Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth and penultimate movie before he says he’ll stop directing feature films, cleverly showcases the writer-director’s encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and pop culture while also serving as a loving tribute to a bygone era of films and stars. Despite incorporating many elements of the filmmaker’s signature style — dark wit, moments of explosive violence, kitschy references, a great vintage soundtrack, and an overall “cool” vibe — Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood shows a more sentimental side of the Kill Bill filmmaker. And yet it also displays many of his self-indulgences and weaknesses. It’s not Tarantino’s best work, but it’s still better than the best efforts of other filmmakers.The movie reflects the sensibilities of an older and possibly more thoughtful filmmaker than the indie bad boy who stormed the industry back in the ‘90s with his “cool criminal” fare like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. There’s still an undeniable coolness —there’s that word again! — exuded throughout this film, but like an older man, it moves a bit slower, is more contemplative and mindful of the end being nigh, and struggles with things not being the way they were back in the day. Perhaps it’s because he’s set a retirement goal for himself with his tenth film that Tarantino leans so heavily into nostalgia here, staging a last hurrah for a breed of aging Hollywood types out of step with their times.
Tarantino largely focuses his story — which is primarily set over three days in Hollywood circa 1969 — on washed-up actor Rick Dalton and his best pal, former stunt double-turned-flunky, Cliff Booth. Rick is deftly played with feverish desperation and crumbling vanity by Leonardo DiCaprio, while an almost transcendently cool Brad Pitt delivers his best performance in years as Cliff, whose sun-kissed appearance belies the inner darkness that’s cost him everything but the affection of his dog and Rick. Cliff may project a Zen-like chill but there’s a coiled intensity lurking under the surface that speaks to the violence he’s capable of committing. Cliff is in many ways a more interesting and complex character than the narcissistic and fragile Rick, but DiCaprio and Pitt share a breezy, boozy chemistry that makes them great foils for one another.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Gallery
The third pivotal character here is actress Sharon Tate, a beauty whose star is on the rise even as Rick’s is on the decline. This is no A Star is Born-esque showbiz drama, however. It’s historical fiction. Portrayed here as Rick’s next door neighbor, Sharon Tate, of course, was a real person whose brutal death — slain while pregnant by followers of cult leader Charles Manson — has overshadowed her brief film career.
Margot Robbie plays her with a free-spirited vivacity, but the character of Tate herself is not well developed (Robbie has much less dialogue than nearly all the other leading characters). She’s more a symbol of Hollywood dreams than she is a flesh and blood protagonist like Rick and Cliff. Tarantino seems more interested in the idea of Sharon Tate than he necessarily is in exploring who she really was. While she may get short-changed here in some ways, Sharon still gets one of the film’s more emotionally engaging sequences, one that registers on a far more intimate level than some of the scenes featuring Rick or Cliff.
Indeed, that’s the biggest drawback of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Rick’s travails and Cliff’s side story are enjoyable but it’s nevertheless tough to fully connect with them. In the end, you’re left wondering what Tarantino wanted audiences to feel about them or his film save for leaving with an appreciation for Hollywood’s yesteryear. That may be enough, intellectually, for those who want to ruminate on the film industry, past and present. But emotionally speaking, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and its characters never quite register as strongly as many of Tarantino’s other films and protagonists.
Tarantino has once again assembled a stellar ensemble cast that includes several veterans of his past films like Kurt Russell — who occasionally provides jarring and unearned narration that comes across like a narrative cheat — and great new additions, such as scene stealers Mike Moh as an egotistical Bruce Lee and Julia Butters as a precocious child actor Rick meets on the set of a potential comeback role. But the biggest supporting player in the film isn’t even a person.
It’s become a cliche to say a location is as much a character in a movie as the people but in this case it’s true. This film is as much a love letter to the Los Angeles of 1969 as it is to the films, TV shows and pop culture of that tumultuous era. Tarantino and production designer Barbara Ling — complemented by Robert Richardson’s warm cinematography — have painstakingly recreated the greater L.A. area of that period and its many landmarks. But did we really need to see every street and stretch of freeway Cliff drives along? Nope, and those unnecessarily bloated stretches only makes one feel the film’s nearly three-hour runtime all the more.
