Xbox has announced plans to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with a series of initiatives meant to highlight the culture and contributions of AAPI community. Alongside a donation match program, Xbox is including a curated list of AAPI games and movies on the Xbox and Microsoft stores, adding a weekly showcase of games featuring AAPI creators and characters to the Xbox Community Game Club, and promoting AAPI streamers and creators on both Twitch and in the Xbox Ambassadors community.
This year marks the first that Xbox has celebrated AAPI Heritage Month, a fact Xbox addressed in its statement. The company said this is due to its deepened efforts to support and celebrate the community during this period of “frightening and reprehensible” attacks and “COVID-19-related hate crimes against members of the AAPI community.”
One of the key ways it intends to do this is by allowing Microsoft Rewards Members to earn and donate points to two AAPI-focused charities, Asian American Advancing Justice | AAJC and Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), which will be matched by Microsoft. Minecraft’s Mojang studios will be promoting this feature, and has already donated $100,000 USD to AAJC as a part of this initiative.
Over on Xbox’s Twitch channel, a schedule has been assembled that focuses on highlighting AAPI creators, developers, and streamers. The schedule is as follows:
Week of May 3 – AAPI Community Appreciation Week, “Let’s play and watch games with the AAPI community at the forefront”
Week of May 10 – AAPI Community Takeover Week, “Meet new & familiar faces in the AAPI gaming community”
Week of May 24 – AAPI Community Appreciation Week, “Let’s play and watch games with the AAPI community at the forefront”
Creators and players will also be showcased on the Xbox Community Game Club and Xbox Ambassadors community. Over at the Xbox Community Game Club, Xbox is featuring games created by AAPI individuals. In the Xbox Ambassadors community, Xbox has asked various AAPI identifying members “how games with diverse representation have impacted them” and about “their stories about being a member of a gaming community.” Their stories have been collected and posted on the site’s blog.
Lastly, Xbox fans can find curated lists of AAPI created games and movies listed on both the Xbox and Microsoft stores. A few highlights of the games list include Outer Wilds, created by Japanese American Mobius Digital founder Masi Oka, and Marvel’s Avengers, which features a campaign centered around Marvel’s Kamala Khan, a Pakistan American woman. Some of the recommended films include Minari, Crazy Rich Asians, and Moana. After May 31, visitors can find these lists by searching for “AAPI Heritage Month” on the respective sites.
In just 40 or so minutes of a hands-off gameplay demo of Biomutant, I’d watched its protagonist ride a jetski through polluted gooey waters, mount some kind of cat-looking horse thing, operate their own ramshackle mech suit, and hop aboard a flying bat creature. Oh, and there’s a flying suitcase, too.
Traversing the world in these many ways is indicative of the level of customization at play in Biomutant. In the final hands-off preview before the game’s release, developer Experiment 101 showed a fair amount of new footage that gave a sense of your ability to explore the game world, engage in combat, create your character, and build your own weapons. That freedom seems to be a central tenet of the Biomutant’s open-world–you can look how you want, fight how you want, wear what you want, and use the weapons that you want.
The freedom to determine your character in the world of Biomutant begins with character creation, where you make your own mutant animal critter to travel the wastes of the game’s post-human world. You can do a lot to create a creature you like to look at, but character creation goes well beyond just having spiffy fur patterns.
As creative director Stefan Ljungqvist explained, character creation has you making a bunch of important RPG decisions as well. You’ll determine your species, as well as your core attributes like strength and intellect, and those determine how your character looks as well as its capabilities. You’ll also fine-tune your ability to resist environmental issues, like radiation, heat, and cold–which will help determine what places you can easily explore, and how dangerous they become.
There are six species to choose from and six tribes out in the world, Ljungqvist said. While he was cagey about the tribes, it sounds like they might be divided by species–and it sounds like your choice of animal might affect how you interact with them.
That’s another running theme of Biomutant’s customization: Your choices will influence how other characters deal with you. As you deal with other characters and make dialogue choices, it’ll affect your “aura,” which can range from light to dark and various shades in between. “Light and dark” doesn’t necessarily mean “good or evil,” though–it sounds like choices won’t be quite so cut and dried. What’s more important is that the shade of your aura affects how you interact with other people based on their distinct auras. If you have a similar alignment, you might find people easier to connect with and influence; drastic differences will make for more strained communication.
