about how you’re going to tackle the next obstacle with your current wardrobe while also keeping an eye out for other paths you could have taken if you had equipped a different costume. Indeed, these are worlds built to be replayed in the sense that all of them contain secret areas and collectibles that can only be accessed through the use of costumes acquired on later levels. You’ll spy many items on an initial playthrough that’ll leave you wondering how on earth you can reach them. Learning to recognize the limits of your current costumes, and what costumes you might need to swap to at the nearest checkpoint, is part and parcel of the experience.

It’s a shame that the novel costume mechanic isn’t given better support on a narrative level. The opening scene-setting cinematic fails at its one job. The suggestion seems to be that your chosen character, teased and rejected by their peers, finds refuge in a mysterious old theatre where the resident showman–Balan himself–promises to help you. But in each world that branches off the hub area, you’re helping some other troubled soul to conquer their demons for no readily discernible reason. In a baffling move, the cutscene introducing each person shows midway through their world, meaning you spend the first half of each level with no idea why you’re there.

Some of the people you’re helping are more sympathetic than others; in one world, a young girl is traumatized after her kitten is run over by a car, while elsewhere a successful chess master must recover from, uh… losing a big match. Maudlin sentimentality prevails, as do lazy tropes, such as the woman who is “scared to love” having her tale situated in a frigid ice world. In any case, no effort is made to develop them as characters. Though you may see these people from time to time inside a level, you’ll never interact with them, nor are you granted any deeper insight into their state of mind. They have a problem and you solve it by beating the level, and that’s it. To say Balan Wonderworld takes a light touch to its story presentation would be an understatement. The result is confusing rather than intriguing and ultimately means you stop paying attention to whatever is trying to serve as a narrative thread.

A couple of dismal mini-games plumb the nadir. Collecting a sports costume prompts a brief chance to play a hole of golf or try to score a penalty kick in soccer, for example. They are bad, unimaginative and forgettable, but at least they’re over in a matter of seconds. In contrast, the “Balan Bout” mini-game forces you to sit through a lengthy cinematic sequence of Balan fighting a demon with a few trivial QTEs thrown in to ensure you haven’t dozed off or popped out for a snack.

Similarly tired and formulaic are the end-of-world encounters with bosses who run through basic attack patterns you’ve learned to avoid in countless other games–whack ’em three times and they’re dead. Bonus rewards incentivize finding different strategies to beat a boss. These add a layer of experimentation as you try out different costumes, but they don’t fundamentally alter the flow of the encounter. They’re more just a neat little twist.

There’s a lot going on in Balan Wonderworld and sometimes you feel like that is to its detriment. It jumps from world to world–taking in standard platformer fare like the water level and lava level, but also venturing further afield to the spooky mansion level and surreal chessboard level. However, the game struggles to convey a coherent vision that aligns its disparate environments, and it jumps from world to world, and costume to costume, without providing much sense that any of it connects together.

Throughout, there’s the faint presence of Balan’s theatre–it’s in the red curtain doors that lead you into each world, in the ludicrous song and dance numbers that conclude every level, and in the cavalcade of costume changes. It’s a motif that could conceivably work to tie everything together and be the consistent throughline the game is crying out for, but it’s too thin and all too easily forgotten once you’re in a level.

Balan Wonderworld feels like a game from another time. In a different era the rough edges, inconsistent mechanics, and formulaic design may have been things that players could overlook, but in this moment in time, it’s a 3D platformer of a quality that can’t compete with polished modern-day contemporaries from Nintendo, Sony, and the like. It has its merits and delivers an unexpectedly mentally stimulating platformer when it manages to play to its strengths, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.