Month: June 2021

Don’t Breathe 2 opens only in theaters on August 13.

Don’t Breathe creators Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues have brought Stephen Lang’s lethal Norman Nordstrom back for a ferocious follow-up to 2016’s intense robbery-gone-wrong thriller.

In the first Don’t Breathe, Lang’s Norman was underestimated by everyone because of his blindness. Eventually though, he revealed an unflinching will to survive. But with that also came a monstrous, evil side of his personality.

The trailer for Don’t Breathe 2 is here and this time Norman (Lang, reprising the role) is a mentor and protector to 11-year-old Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), essentially the daughter he’s always wanted. Taking place eight years after the horrific events of the first film, Norman hides his evil past from Phoenix as he commits himself to teach her survivalist skills. When a new threat comes to his home — intruders who are clearly coming after Phoenix — the monster inside Norman will be unleashed again.

Check out this exclusive first look at the Don’t Breathe 2 trailer…

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IGN spoke to co-creator/co-writer Fede Alvarez (2013’s Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) as well as the new film’s director and co-writer, Rodo Sayagues, about this new look into the life of the enigmatic and cunning Norman Nordstrom and what type of challenges he’ll face this time around.

Picking things up several years later, Don’t Breathe 2 finds Norman somehow managing “to have a family again,” Alvarez stated. “The home invaders not only represent a physical threat to him and his daughter, but also will force Norman to confront the unspeakable actions of his past.”

“In the first film, Norman had the upper hand,” Alvarez added, “but this time the tables are turned and the invaders totally outnumber him. And he’s the one that will have to fight for his life against all odds.”

Sayagues, like Alvarez, thought Norman was the most interesting character from the first movie. “If we were going to expand on the Don’t Breathe universe, it would be Norman Nordstrom’s story we should explore,” he said. “He is a deeply wounded man, who has felt over and over again that life has betrayed him.”

Check out these images from Don’t Breathe 2. The first two are IGN exclusives…

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“When we met him in the first movie,” Sayagues continued, “we discovered a character with deep emotional and psychological trauma, who, driven by a twisted and sick sense of justice, embarked on a journey that pushed him over the edge and threw him into a downward spiral of madness and violence, which left him in an even much darker place than before.”

“In this new movie, we are presenting the question of whether he can rise from the darkness, or on the contrary, sink deeper into it.”

In Don’t Breathe 2, the blind and brutal Norman will face a near-impossible challenge. “Not only he is going to have to face much more skilled and deadly invaders, but also, they are going to force him to come out of his lair and engage in a battle on different and unknown turf,” Sayagues explained. “Against all odds, Norman is going to have to be on top of his game to be able to overcome unimaginable and seemingly impossible obstacles in order to prevail. He is going to be tested like never before. It’s the biggest ordeal of his life.”

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Don’t Breathe 2 stars Stephen Lang (Avatar, Tombstone), Madelyn Grace (Grey’s Anatomy), and Brendan Sexton III (El Camino, Black Hawk Down). It will be released exclusively in theaters nationwide on August 13.

Microsoft has announced the next suite of games joining Xbox Games With Gold. July 2021 will see Xbox Live Gold players receiving Planet Alpha, Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break, Midway Arcade Origins, and Conker: Live & Reloaded.

The news comes by way of Xbox Wire, which also announced that the four games added to the service this month reach a combined value of $79.96 and players can earn a total of 3000 Gamerscore overall. Planet Alpha will be available from July 1 to 31, Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break will be available from July 16 to August 15, Conker: Live & Reloaded will be available from July 1 to 15, and Midway Arcade will be available from Origins from July 16 to 31.

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Planet Alpha is an action-adventure game where the player must navigate a strange alien world after being marooned, whilst avoiding enemies as you plan your escape. You can find out more about the game here.

Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break continues the surreal, Monty Python-esque tower defense series, as you strategically roll a massive concrete ball to destroy enemy forces. The game is strange yet satisfying, and IGN liked the approach to multiplayer in this third game, as pointed out in our review.

Conker: Live & Reloaded is one of the more recent adventures for the foul-mouthed squirrel. The game is essentially a remake of the original Conker’s Bad Fur Day for the N64, but includes a multiplayer mode that allows you to play Capture the Flag or Deathmatch. You can also play Conker’s Bad Fur Day via Rare Replay, but if you want to know how this version turned out, have a look at the IGN review.