And, of course, customization plays a big role in combat. The core of Biomutant is a fast-paced, Devil May Cry-like combination of gunplay and melee combat, filled with combos and special abilities. When you build your character, you also define your class, which Ljungqvist described as being more like a loadout than a set of hard-and-fast rules about your character’s abilities. You can do things like lean into being more of a commando-style fighter or a precision shooter, or maybe prioritize psionic abilities, but picking a certain class doesn’t lock you out from other possibilities when it comes to your abilities and weapons. What it does do is give you lots of options on the battlefield to hit enemies with big area-of-effect psionic attacks, or to slow down time to make sure you land a ton of shots for precision damage.
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Combat is also influenced by the weapons you bring to the fight, which is where crafting plays a huge role. It seems like the crafting system in Biomutant is extremely deep; this is a loot-based RPG where you’ll be finding all kinds of gear of various rarity and quality levels, and you’ll be able to cobble it together to build new things.
For instance, Ljungqvist showed one possibility in which he crafted a mace made out of a cane and the door of a safe, imbued with freezing powers–which came to be called the Cane Stronkbox. Later, he assembled a new gun from a ton of different pieces, each of which determined how it would handle. Setting the stock and trigger meant it would be a two-handed weapon instead of one-handed; choosing a magazine determined how many shots it could handle; picking a certain barrel switched it from a rifle to a shotgun. As Ljungqvist explained, your crafting choices determine not only how the gun will work and what kind of damage it’ll do, but even how it handles and how it sounds.
Crafting extends to your armor, too, where you can sometimes add additional components that give you different benefits. You’ll be thinking about this, in particular, because armors can have resistances just like the ones you determine for your character at the start of the game. Having the right armor with the right resistance is how you’ll survive in some areas of Biomutant. While other places might be gated, for the most part, you’ll be able to go anywhere you want in Biomutant right off the bat, Ljungqvist said; you’ll just need to find the right armor to survive in some of the more harsh environments.
And that’s what seemed most remarkable about our quick, final look at Biomutant–it seems like a vast world with a ton of freedom in how you’ll play it. There’s a story pulling you along (something about protecting the Tree of Life from Worldeaters and maybe the end of the world), but how you engage with that story and the 8-by-8-kilometer game world is up to you. We’ll have to see how that freedom translates into actually playing Biomutant when it finally releases on May 25 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
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When Mayans MC first debuted on FX, the idea of a continuation of the world of Sons of Anarchy was exciting. Still, the original series left some massive shoes to fill. While its quality may have fallen off in the last couple of seasons, it was a groundbreaking show that told a compelling story and featured a group of characters you were dying to root for. How could a sequel series with an all-new cast stack up?
Yet here we are, nearing the end of Mayans MC’s third and best season. Not only has it measured up to the original series, but it’s also toppled it. It took some work to get there, though. After all, while all three seasons of Mayans MC are worthwhile, it’s not until the current run of episodes that the show did the smartest thing it could: It buried the past and moved forward.
Co-created by Elgin James and Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, the first two seasons of Mayans MC introduced a very relevant story. Unlike Sons of Anarchy’s predominantly white motorcycle gang in a small Northern California town, Mayans is made up of a primarily Latinx cast of actors in a tale set on the border between the United States and Mexico. It couldn’t be a more timely narrative.
Yet still, with so many intricate stories to weave, the first two seasons–in which James and Sutter served as showrunners together–could not untie the knots that bound it to Sons of Anarchy. While this story of the Latinx existence in such a dangerous place at such a dangerous time was the primary plot, all too often the series relied on callbacks to Sons of Anarchy, as if it were afraid of telling a story independent of the original show. It began with the pilot and continued right on through the Season 2 finale, in which a member of the Sons club was mistakenly gunned down.
Then, something important happened. At the premiere of Mayans MC Season 2, Sutter took the stage and announced he would be handing sole control of the series over to James. “It’s time for the white man to leave the building,” he said at the time. A few months later, the Sons of Anarchy creator was fired by FX, reportedly due to “multiple complaints” about his behavior on the show.