The film is also chock full of asides to Rick’s faux movies and TV shows, from his heyday as the star of the ‘50s TV show Bounty Law to his later spaghetti westerns, war movies, and exploitation films. These are often hilarious and spot-on send-ups that lovers of B-movies and the Golden Age of Television will appreciate and laugh at more than casual (and frankly younger) viewers who lack the pop cultural context to get the references Tarantino is making. Indeed, Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood’s effectiveness depends in large part on one’s fondness for the bygone era Tarantino is honoring. But there are times where Tarantino veers into self-indulgence.
There’s another and arguably larger curiosity factor for those going to see this film than what pop culture riffs they’ll get from the director who wears his influences on his proverbial sleeve, and that’s the Manson family murders in August ‘69. Critics have been forbidden from revealing how Tarantino handles one of L.A.’s most infamous crimes, but suffice to say his interpretation was always going to prove divisive and the end result most certainly will. As exploitative and jarring as the whole sequence can be, it also gives the film a jolt in its uneven second half.
Could it have been handled differently? Of course, but this is Quentin Tarantino’s world we’re in here and his bloody and lurid approach serves as an almost meta-commentary on his own films and what he knows his audience expects from him. While this climax never matches the masterful building of suspense in an earlier sequence where Cliff encounters the Manson family on an old movie ranch, the homestretch reminds Tarantino fans of the edgy provocateur he started out as after sitting through two plus hours of slow-moving industry nostalgia.
NECA is back with another great SDCC lineup of super detailed collectibles. This year they’re leaning heavily into the horror movie genre with Pennywise figures from both the TV and movie adaptations of It, a Halloween II Michael Meyers, a really gross Candyman, Leatherface, “Ultimate” Annabelle and Crooked Man figures from the Conjuring universe, Pinhead and more.In addition to the cool horror icons, there are a bunch of neat figures from the Terminator, Alien and Predator movies, including a Parker action figure from Alien, a 1/4 scale Alien, a “Rhino Alien”, Arnold and Sarah Connor figures from Terminator: Dark Fate, and several Predator variants, including the awesome looking Alpha Predator.
NECA Brings Horror Icons and Alien, Predator and Terminator: Dark Fate Collectibles to SDCC
Fire Emblem: Three Houses asks a lot of you. Every piece, from battle to friendships to training your units, must be managed both individually and as part of a whole. It can be intimidating, but when it all clicks together, it really clicks. Mastering the art of thoughtful lesson planning as a professor improves your performance on the battlefield, where success relies on calculated teamwork and deft execution. Cultivating relationships during battle in turn draws you closer to each of the characters, who you then want to invest even more time into in the classroom. Every piece feeds into the next in a rewarding, engrossing loop where you get lost in the whole experience, not just in the minutiae.
Three Houses casts you as a mercenary who, while out on a mission with their father, runs into a group of teens under attack. After a brief introduction and battle tutorial–which you shouldn’t need, since you’re apparently already an established mercenary, but we’ll go with it–you learn that they are students at Garreg Mach monastery. Each of them leads one of the school’s three houses: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. At the behest of the church’s archbishop, who definitely gives off nefarious vibes but is also a gentle mom figure, you end up becoming a professor and must choose which of the houses to lead. There is a lot of mystery to the setup, with consistent hints that something is not quite right, and it’s easy to get absorbed in trying to figure out what the archbishop and various other shady figures are up to.