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Finally, Midway Arcade Origins is a remaster of 30 classic Midway arcade games, including Gauntlet, Rampage, Joust, Spy Hunter, Defender, and Marble Madness. And at least this time you won’t run out of coins to play the game. Check out our thoughts on bringing these arcade classics to console in our review.

There’s only a little time left to download June 2021’s Xbox Games With Gold – make sure to check that out before they’re gone.

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Liam Wiseman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @liamthewiseman

Partway through my conversation with Nerial artist Nicolai Troshinsky about Card Shark, the studio’s upcoming game, a card appears in his hand. It’s a casual gesture, made as he speaks to me about art techniques. A moment later, it vanishes.

Troshinsky is, I later find out, just idly messing with a card on his desk. But the combination of webcam and earlier discussion of card magic makes it seem, for a moment, like I am being shown a clever trick and just don’t realize it yet. After all, Card Shark is a game about tricks of exactly that flavor, and Troshinsky’s card enthusiasm is at the heart of its concept.

Nerial is the studio behind Reigns and its various spin-offs: Her Majesty, Game of Thrones, and The Council. All the Reigns games can be loosely classified as card games largely because the decisions a player makes are determined by card draws and decisions made with them. But they’re not really card games per se, not in the way Poker or Go Fish or Hearthstone or Magic are.

Card Shark, then, follows in the footsteps of its predecessor only in the sense that it’s a card game that isn’t a card game, as design director Francois Alliot explains to me in the same interview. Specifically, it’s a narrative game where the main character travels across 18th-century France and cheats at cards. It’s not about playing games, but about taking advantage of cheating techniques to win. For instance, you might need to arrange a deck to keep track of a card to give to your accomplice, or signal information to your colleague about card values or what cards other players have. Actually being good at cards is optional.

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The cheating techniques come courtesy of Troshinsky, who tells me he’s always loved Stanley Kubrick films, especially Barry Lyndon. Then, five years ago, he started learning card magic as a hobby… a practice which quickly turned into learning how to cheat at cards, too, because the techniques overlap. It was then that he remembered his love of Barry Lyndon, specifically one memorable scene where Barry cheats at cards.

“I thought, what if you had a game that’s just [that scene] from Barry Lyndon over and over?” 

He continues: “I was very fresh from magic, and I knew the process: you learn some techniques, you practice them, you learn a trick that puts them together in a sequence, you practice that sequence, you get good at it, and then you execute under pressure in front of your friends. And you have only one chance, because if you screw it up, you cannot repeat it, because then it’s not a magic trick. When you get it right, it’s really satisfying, and you have that loop. And I saw that could actually be a game loop.”

Now, Card Shark isn’t a step-by-step tutorial on how to cheat at cards in real life — it’s a fantasy, not a sim. Some of the in-game tricks are portrayed as easier to perform in-game than they are in reality; others are more impactful in Card Shark than they actually would be. Some are taken from influential books on card cheating from the period, and may be outdated now. But all of them are based on authentic cheats.

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The card cheating puzzles of Card Shark are woven together by a singular narrative, rather different from Reigns’ choice-based direction. In our video interview, Alliot spoke with me directly beneath a long strip of paper plot maps, with lines representing characters’ locations over the game’s timeline. It’s a necessary tool, he says, to help him keep track of who is where at which point in the plot, which involves traveling from place to place with your cheating partners and cheating your way out of situations,with stakes ranging from simple money gambles to trying to avoid getting shot.

And it’s all brought to life via hand-drawn art from Troshinsky created using a technique called monoprinting, which effectively stamps freeform patterns into the art. The scenes are inspired by baroque and rococo paintings and are intended to have the look of period oil paintings, but are treated digitally to keep them from becoming too static.

Card Shark is Nerial’s first deviation from the Reigns formula, and though we haven’t seen much in the way of gameplay yet, it stands poised to solidify Nerial’s overall vibe beyond the Reigns games. Like Reigns, it has all the style, feel, and time-appropriate politics of a period drama. It’s interested in narrative if not decision-making (Alliot confirmed it’s a single, linear path). And of course, it’s a not-a-card-game-card-game, just like its older cousins. But preliminary looks at Card Shark hint at a deeper story and a more sophisticated feel than Reigns’ pleasantly casual play, one we’re eager to see more of.

