Author: Trafficblast

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Mario is a video game icon not only because he’s a plucky and affable dude, but because he’s the face behind some of the best platformers of all time. Nintendo has carefully guided his adventures for decades, but something happened in 2015: It gave players the keys to design and share stages in Wii U‘s Super Mario Maker, and the Mario we thought we knew took on a whole new light. He was no longer a laidback high-jumping hero; Mario became a hardened speed demon, a death-defying daredevil forced into unruly gauntlets crafted by evil geniuses who know his every hop, skip, and jump like the back of their hand.

With the Wii U and 3DS versions of Mario Maker abandoned by Nintendo at this point, Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch brings us back to that heady time from years past. The game itself is largely familiar, though the more you play and create, the more you notice all of the little additions tucked inside and appreciate how they elevate the potential for creativity in new ways. Mario Maker 2 is a robust level creation tool and a fantastic open-ended platformer that will no doubt spur a new era of competition among players and creators alike. But so far, it’s amazing what the right players can do when given the tools to craft Mario’s world.

The intuitive drag-and-drop system is back–you don’t, however, have the luxury of a built-in Switch stylus, so consider buying or devising one before getting into the game as using your finger alone can cause you to occasionally misplace objects. You can create while your Switch is docked, though ultimately that should be a last resort considering how quickly you can place objects in handheld mode, even with the lack of stylus. Picking and placing ingredients for your level, or painting wide swaths of land, is a quick and painless process, and there are intuitive means of copying, pasting, and undoing your work as needed. You are once again given access to the components of games including Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U, along with their numerous enemies, objects, and mechanisms. You select a game theme and work within that toolset, but you can easily switch to another one on the fly and retain most of your work–only occasional elements aren’t transferable.

The big exception is the newly included set based on Super Mario 3D World, which can only be used in isolation. Lest you mistake the “3D” aspect to suggest you’re breaking free from side-scrolling Mario, you aren’t–you’re just given access to unique elements from that game, such as the never-not-strange Cat Mario power-up. Far from being the only notable addition, the sum total of which are too numerous to list here, the Cat Mario suit is up there with the ability to make slopes, craft custom scrolling for stages, and set level-clear conditions as one of the most impactful additions to the Mario Maker formula. But of course, even the smallest variable can have a huge ripple effect in the hands of the right person. Time will tell what seemingly average element gets twisted into a diabolical weapon in the hands of the craftiest creators.

For new creators, there’s the chance of becoming overwhelmed with the number of options available at the start, but that’s where Yamamura’s Dojo comes in. Yamamura is a pigeon, but a very wise and insightful pigeon at that. If you need help wrapping your head around the basic concepts that go into conceiving and creating a level, Yamamura’s your bird. His catalog of 45 lessons (divided into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced sets) walk you through everything from laying tracts of land and placing Goombas to the more philosophical side of level creation, even navigating the meta side of being a creator unleashing their work for others to judge.

These lessons will help get a novice creator up to speed, and the fact that there’s nothing holding back knowledgeable designers from the start was a smart move by Nintendo, too. The pool of creators has thus far made some truly impressive stages that utilize Mario Maker 2’s robust toolset well. The overall level of logic inherent to a Mario game remains largely the same–no digging under the hood to rewrite traditional cause-and-effect rules, for example–but the spirit of Mario Maker 2 comes alive when familiar elements are combined by masterful players, often in ways that Nintendo would never employ in a traditional Mario game.

So far, that unexpected creativity often manifests itself in oddball stages packed with an unreasonable number of enemies, diabolical platforming tests that demand superhuman reflexes, or clever contraptions that move Mario and key items around an environment with calculated chain reactions. Not every stage is a winner, but because the fundamental controls and elements of the world are tried-and-true, it’s rare that you run into a custom stage worth getting upset about. Ultimately, dozens (soon to be hundreds, if not thousands) of alternative stages are seconds away, a convenience that’s easy to take for granted. It’s not an understatement to say that the speed at which you can browse, download, and play levels are key factors that make exploring Mario Maker 2 so easy and enjoyable.

Discoverability plays a part in what levels you find, and beyond basic lists such as popular, new, and trending courses, there’s a detailed search function that lets you narrow stage selection by attributes like theme and difficulty. You can also sort by tags that indicate the type of stage at hand, be it an auto-scrolling level or puzzle-centric challenge. After playing, you can leave feedback on the level for other players to consider–a simple but meaningful chance to contribute to the community and learn from your peers. This is all to say that Mario Maker 2’s online stage selection is both organized and catered to the wider player base. You don’t have to involve yourself in every aspect of it if you just want to play a bunch of random Mario levels, but it’s great to see that you can become deeply involved with your fellow makers if you desire.

One of the hotly contested elements pre-launch was online multiplayer, which comes in both co-op and competitive forms. Nintendo’s initial plans to limit these modes to random matchmaking drew the ire of some fans who quite reasonably expected to be able to play with their friends. Nintendo has since made it clear that feature will come, just not in time for launch. As it stands, the lag present in most multiplayer sessions (where matchmaking happens automatically) ruins the experience. Mario, and especially Mario Maker levels, are geared around precision platforming. When you can’t rely on the movement of your character or your controller inputs, you might as well not be playing at all. If anything stains Super Mario Maker 2, it’s the current state of online multiplayer.