Your main role as professor is to instruct your students in matters of combat and prepare them for story battles at the end of each month. Battles in Three Houses feature the same turn-based, tactical combat at the heart of the series, albeit with some changes. The classic weapon triangle is downplayed quite a bit in favor of Combat Arts, which have been altered somewhat from their introduction in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Combat Arts are attacks tied to a weapon type and can boost a unit’s attack power at the expense of weapon durability; some are effective against specific enemy types, like armored units. You can also unlock skills outside of Combat Arts that grant you better stats with certain weapons, like a heftier boost for using an axe against a lance user, similar to the old weapon triangle. It’s the same complexity the series is known for but less abstracted, making it a bit easier to strategize without sacrificing depth.
One of the big combat additions is battalions, mini armies you can equip that provide various benefits to a unit during battle. They also give you a new type of attack called a Gambit, which varies based on the type of battalion–magic-focused, brute force, and so on–and stuns the enemies it hits. Gambits are limited-use and can be incredibly powerful against the right enemies. You can increase a Gambit’s effectiveness even further if one or more of your other units are within attack range of the target, a tried-and-true Fire Emblem concept that applies to all kinds of attacks. There’s also an anime-style splash screen as you attack that shows each character involved in the Gambit looking fierce, which adds a nice bit of drama.
How much you use Combat Arts and Gambits depends on what difficulty you’re on. On Normal difficulty, well-trained units will likely be able to dispatch most enemies in one or two hits without the help of Combat Arts or Gambits. On Hard, however, enemies hit harder and withstand your attacks better. You have to think much more carefully about unit placement, the best time to use a Gambit and take advantage of its stun effect, and how many Combat Arts you can fire off before your weapon breaks. This is where things get exciting; after a few turns of cautious setup, you (hopefully) get to knock out tons of enemies as your plans fall into place.
Some of the early-game and optional battle maps are open spaces that don’t require you to think too hard, especially on Normal. But the story battles throughout feature a variety of map layouts–from pirate ships to what appears to be a lava-filled cavern–that challenge you to consider where your units need to be, both in the next turn and several turns down the line. Many of them have different routes, enemies coming at you from multiple angles, optional treasure to chase, and other quirks that require you to split your party up or change their equipped classes to suit the situation. Thieves, for instance, can open chests and doors without a key, while flying units don’t take damage from ground that’s on fire.
The depth of strategy in these elements really shines on Hard difficulty, but especially so when coupled with Divine Pulse, another limited-use ability. Divine Pulse allows you to rewind time in order to redo all or part of the battle, usually if one of your units dies. Rewinding with Divine Pulse shows just how important unit placement and attack choice can be, as even a slight change can make or break the encounter. It’s also just a nice quality-of-life feature if you play on Classic mode, in which units who die in battle are lost forever and can’t fight or train anymore. You might still soft reset from time to time, but it’s great to be able to rectify a mistake right away and get a shot of instant gratification for a job well re-done.
Battling, of course, is only one part of life at the monastery. The backbone of Three Houses is the monthly school calendar, and if you like organizing things, planning ahead, or school in general, this can be the most engrossing part. On Sundays, you have free time you can spend in one of four ways: exploring the monastery, participating in side battles, holding a seminar to improve your students’ skills, or simply taking the day off. Mondays are for instruction, which consists of selecting students from a list and choosing a few of their skills to boost. The rest of the week goes by automatically, with a sprite of the professor running along the calendar and stopping occasionally for random events or story cutscenes. It sounds a bit hands-off, but there’s a lot to think about as it is, and the week-by-week rather than day-by-day structure keeps things moving and ensures you never have to wait too long to progress in any area.
The predictable structure of each month–and the fact that you can see the full month’s schedule with events listed ahead of time–gives you the foundation to make effective plans. All that time management can definitely be overwhelming, at least at first. You have to keep tabs on your students’ skills and study goals, your own skills, everyone’s inventory, and various other meters and menus while planning for the lessons and battles to come. But you’re treated to a near-constant stream of positive reinforcement as those meters fill up week by week and your students improve their skills. You’re always moving toward the next thing: the next level up, the next skill you need to develop, the next month and what may unfold.