Fortunately, more info about Card Shark is on the way via a stream on the Unity Twitch channel on July 5 at noon ET, and the game’s currently planned for release this year on Switch and PC via Steam.

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Classic Square Enix JRPGs Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI will be removed from Steam to make way for the new Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series of the first six Final Fantasy games.

The Pixel Remaster series was announced to be arriving in July in a short trailer that Square Enix uploaded to YouTube and then quickly pulled. Eagle eyed fans quickly then noticed that two games in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, had had their Steam pages updated to state that the games would be removed and “no longer available for purchase after July 27, 2021”.

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Whilst it’s obviously unfortunate that the games will be removed from digital storefronts to make way for the Pixel Remaster versions, the Steam versions of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI were not held in particularly high regard by fans of the franchise. Both games came to PC in 2015, and whilst it was great to have them in a more accessible format, the games were immediately criticised for reducing the quality of the original art, creating a washed-out effect that diminished the overall style of the graphics, and for being very basic ports of the mobile releases. Generally, they don’t hold a candle to the classic pixel art of the originals.

Square Enix’s new Pixel Remaster series of the first six Final Fantasy games were first announced at its E3 Square Enix Presents show, and was not well-received by fans either. The main focus of the backlash stemmed from the fact that the games are heading exclusively to mobile devices and PC, and will not be available on consoles. Fans have been crying out for console versions of the classic Final Fantasy titles for years now, as they have been locked to mobile and PC for years now. Whilst Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, and XII are all available to purchase on the latest systems of consoles, the original Final Fantasy titles are still nowhere to be seen.

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Interestingly, Final Fantasy games that have received updated versions, such as the 3D remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV (that first released on DS, then later PSP and PC), will be left untouched on Steam and will continue to be available to purchase. However, III and IV will also be receiving the Pixel Remaster treatment, so it seems like customers will have the choice to decide which versions of the games they want to play.

Whilst we don’t yet have a confirmed release date for the Pixel Remaster series, it’s likely we’ll see them arrive on July 27, when the Steam versions of Final Fantasy V and VI are delisted. Personally, I just want to see the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy come to PS5. Where’s that, Square Enix?

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Liam Wiseman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN, and likes Final Fantasy XIII more than he probably should. You can follow him on Twitter @liamthewiseman

Nintendo Switch players can now download Thatgamecompany’s Sky: Children Of The Light for free, marking the game’s first release on a traditional gaming console. Originally released for iOS, and later Android, the Switch version of the game supports crossplay with both mobile platforms.

Sky sees players explore multiple dreamlike realms inhabited by other players, with whom they can make friends, team up to solve puzzles, and help each other unlock the game’s secrets. Since its first release in 2019, multiple new areas and features have been added, giving players new places and ways to explore.

The Switch version of the game will share servers with iOS and Android players, meaning new players will have veterans on hand to help them through the game.

Veteran players will also be able to keep their hard-earned progress if switching to the Switch, by using their mobile device to link their Sky account and Nintendo account. Thatgamecompany has published a blog that walks players through how to link their accounts, warning that this step can be permanent and should be done before starting a new game on the Switch.

While most of Sky: Children of the Light is free-to-play, the game includes a battle pass-style purchase to unlock some of its seasonal cosmetics. Some cosmetics and in-game currency packs can also be obtained through a one-off payment, including a new $30 Starter Pack that has been released for Switch players that includes two new capes, a playable vessel flute, a new hairstyle, and a bundle of candles, the game’s main currency.

Sky: Children of the Light is about to move into its tenth season, an event themed after The Little Prince which also marks its first third-party content collaboration. The new season will launch on July 6th.

2021 is a big year for Xbox Game Pass, with some huge games set to join the service over the next few months, including Halo Infinite, Back 4 Blood, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, and much more.

If you’re new to the service, you can currently get 3-months for just $1. But, that’s not the only good news, as one of our favourite Game Pass deals is back, and you can currently get 3-months of Game Pass Ultimate for $30 (was $44.99). This saves you $15 off the list price, and you can stack these codes as well. That means you could buy two codes, and cover yourself for the rest of 2021.

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How Much Does Game Pass Cost?

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is $14.99 a month, and there are almost always deals to be found so you don’t have to pay full price for Game Pass. If you’re already a member, we’ve found you an outstanding deal – get 3-months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $29.99 (was $44.99).