In a way, that departure allowed Mayans to be creatively reborn into the show it should have been since the beginning. With the debut of Season 3, the Sons of Anarchy influence decreased, while the series was refocused on an inter-gang rivalry between different charters of the Mayans club. With the advent of this civil war, the new season has gone to great lengths to confront members outlaws who they have become as a club and made them grapple with how far they are willing to go to protect their own interests–even if that means killing their fellow members.
What’s more, a refocused Mayans MC allowed certain characters that had been stuck largely on the sidelines to shine bright, whether it’s Coco’s (Richard Cabral) struggle with heroin addiction and the haunting and violent upbringing he had–in which Cabral is giving the performance of his career–or the tragic story of Taza (Raoul Trujillo).
It was revealed this season that Taza, the vice president of the Santo Padre Mayans MC charter, is bisexual–something that’s frowned on in this world of outlaw bikers. Viewers came to learn that his past misdeeds against the club were done to not only protect that secret but to seek vengeance on the person who killed the man he loved.
Coco and Taza’s stories are by far some of the most riveting on Mayans MC this season and had the show not pulled back on the Sons of Anarchy influence, it’s possible viewers wouldn’t have seen them come to light. At the very least, they likely wouldn’t be given as much time to bloom as they have in Season 3.
In the end, Sons of Anarchy had its time. It ran for seven seasons on FX, telling the full tale of Jax Teller’s (Charlie Hunnam) rise and fall as the king of his MC world. That story, however, is over. Mayans MC has proved this season that it can more than hold its own without having to also fill in the gaps in Sons of Anarchy’s history. As much as we, as fans, would all love to know what’s happening with SAMCRO since Jax’s death, that is not this show’s responsibility–and it never should have been.
Instead, Mayans MC needs to tell its own story, explore its own characters in more depth, and make the audience care about them independent of their relationships with characters from another show that stop by from time to time. And it’s done that.
Moreover, it has surpassed Sons of Anarchy. The stories unfolding, including Coco’s addiction and Taza’s bisexuality, are being given the time to breathe and grow naturally. These are the types of stories we never got on Sons of Anarchy. That show was always honest about what it was. Sons of Anarchy was about the club, first and foremost. Everything, ultimately, was in service to the story of SAMCRO. While that’s not a bad thing, it can certainly be limiting.
Mayans, on the other hand, has shown that it’s more interested in the people that make up the club–and not just one of two main characters, but as many as possible. It is looking at how they function as individuals, and how that impacts the club. That’s the kind of story we need to see in this vicious, blood-soaked world. Thankfully, we’ll get to see more of it in Season 4.
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You know the drill: there’s a worldwide catastrophe, and all our creature comforts are suddenly worthless. Society disintegrates, and one adorable child is our last hope for survival. That’s the premise behind Netflix’s upcoming thriller, Awake, starring Gina Rodriguez and you can watch the first trailer right now.
In Netflix‘s Awake, “global hysteria ensues after a mysterious catastrophe wipes out all electronics and takes away humanity’s ability to sleep,” according to the official synopsis. “Scientists race against the clock to find a cure for the unexplained insomnia before its fatal effects eliminate the human race. When Jill, a former soldier, discovers her young daughter may be the key to salvation, she must decide: protect her children at all costs or sacrifice everything to save the world.”
Along with Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin, Annihilation), Awake stars Arianna Greenblatt (Love and Monsters) as the daughter, as well as Finn Jones (Iron Fist, Game of Thrones) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Annihilation, Single White Female). Awake is directed by Mark Raso, and written by Mark and Joseph Raso based on a story by Gregory Poirier.
The basic premise sounds a lot like Children of Men, A Quiet Place, Logan, The Last of Us, and so many other stories about children in apocalyptic situations. What seems to set this one apart is how fast-moving the danger is–sleep deprivation takes a toll in days, not weeks or years–and the nature of sleep deprivation makes for some pretty weird shots and situations as the trailer seems to indicate.
You don’t have to wait very long for this one. Awake hits Netflix on June 9, 2021.
There’s nothing sus about this collector’s edition. Limited Run Games, which often brings digital-only titles to a physical format with plenty of extra goodies, is partnering with developer Innersloth for a collector’s edition of Among Us. Customers can start preordering the Among Us Collector’s edition from Limited Run Games’ store on May 11 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET. Preorders for the bundle will likewise close on June 27 at 8:59 PM PT / 11:59 PM ET.