To complement this, your activities when exploring the monastery (as well as how many battles you can participate in, if you choose to battle on your day off) are limited by activity points. You get more as your “professor level” increases, which means you have to balance activities that boost your professor level with ones that help your students grow. Activity points also ensure that the month continues at a healthy pace, preventing you from lingering on any one Sunday for too long. Seminars and rest days just eat up the whole day without consideration for activity points, which can break up the more involved weeks and provide their own benefits.
How you choose to spend your time also comes down to how motivated your students are to learn. Each of your students has a motivation gauge that’s drained when you instruct them, and they can’t be instructed again until you interact with them and get their motivation back up. You can do this most effectively when exploring the monastery–where you get to talk to different characters, give them gifts, and share bonding time with them–whereas battle only rarely increases motivation levels. While you can skip a lot of the school life bits and even automate instruction, you won’t get the best results. You’re directly at a disadvantage in combat if you don’t make time for your students, which is by design.
Like all recent Fire Emblem games, keeping you invested in your units and their relationships is the glue that binds the whole experience together. It’s incredibly effective in Three Houses, where your direct involvement in nearly all aspects of a unit’s growth trajectory gives you a special stake in their success. After spending time and effort to help a character achieve their full potential, you’re not just satisfied when they win a fight–you’re proud. And the more you invest in someone–both emotionally and through months of lesson plans and instruction–the more cautious you’ll be about putting them in harm’s way, and the more you’ll work to come up with a solid battle strategy.
Considering you’re a teacher, it’s good rather than disappointing that there’s almost no romance to speak of. Some students are flirty, but mainly, you’re fostering camaraderie rather than playing matchmaker or romancing them yourself. As you unlock new support levels with different characters–both by interacting with them at the monastery and by using teamwork in battles–you get cutscenes that flesh them out more. Some are charming, lighthearted conversations between two friends, while many of them give you insight into more serious matters–a father forcing his daughter into marriage, discrimination within the monastery, the dark reason behind someone’s lofty ambitions. For the most part, each support conversation is just a piece of who a character is, and as you slowly build support levels over time, you begin to uncover the full picture of each person. As a result, learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.
Every NPC is fully voiced in both English and Japanese, which brings a lot of life to the brief support conversations. Disappointingly, though, the professor is silent. They do have a voice–they’ll occasionally say a line when leveling up or improving a skill–but in cutscenes and when talking to students and faculty, they just nod or shake their head flatly. There are brief dialogue options during conversations, but where they could give way to a full, subtitled sentence or two from the professor, you’re just left with the other character’s reaction. Characters do, however, refer to the professor’s personality and how they come across throughout the game, which is odd considering they mostly nod at things. This puts distance between you and the characters you’re bonding with, and it’s a missed opportunity in a game where the protagonist has an otherwise set look, personality, and backstory.
It’s not hard to like a lot of the characters, though. They draw you in with anime archetypes–the ladies’ man, the bratty prince, the clumsy but well-meaning girl–and surprise you with much more nuance under the surface. Some of the funniest scenes early on involve Bernadetta, a shut-in with extreme reactions to normal social situations, but her inner life is a lot darker and more complicated than those early conversations let on. You might discover a character you thought was a jerk is actually one of your favorites or slowly stop using a less-than-favorite character in battle. You also have the option of having tea with someone, during which you have to choose conversation topics according to what you know about them, dating sim-style. Knowing what topics they’ll like is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and successfully talking to a favorite character–even if the tea setup can be a little awkward in practice–is a small victory.
Each house’s campaign feels distinct but not so different that one seems way better than the other. Every house has a mix of personalities and skills, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students from different houses can form friendships with each other, too, and you can eventually recruit students from other houses to join yours. Rather than being repetitive, on a second playthrough, recruiting gives you access to different relationship combinations; you can see a different side to a character through a different set of support conversations. And while the overall setup of the game is largely the same across the three houses, each has its own web of B plots, and the second half of the game will look very different depending on who you’re with and the choices you’ve made.