However, if you haven’t joined Game Pass yet, you can also get 3-months for just $1 as an introductory price. Bethesda has also confirmed that another 10 of the publisher’s games have joined the service, including Doom, Wolfenstein 2, Fallout, Fallout 2, and more.

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Are Xbox Exclusives on PC?

The good news for PC gamers is many of the Microsoft games announced during the Microsoft conference are coming to PC as well as Xbox Series X and Series S. Those include Starfield, Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft Flight Simulator and more.

Does Game Pass Work for PC?

There is Game Pass for PC, but it’s separate from the Xbox Game Pass subscription. Xbox Game Pass for PC, as it’s creatively named, does have a deal similar to the Xbox console version: Get Xbox Game Pass for PC for $1 for your first month and $9.99 a month after that.

Many of the games announced during the E3 2021 Microsoft/Bethesda conference are coming to Game Pass on Day 1, including Starfield, Halo Infinite and more.

If you decide you don’t want Game Pass, or you want to get yourself equipped with any of the biggest games announced this year, check out our full guide to preorder every game announced at E3.

New to Xbox Game Pass in June

• Yakuza: Like a Dragon – Now Live
• Dishonored: Death of the Outsider – Now Live
• Doom – Now Live
• The Evil Within 2 – Now Live
• Wolfenstein 2 – Now Live
• Fallout – Now Live
• Fallout 2 – Now Live
• Fallout 3 – Now Live
• Fallout Tactics – Now Live
• Rage – Now Live
• The Wild at Heart (Cloud) ID@Xbox
• For Honor (Cloud and Console)
• Backbone (PC) ID@Xbox
• Darkest Dungeon (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Super Animal Royale (Xbox Game Preview)

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Robert Anderson is a Commerce Editor and deals expert for IGN. Follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Konami and Bloober Team (The Medium, Blair Witch, Observer) have announced a “strategic cooperation agreement” that will see the two companies developing games together – adding weight to rumours that the Polish studio is working on a new Silent Hill game.

As detailed on Bloober’s investor relations website, the partnership will “include jointly developing selected contents and exchanging know-how.” Konami’s Hideki Hayakawa said that the betnership would combine “Bloober Team’s and our respective characteristics and strengths to create high-quality contents.” No specific projects have been detailed, but speculation and rumour have pointed to a new Silent Hill game for some time.

Previously, reports had stated that Konami has begun outsourcing Silent Hill development to third-party developers, with one game rumoured to be in the works at a Japanese developer. However, Bloober has previously said that it’s working on a horror IP with a “very famous publisher”, sparking rumours of a new Silent Hill project. Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka has separately teased that his latest project will be announced this summer, calling it “the one you’re kinda hoping to hear about.” Yamaoka previously worked with Bloober, although it’s not clear if that relationship is ongoing.

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In a statement provided to IGN, Konami wouldn’t speak to exactly what Bloober was working on, simply saying, “We are excited to work with Bloober Team and other highly regarded development partners to produce games from existing and new IPs.”

Konami also made clear that it will be developing games both with outside developers, while continuing internal development: “Our alliance with Bloober Team is one area where we are continuing to evolve our approach to game development. We will continue to explore partnerships with a variety of development companies as well as continue in-house development of key projects among our own teams, as we have done for many years.”

President of Bloober Team, Piotr Babieno wrote of the partnership: “It is a historic day for me and the culmination of several years of our work. The fact that such a renowned company as Konami has decided to strategically cooperate with the Bloober Team means that we also joined the world leaders in gaming and became an equal partner for the leading players in this market.”

Bloober Team most recently released The Medium, which we gave an 8/10 review, calling it “a psychological horror adventure that’s all thriller and no filler.” We’ve been waiting for a new Silent Hill game since 2012, after Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills was cancelled and caused collaborator Guillermo del Toro to vow never to make another video game.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Venture is a mechanic created for Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons crossover set, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms – and it’s probably the one that makes the game feel most like a D&D adventure as well as a regular round of Magic. We spoke to one of the set’s designers to find out more about Venture, and how you’ll be using it to your advantage.