This collector’s edition of the hit indie title will cost $80, a steep hike on the game’s usual price of just $5. That being said, customers get a ton of extra Among Us-themed merch for picking up this bundle.
The Among Us Collector’s edition includes two copies of the game, although they’re both digital. One copy is specifically for Steam while the other can only be redeemed on the Epic Games Store. Along with a couple of copies of Among Us, customers will also get a working Emergency Button from the game, a CD featuring its ambient music, and an imposter-themed steelbook containing a disc of Among Us concept art and interviews with Innersloth. The collector’s edition also includes a reversible poster.
This is all packed into an emergency button box. The box itself is blue with white sides. On top, it reads “Emergency” and in the middle is a big, shiny red button in a plastic case just asking to be pressed.
If you just want to get your hands on a copy of Among Us, the game is currently on sale for $4 on Steam.
It’s been a long time since the last Left 4 Dead release, but that doesn’t mean that the series is completely forgotten. Today, Dead by Daylight now has a new Left 4 Dead crossover, thanks to its latest DLC
Dead By Daylight‘s latest Tome–which are sets of challenges and lore–is called Forsaken, and it brings with it narratives and challenges for William “Bill” Overbeck from the Left 4 Dead series. The Tome adds a storyline exploring Bill’s backstory, specifically in the run-up to the events of Left 4 Dead. New challenges for players to complete will unlock more information about Bill, developer Behaviour Interactive stated in a press release.
Bill’s story is rolled out in a set of Tome memories, which are short pieces of fiction and cinematics that talk about the character. For a short glimpse, check out the trailer embed above.
Bill was originally brought to Dead By Daylight as a playable character back in 2017. He is one of a growing roster of crossover characters to be introduced to the horror game. Dead By Daylight is also increasingly developing a sprawling, multi-franchise narrative featuring a number of crossovers. We already know about an upcoming crossover event, too: Dead By Daylight will be getting Resident Evil characters in the near future.
EA announced today that it has acquired Metalhead Software, the studio behind the Super Mega Baseball series. Metalhead will be part of the EA Sports label alongside mainstays EA Tiburon and EA Vancouver, the developers of the majority of EA’s sports franchises.
With three games released so far, the Super Mega Baseball series has established itself as a strong complement to–if not competitor with–the simulation series MLB The Show. Although Super Mega Baseball doesn’t have the MLB license, it’s found an audience with its arcade-y, over-the-top take on the sport.
It’s more in the tradition of Backyard Baseball than MLB simulation games, and it appears that it’ll stay that way for the near future. In a statement to Polygon, EA Sports Vice President Cam Weber said that even though fans might expect an MLB license for the Super Mega Baseball series, “My belief is that Super Mega Baseball is well differentiated from MLB The Show, and I think it has its own spot in the marketplace.”
As for Metalhead itself, in a post on the Super Mega Baseball subreddit, it explained its reasoning for joining EA. “We’re proud of our games and passionate about our community,” the developer wrote. “We want to tackle bigger projects and expand the reach of our games. EA is the perfect partner to help us achieve that goal! Most importantly, EA is a big fan of our games and shares our vision for future projects.”
Terms of the acquisition have yet to be disclosed by EA. This move marks a return to baseball for EA Sports, which hasn’t published a baseball game since MVP Baseball 2007. Considering the continuing dominance of MLB The Show, it’s likely that EA and Metalhead will focus on the cartoonish style of games for the time being.
The last game in the series, Super Mega Baseball 3, launched in May 2020. It’s available across PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch, and playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Pokemon Go‘s May Community Day is set for Saturday, May 15. Not only will the event give you more chances to catch Swablu, this month’s featured Pokemon, but Niantic is also introducing Mega Altaria to the game immediately afterward. There will be various other bonuses to take advantage of during the event as well, so to help you prepare, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about Pokemon Go’s May 2021 Community Day below.