The first half concerns the church, its secrets, and the fact that the professor knows very little about their own identity. As the basic loop of each month pulls you forward, so too does the promise of learning the truth about something, whether it’s why the archbishop wanted you to be a teacher in the first place or who a suspicious masked individual is. These threads remain pretty open, though, at least after one and a quarter playthroughs. You get different details in each route, and so far it’s been a long process to piece everything together.
Learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.
After a five-year time skip, you enter the “war phase” of the game. While the structure of the game is the same–you even instruct your units, since you still need to train for battle–the focus shifts to the house-specific stories. They involve a lot of hard decisions, with old friends becoming enemies, people you wish you didn’t have to kill, and students who’ve changed either in spite or because of your guidance. Late-game battles are especially challenging, with higher stakes and multi-lane layouts that require a lot of forethought. Success in these battles is incredibly rewarding, as you’re seeing dozens of hours of investment in your students reach a crescendo, but they’re bittersweet in context.
When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough. I was curious about the mysteries left unsolved, of course, but I also hoped to undo my mistakes. There were characters I didn’t talk to enough, students I didn’t recruit, and far more effective ways to train my units. A second playthrough treads familiar ground in the beginning, but after learning and growing so much in the first, it feels fresh, too. That speaks to Three Houses’ mechanical complexity and depth as well as the connections it fosters with its characters–and whether you’re managing inventories or battlefields, it’s the kind of game that’s hard to put down, even when it’s over.
Season 10 of Fortnite is just around the corner, but in the meantime, the game’s second birthday event is now underway. Alongside the event comes a handful of challenges, each of which will unlock a new birthday-themed reward when completed, with a special birthday cake pickaxe awaiting those who finish all of the tasks.
There are four birthday challenges to complete in total, most of which are self-explanatory and can be cleared fairly easily simply by playing the game as normal. The one that may give you a bit of trouble, however, is to dance in front of different birthday cakes. A similar challenge was featured as part of last year’s birthday event, but these cakes are hidden in different locations, which may pose a problem if you don’t know where to look. Fortunately, we’ve put together a handy map and guide to help you find the birthday cake locations.
Where Are The Birthday Cake Locations?
You need to dance in front of 10 birthday cakes in total in order to complete this challenge, and they’re scattered all across Fortnite’s island. Fortunately, once you know where to look, the cakes should be easy enough to spot, as they’ll be surrounded by balloons. We’ve put together a map of the birthday cake locations below:
How To Complete The Challenge
Once you know where to look for the birthday cakes, completing this challenge is simply a matter of going to the right location and then busting a move in front of the confection. If you’re low on health, you can also grab a slice of cake to recover; not only will it help replenish your health and shield, it’ll count toward your progress in a separate birthday challenge, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone.
Unlike some other challenges of this nature, which allow you to revisit the same locations in different matches and still make progress toward completing the task, you’ll need to visit 10 different cakes in order to clear this challenge. If you need a visual walkthrough, you can watch us complete the challenge in the video at the top of this guide.
Fortnite Birthday Celebration Challenges
Play matches (10) — Wrap
Dance in front of different Birthday Cakes (10) — B-day Beats music track
Outlast Opponents (500) — Spray
Gain health or shield from Birthday Cake (50) — Banner
Reward: Birthday Cake harvesting tool (after completing all four challenges)
At some point in the past few weeks, some of us at the office were spitballing about when we thought the ludicrous new crustacean-themed battle game Fight Crab might come out.While we don’t know for sure (though their website alleges it will be some time by the end of the month), it got us thinking: this game, while undeniably awesome, is also undeniably silly and sort of dumb. But that’s not a bad thing – in fact, it reminded us that some of our favorite games aren’t much smarter.
IGN’s Favorite Dumb-But-Awesome Games
Check out the slideshow above for some of our favorite dumb-but-awesome games, or scroll through the entire list below.