For the uninitiated, Venture was introduced last week, and directly ties into Adventures in the Forgotten Realms’ most interesting new cards, the Dungeons. Each of the set’s three Dungeon cards (below) act as a map, with every room on that map coming with an associated effect. You travel through those rooms by activating cards with a Venture ability – every time you Venture, you move one room through the map. And don’t worry, each Dungeon will be released in the token slots of new booster packs, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting hold of them

“It meshes incredibly well with the D&D feel and flavor,” says senior games designer Jules Robins in an interview with IGN, “and we think when players start playing with it, they’ll really enjoy it. In fact, even just showing off the dungeons has inspired players to start making 3D models, oversized versions to explore, and more, which is really cool to see.”

Robins tells us that there are 35 cards that either have the Venture ability, or an ability connected to completing a dungeon by using Venture. That means that it’s not going to appear in every Forgotten Realms deck, but it’s a viable option for many – particularly white-themed decks:

“There are a lot of ways to Venture,” Robins explains, “but it definitely shows up most in White and least in Red; White-Blue and White-Black are especially themed around Venturing. So, much like any set theme, you can certainly draft without it, but expect to play against it often enough to feel like someone is making their way through dungeons.”

Robins adds that decks can be built solely around Venturing, but don’t have to be: “We’ve provided enough support between the main set and the Commander decks that players can build decks around Venture or just play a few key cards that happen to have Venture.”

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As for the Dungeons themselves, seasoned players will see that each one appears to support a different style of play – Lost Mine of Phandelver is something of a jack-of-all-trades, Tomb of Annihilation supports aggro play, and Dungeon of the Mad Mage feels more suited for a control deck. But as well as their uses in Magic, Robins adds that they were chosen for their D&D flavor, too:

“We knew the three dungeons needed to feel really distinct, both in flavor in gameplay. We soon landed on a model, of ‘the default one,’ ‘the dangerous one,’ and ‘the long one’ and these dungeons fit the bill perfectly, as well being fan favorites.”

Dungeons themselves are something of a rarity for Magic – a card type that forces you to interact with the game in a whole new way, almost adding a board game element alongside the traditional card game. It’s clearly been the product of a long thought process for Robins and other Magic designers.

“We have experimented with things like this before,” he explains, “particularly ‘mini-games’ like fighting the Hydra, battling Garruk, or multiplayer experiences like Planechase, but this is new for Standard. Ultimately the exploration felt a lot more real with a space to explore, and permanents on the battlefield have a lot of issues standing in for physical space.

“These extra game elements have generally stayed away from Standard for two main reasons: complexity, and ensuring it’s not right for every deck to have to bring extra elements. Here, the complexity is worth it, and we addressed the second issue by generating the element from cards and allowing players to play using dungeons even if they didn’t bring their own copies to the table.”

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The question is, after all this work to make the mechanic work, will the D&D crossover be the only time we see Venture and Dungeons in Magic? After all, other sets have a similarly adventurous theme – Throne of Eldraine’s focus on fairy tales feels like a good fit, for example. Could we see the idea persist?

Robins is open to the idea, it seems: “It meshes really well with D&D feel and flavor, but if the right opportunity emerges, we might use it, or something similar, for another Magic set.” Personally, I hope so – Venture and Dungeons don’t just feel like a great fit for a D&D crossover, it feels like a brilliantly tricky new Magic mechanic in its own right.

If you want to see one of the new Venture options right now, check out our reveal of two new Adventures in the Forgotten Realms cards, Find the Path and Hunter’s Mark. And for a different kind of D&D crossover, we also showed off the iconic Gelatinous Cube in Magic card form.

Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will release within MTG Arena on July 8 and physically on July 23.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

IGN is delighted to exclusively reveal two more cards from the Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons crossover set, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms – say hello to Find the Path and Hunter’s Mark.

Both new cards are Green spells, but have very different uses. Find the Path is perhaps the more interesting to those looking for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms’ brand new mechanics. While this land-based enchantment is a nice way to ramp mana for a high-cost green deck, it also comes with another use – when played, it allows you to Venture.

As explained in a DailyMTG tutorial video, Venture is half of an extremely Dungeons & Dragons-inspired mechanic built around a brand new card type, appropriately called Dungeons. The new set includes three Dungeons, each of which present a map that can be followed, with each ‘room’ on that map including an effect on the game. Each time you play a card or ability with a Venture activation – as Find the Path has – you can move forward one room in your chosen dungeon and activate its effect. You can find out much more about the new mechanic in our exclusive interview with one of the set’s designers.