May 2021 Featured Pokemon: Swablu
Swablu
This month’s featured Pokemon is Swablu, the pre-evolved form of Altaria. All throughout the event, Swablu will appear in the wild much more frequently than normal, making this a good opportunity to stock up on Swablu Candy. You’ll want to take this chance while you can; like Magikarp, Swablu requires a whopping 400 Candy to evolve, so you’ll need to catch a ton of them if you’re hoping to get Altaria.
You’ll also have a chance to encounter Shiny Swablu during the event. This variant is yellow rather than blue, so you’ll be able to immediately tell if you’ve found one. Like other Shiny Pokemon, however, it will be rare, but you’ll have more opportunities to encounter a Shiny Swablu if you use an Incense during the event.
May’s Community Day Move: Moonblast
If you’re able to evolve Swablu into Altaria during May’s Community Day or up to two hours after the event ends, it will know the powerful Fairy-type Charged Attack Moonblast. Altaria normally cannot learn this attack in Pokemon Go, making this your only chance to get it.
Moonblast is a good move for Altaria to know; as previously mentioned, Niantic is introducing Mega Altaria to the game immediately following the Community Day, and this form is part-Fairy, meaning it gets an attack bonus when it uses Fairy-type attacks such as Moonblast. To Mega Evolve your own Altaria, however, you’ll need to first stock up on Altaria Mega Energy, and this is primarily earned by defeating the Pokemon in Mega Raids.
May’s Community Day Hours
May’s Community Day will once again run for six hours, from 11 AM to 5 PM local time. This means you’ll have until 7 PM local time to evolve Swablu into an Altaria that knows Moonblast.
Other May Community Day Bonuses
In addition to increased Swablu spawns, Niantic is offering a paid Special Research story during this month’s Community Day called Cotton-Bird Pokemon. A ticket to access the Special Research costs $1 USD, and it’ll give you more opportunities to catch Swablu.
Niantic is also selling a Community Day item bundle in Pokemon Go’s in-game shop during the event. The bundle costs 1,280 PokeCoins and contains the following:
50 Ultra Balls
5 Super Incubators
5 Incense
1 Elite Fast TM
There will be a few other in-game bonuses as well. First, any Incense that you use during the event will remain active for three hours. On top of that, eggs that you place in incubators will hatch at a quarter of the distance they typically require, letting you hatch Pokemon much more quickly during the event.
In a recent interview, The Simpsons executive producer Al Jean revealed that the animators were toying with a Mandalorian cameo, but ultimately decided it would detract from the story. “There was a scene where we had the parents picking up the kids, and the Mandalorian was one of them,” Jean said. “What happened was once we hit on it as a story between Maggie and BB-8, we just eliminated everything that wasn’t pertinent to that story.”
According to the short’s official description, “In a daycare far, far away… but still in Springfield, Maggie is on an epic quest for her stolen pacifier.” The short, which celebrates the Star Wars galaxy, takes that seemingly straightforward plot and uses it to bring the baby Simpson “face-to-face with young Padawans, Sith Lords, familiar droids, Rebel scum, and an ultimate battle against the dark side.”
While The Simpsons and Star Wars are both owned by Disney, Jean shared there was a lot of freedom they had to play around with the universe’s characters, but they had to be faithful to Baby Yoda’s character. The closest they could get, said Jean, was Disney allowing “us [to] do a little tribute to him but not a big reference, which I think is great… he [was] the most popular character created anywhere in fiction in the last year, and you don’t want to overexpose him.”
After you’ve discovered the first Illumina Spot in New Pokemon Snap, you’ll begin receiving requests from Professor Mirror and the other members of your research team. You can view these requests by pressing Y while on the Research Camp screen, and they typically ask you to snap photos of Pokemon performing rare behaviors. However, if you’re just trying to play through the game, you can safely skip them and come back later, as they have no bearing on your story progress.
In fact, it’s generally a good idea not to get caught up completing requests right away and only focus on them after you’ve cleared the story and are working on filling out your Photodex. Not only are there a ton of requests to fulfill in the game, but many of them are cryptic or impossible to complete until you’ve unlocked higher Research Levels.
The requests will become much more important once you’re focused on filling out your Photodex. Each request essentially serves as a hint on how to photograph a Pokemon performing a special behavior, so they’re vital if you’re striving to snap up rare three- and four-star photos. If you’re just trying to see the credits, however, it’s best to return to them later.