I Am Bread
In I Am Bread, you are bread, and your mission is to become toast. Literally – it’s all about traversing a hazardous kitchen, apartment, or other mundane room as a slice of bread to get to a toaster and cook yourself.
The premise is silly as hell and it’s frustratingly, stupidly hard, but it also had me laughing so hard I teared up. Funny, because I had the same exact reaction to Bossa Studios’ other wacky game, Surgeon Simulator.
– Casey DeFreitas, Editor
This game was an absolute turd, so bad in fact that it was one of the first games to be approved for the PS Classic, the first mini-console desgined to showcase all of the worst titles in the history of an otherwise beloved system.
It was also the first and only 3D fighting game available for the system at launch (a couple months before Tekken and a couple years before Soul Blade would be released), so you better believe there were quite a few of us early adopters out there wasting hours mastering a game that would never really achieve widespread popularity. Even though I definitely know better in retrospect, I still can’t help but to remember my time with BAT fondly.
– Jeremy Azevedo, Head of Gaming Video
Blitzball
Final Fantasy X was a game about love, parenthood, responsibility, adulthood, and playing underwater basket-rugby with lots of dudes in big shorts. At least, it was for me. I am acutely aware that Blitzball, X’s take on the traditional all-consuming Final Fantasy side-game, is objectively bad. It’s slow, predictable and has, generously, about 4 animations in total. And I played it for dozens of hours, sculpting the perfect team of dudes in big shorts and winning everything I could. It was a chance for a distraction from the sad fact that Tidus’ dad had become an apocalyptic whale, and by god, I took that chance. I love it.
– Joe Skrebels, UK Deputy Editor
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
In my house, my dad didn’t let me play Doom. He let me play Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold while he played Doom. Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold is kind of like Doom, but it’s also not Doom. Doom came out the week after this game and ruined my life. Thanks, Doom.
– Ronny Barrier, Video Producer
Sneak King
Who’d have thought that one of the most memorable games of the last generation would have been a marketing stunt? Sneak King took my love of stealth games, and slapped it on the grill with my love of burgers to make a delicious, greasy, surprisingly unbroken adventure starring America’s only acceptable monarch, the Burger King. May his charbroiled reign last a thousand sneaky, greasy years.
– Jon Ryan, Senior Editor
Uno (Xbox Live Arcade)
When this game came out, I got way too into becoming the greatest Uno player of all time. I will never forget the lack of moderation on the pictures for my competitors leading each game of Uno to basically become a proxy for chat roulette. A unique time in gaming.
– Tate Fiebing, Product Manager
Roundabout
Expecting an FMV comedy romp, I was not expecting to be dumped into what is arguably the most absurd puzzle/platformer/racing game I’ve ever played. Yes, it also has FMV. Beginning with frustration and utter confusion as I tried to learn how to control my continually-rotating cab quickly gave way to howls of laughter as I crashed and exploded again and again, and I became obsessed with trying to top my previous high scores for each level. If I’d been playing by myself, I might not have found it quite as funny – but with friends, this game is comedic gold.
– Ginger Smith, Product Manager
Almost every single licensed NES game (not made by Capcom)
If it existed in the 80s, there was an NES game based on it. It didn’t matter if the underlying IP was rated R, or what the story might be, or if the developers had ever seen the movie or show it was based on.
This was before the internet and by the time you were suckered into buying the game, that was it, you were stuck with it. Rambo, Total Recall, TMNT, Bart vs The Space Mutants, A Nightmare on Elm Street, X-Men, Goonies, Karate Kid, Terminator 2, Friday the 13th, Night Rider, Airwolf, Bill & Ted, if you can remember it, there was probably an NES game based on it and it was almost definitely shit. But you’d play the hell out of it because you wanted to believe it was like the thing you loved, and because you had to justify the expense of a new game tape to yourself and your family. Unless it was made by Capcom (like Ducktails or Little Nemo), in which case it was, of course, bitchin’.