Hunter’s Mark is a more familiar kind of card, but a potentially very effective one. Although it comes with a relatively high base cost, Hunter’s Mark can be used extremely cheaply against opponents playing Blue cards (ignoring their inevitable counter-spells, too), and to potentially devastating effect against Blue planeswalkers – it’s a tempting sideboard card.

Yesterday, we revealed a card themed after one of D&D’s most iconic monsters, the Gelatinous Cube. It’s a 4/3 Black creature card, and comes with two brand new ability words for the set. Between the Oozes and the Dungeons, it seems we’ll have a lot of D&D flavour in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will release within MTG Arena on July 8 and physically on July 23.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

lightning-quickAmerica: The Motion Picture premieres Wednesday, June 30 on Netflix.

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From Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The LEGO Movie) and Archer’s Adam Reed comes a raunchy and riotous retelling of the Revolutionary War that feels like Drunk History had a one night stand with The Naked Gun and then gave birth to a history report by Bill and Ted if they never had a time machine. This animated adventure, from first-time feature director Matt Thompson (also Archer), can, at times, exhaust with its over-the-top antics and unabashed insanity, but overall it’s a worthwhile watch featuring a fun voice cast and awesomely nutty anachronisms.

To its hilarious benefit, America: The Motion Picture is presented without context. There’s no bookend letting us know that this is a dumb person’s account of the founding of our nation or even, like, Princess Bride-style interludes showing a grandfather reading uproariously wrong information off the internet to his grandkid. We just get the story as-is. Out of the gate, it’s just a bonkers chronicle of 1776 that features a werewolf Benedict Arnold blowing up most of the founding fathers and then killing Abe Lincoln in front of Abe’s BFF George Washington. Just about every aspect of American political history, including quotes from presidents 200 years later, is jammed into a blender and minced up into a deranged action movie.

Channing Tatum, who also serves as executive producer here, provides pure Golden Retriever meathead joy as George Washington, once again reminding us how freakin’ funny he is. In fact, if it helps, just imagine that this movie is the result of a homework assignment by Tatum’s 21 Jump Street character, Jenko. It’s that blissfully boneheaded.

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Backed up by Jason Mantzoukas as Sam Adams, Raoul Trujillo as Geronimo, Bobby Moynihan as Paul Revere, and Olivia Munn as a gender-flipped electro-gauntleted Thomas Edison, Washington must thwart an evil plot by Andy Samberg’s Benedict Arnold and Simon Pegg’s King James (which some may not even realize is a just plain wrong) to turn all the colonists British by steeping them in tea. This formidable cast, which also includes Judy Greer and Run the Jewels’ Killer Mike, all wonderfully understand the rapid-fire pace and the satirical tone.

Stretching this type of lightning quick humor out to 90 minutes is a challenge though, and there are times when jokes don’t land well, or at all, simply because they’re not given time to breathe. It’s why most of the time this format is relegated to 22-minute episodes. It’s just better in small batches. This is the main thing that holds America: The Motion Picture back a bit. Despite it being, more or less, supersonic Mel Brooks, the style doesn’t easily lend itself to feature-length projects. That being said, there are so many jokes here, and they move so fast, that it’s easy enough to glaze over and dip out every so often and then pop back in refreshed.

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America: The Motion picture also takes no prisoners, topic-wise. It both embraces the innate earnestness and innocent idiocy of American jingoism while also never letting our heroes off the hook for being racist and misogynistic. Even as some of our heroes learn valuable lessons — usually because they’re educated by Geronimo, Edison, or Killer Mike’s Blacksmith (aka “Black Smith”) — the film never presents the country as anything other than a noble experiment on the precipice of implosion. Even if, going by action movies, America is the rogue cop who doesn’t play by the rules the story is hyper-aware that there’s something deeply wrong with that type of heroics.

Skewering everything from Star Wars to Fast and Furious to even Harry and the Hendersons, the film is great at lassoing different blips from pop culture in a way where the larger story still makes sense, in its own goofy way. Sure, Big Ben turns into a giant mech and people openly use machine guns and holograms but it’s all in service of calling out, and laughing at, the U.S.’s societal and cultural issues and ills. This movie and 2004’s Team America: World Police would make for an excellent double feature on any given Independence Day.