– Jeremy Azevedo
You Have To Burn The Rope
YHTBTR is a 30sec game with a great 2min end credits song. It’s not very difficult. The game literally tells you what to do right in the title. You could argue this isn’t even a game and instead is more of a music player with an interactive play button. No matter how you look at it, YHTBTR is definitely a “dumb” game but to this day is still one of my favorite time-wasters.
– Isaiah Smith, Software Engineer
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
After G-Unit performs a sold-out show in an ambiguous Middle Eastern country, they’re outraged to learn the concert promoter can’t pay them in cash. Instead, he offers them a jewel-encrusted skull, which is immediately stolen by a beautiful ninja woman. 50 Cent, Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks, and DJ Whoo Kid chase after her, which proves easier said than done because there are terrorists everywhere and they have to fight the terrorists.
Because this is a video game, new weapons and skills can be unlocked, but because this a 50 Cent video game, so can new swearwords. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is dumb as all hell, and way better that is has any right to be. It is a tragedy and an atrocity that it never got a follow-up where G-Unit goes to outer space or back in time.
– Max Scoville, Executive Mailroom Clerk
Chrome Dino
When you go offline…and you’re really bored…watchu gonna play? Chrome Dino! No, but seriously, Chrome Dino has saved me from complete boredom so many times over the years. From dodging pterodactyl and cacti to watching the world change from day to night and back again, Chrome Dino is a surprisingly addictive game that lives in the most unlikely of places. I still play it sometimes to this day when the internet goes out…
– Isaiah Smith
Cool Spot
A video game tie-in to promote Sprite’s bastard stepchild 7-Up, Cool Spot is profoundly dumb in theory, but actually quite fun to play. You play as the eponymous spot – 7-Up’s mascot in the United States – as he traverses through various generic ‘90s platforming levels, rescuing other Spots and collecting points. Strangely competent despite the relentless product placement.
– Lucy O’Brien, Executive Editor
Get On Top (Sportsfriends)
The awkard wrestling game where rounds last 2 or 3 seconds. Many laughs were had and bets decided from wierd round boys slamming eachothers heads into the ground by wiggling around in QWOP-like motions. Existed as a hidden mini game in Sportsfriends and on the best selling console of all time: Ouya.
– Drake Wempe Software Engineer
Dong Dong Never Die
One of the weirdest fighting games ever made, DDND is a Doujin (Fan-Made Indie Game) game from China made in Fighter Maker. It plays a little bit like the old King of Fighters series, but the game looks like you took the weirdest characters out of Kung Fu Hustle and put them in a digitized 2d fighter. You’ll laugh at how absurd each character and their attacks are, but actually get a kick out of the fighting engine too. The game is free on PC, so you can take a shot of using your Mian Hua Tang against Super Mario without spending a penny.
– Aaron Smith Sr. Mgr.of AdOps
Metal Arms: Glitch In The System
A long-forgotten game for GameCube that was in many ways ahead of it’s time. Quirky storytelling that reminds me of borderlands. A bunch of bizzare weapons that could be upgraded and customized.
A final boss fight that was utter insanity as you’re almost literally fighting a building. A ton of fun to play and even gave itself an arena to do PvP with. Sadly in spite of having all of the elements of other great games it never really caught on.
– Eric Becking Lead Engineer
What are some of your favorite games that make you go “this sucks, I love it?” Let us know in the comments!
It’s been a decade since the first Zombieland movie premiered and in October, fans will be able to get a second helping when Zombieland: Double Tap hits theaters–with the four principal stars returning. The first trailer for the sequel has arrived, catching viewers up on what Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) have been up to in the last year. It’s about what you’d expect.
In the first look at the movie, the gang arrives in Washington to take up residence in the White House for Christmas, with Tallahassee joking he could have been a good president. It’s also hinted that this is the first time the group has been on the road in some time, though it’s unclear where they were settled before. For those who haven’t seen the movie in some time, we last saw this quartet in California, after they escaped a theme park overrun by zombies.
The trailer also introduces a few new characters. Madison (Zoey Deutsch) enters the picture and seems very ill-equipped to survive a zombie apocalypse, unlike gun-toting Nevada (Rosario Dawson), while Little Rock runs off with Berkeley (Avon Jogia), a new boy she met. Then there are the doppelgangers. It’s unclear just how big a role they’ll play in the movie, but the trailer briefly shows characters very similar to Tallahassee and Columbus, played respectively by Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch.
Based on this small look, Double Tap looks to be even more of the same mix of humor and horror as the first film, as this wildly dysfunctional family simply tries to survive together. Zombieland: Double Tap hits theaters on October 18, just in time for Halloween.
Over the past eight months or so that the Epic Games Store has been in business, the PC game retailer has slowly ramped up its offering of free games for its users, first giving away a game every two weeks and then transitioning to a weekly giveaway. Now, it appears Epic is testing the waters of giving away two free games on a weekly basis, if the offerings this week and next are any indications of its future plans. From now through August 2, you can claim Moonlighter and This War of Mine for free at the Epic Store; then, on August 2, the pair will be replaced by another duo of freebies: Alan Wake and For Honor.
As a reminder, once you claim any of Epic’s free games, they’re yours to keep forever. To claim them, you’ll have to first create a free Epic account, if you don’t already have one.
This War of Mine
If you enjoy dark survival-themed games that require life-and-death decisions influenced by your own morals, definitely check out This War of Mine, which was developed by the same team behind Frostpunk. The game puts you in the shoes of a group of civilians struggling to survive in a war-torn city. Scavenging for resources like food and medicine is crucial, and along the way, player-controlled characters will run into other NPC survivors, whom you can choose to kill or help out. Epic seems to be giving away the Anniversary Edition, which adds new characters, new locations, and an entirely new ending to the game.
Then there’s Moonlighter, a very different sort of game that you’ll like if you’re into action RPGs with rogue-lite elements. Primarily, you’ll manage your shop in Rynoka Village, controlling inventory, setting prices, recruiting assistants, and upgrading the shop. You can also upgrade other aspects of the town, adding things like a blacksmith or potion-maker to produce items that are helpful for the dungeon portion of the game. Your character can access various worlds through otherworldly gates, where they will fight hordes of enemies and gather profitable loot, resources, and more. As you progress in the game, you can craft new armor and weapons and even enchant existing equipment.
On the topic of PC game deals: Don’t miss out on Green Man Gaming’s huge summer sale going on right now with over 2,000 PC games and DLC marked down. If you like This War of Mine and haven’t played Frostpunk, the latter is on sale for $13.50. Plus, get Resident Evil 2 for $35.63, Monster Hunter World for $27, Civilization VI for $13.20, and more.
QuakeCon begins this weekend, and it promises to be a hell of a show. This will be the “Year of Doom,” both to celebrate the groundbreaking FPS classic’s 25th anniversary and to look ahead to the coming release of Doom Eternal. A series of panels include a few looks at Doom, along with fellow Bethesda-published games Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online.
GameSpot will be streaming the show as it all goes down, so make sure to bookmark this page and check back to watch the panels live. The first livestreams will begin on Friday, July 26 with even more on Saturday, July 27.
QuakeCon will once again take place in Dallas, TX. Panels include a keynote featuring Doom Eternal, two separate panels on the impact and influence of Doom, and panels featuring Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online. Those latter two are ongoing live games, so we may get a first look at upcoming updates and expansions. Check below for the full schedule.
Friday, July 26th
QuakeCon Keynote featuring Doom Eternal – 11 AM CT (12 PM ET / 9 AM PT)
Influence of Doom Panel – 12 PM CT (1 PM ET / 10 AM PT)
Saturday, July 27th
Fallout 76 Panel – 10 AM CT (11 AM ET / 8 AM PT)
Knee Deep in Doom panel – 11 AM CT (12 PM ET / 9 AM PT)
Elder Scrolls Online Panel – 2 PM CT (3 PM ET / 11 AM PT)