On a more positive note, the other major addition to Mario Maker 2 is a proper story mode, a campaign of 100 Nintendo-made levels. The story is typical Mario fare set in an overworld with NPCs and a few fun surprises, taking things a few steps further than The Super Mario Challenge from the 3DS Mario Maker. It’s not an amazing addition in light of the countless levels coming from other players, but it’s an enjoyable alternative if you prefer a more coordinated campaign. There’s the slight missed opportunity to give you creative tools as a means of solving purpose-built puzzles, to give you that hands-on learning in a practical scenario, but they are given to you as options to overcome stages that you repeatedly fail. It’s not as if there’s a drought of custom stages online, even before release, though Nintendo’s batch of stages are nice to have if you want to dig into stages handmade by the developers themselves.

The Mario series is worth all the admiration it gets, and Super Mario Maker 2 is an excellent tool for picking it apart by pushing its enemies, mechanisms, and Mario, to their limit. I’ve yet to make a stage of my own that I think is worthy of sending out to other players, but I’m committed to getting there. Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I’ve got the itch to join the creator’s club. Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable. Most importantly, it’s enabled designers amateur and professional alike to share their creativity with the world. The community is off to a great start, and thankfully, the fun has only just begun.

Midsommar, the new movie from writer and director Ari Aster (of Hereditary fame), is now in theaters, having received extremely positive reviews. Throughout the film, the group of friends that includes Dani (Florence Pugh), Christian (Jack Reynor), Josh (William Jackson Harper), and Mark (Will Poulter) experience strange and ever more sinister rituals during the Midsommar festival of a remote Swedish village to which they’ve been lured by their good buddy Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren).

This is your final spoiler warning: If you haven’t seen Midsommar yet, come back when you have for a look at the movie’s ending.

Dani and Christian’s friends drop like flies–first their new acquaintances from London, then Mark, who’s seduced by a village girl and apparently has his face skinned off, and finally Josh, who gets smacked in the noggin while snooping around the village’s scriptures. Eventually, the two protagonists are the only ones left standing, much like Dani at the end of the dance-off that sees her crowned May Queen.

They go through some crazy weird rituals: Dani sits at the head of the table while tripping her freaking balls off on shrooms and gets palanquin’d away to bless the land, while Christian takes part in one of the strangest sex scenes ever committed to film. It was all leading here: Pelle brought in the outsiders for a specific purpose, and Christian was deemed worthy of “breeding.” It’s less clear if the plan was always to crown Dani May Queen, although Pelle’s suspicious words to her early in the film–that he was glad she was coming on the trip–seem to indicate so.

In Midsommar’s final climactic scene, Dani is presented with a choice: Who will be sacrificed in the impending fiery ritual? Christian, her boyfriend of years, or a random villager she’s never met before this week? She picks Christian, and in so doing chooses a new family for herself–one that values her and doesn’t keep her around out of a misplaced sense of pity.

Some viewers have experienced Midsommar’s final scenes as a happy ending. And surprisingly, despite the human sacrifice element, that’s not far off from writer and director Ari Aster’s intent.

“I hope that it’s something that feels maybe cathartic, and almost maybe even uplifting, at the moment, and then I hope it’s something that you have to wrestle with later,” Aster told GameSpot. “I’ve always viewed the film as a perverse wish fulfillment fantasy in the clothes of a folk horror film. For the guys, for the men in the movie, the American men, it is a folk horror movie it’s. But for Dani, it’s really more of a fairy tale. And we are aligned with Dani.”

We here at GameSpot can attest to that–after leaving the theater, our own Meg Downey proclaimed Midsommar “the feel-good movie of the summer,” a reaction Aster seemed tickled by.

“That’s great,” he said when we recounted Meg’s reaction. “I mean, that’s certainly what I was going for. I’m always happy when people call it a crowd pleaser.”

Aster shared another interesting tidbit about Midsommar’s ending: The aforementioned human sacrifice is not the end of the festivities. In fact, it takes place on just day four of the village’s nine-day festival.

“I just found it funny that this is a nine-day festival, and this massive thing–the thing that ends the film–happens on day four,” he said. “I like the idea of thinking about what would happen for the next five days after that.”

That timeline was more clear in Midsommar’s original cut, but given that that version was three hours and 45 minutes long, some things had to go. Aster said he dislikes exposition, and besides, the ambiguity of basic questions like “What time is it?” and “How long have they been there?” adds to the movie’s sense of anxious unreality.

Midsommar’s remote Swedish village and its many alien rituals aren’t based on any one particular location or people, according to Aster, but rather drawn from a “stew” of different inspirations. “I was drawing from research into Swedish traditions, Swedish history, Swedish folklore, and then I was also pulling from German and English midsummer traditions,” the writer and director said. “And then beyond that, I was pulling from my imagination and what was necessary for the story.”

One thing that doesn’t happen by the end of the movie: anything supernatural, unlike in Aster’s previous film, Hereditary.

“It just wasn’t that film,” Aster said. “There was never going to be anything supernatural, so it wasn’t anything I had to–I didn’t have to restrain myself from doing that. The only thing I’ve ever written that did involve the supernatural was Hereditary.”

Supernatural or not, it was a hell of an ending–and, depending who you ask, quite an enjoyable one, as well. Midsommar is in theaters now.

Read next: The Midsommar Deleted Scene Director Ari Aster Hated To Cut

Disney’s 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid is getting a live-action reboot. While some cast members are still in talks over deals, Walt Disney Studios has announced that lead character and mermaid princess Ariel will be played by Halle Bailey (Grown-ish, Last Holiday) of R&B duo Chloe x Halle.

The Hollywood Reporter reported in late June 2019 that this live-action reimagining is seeking Melissa McCarthy (Ghostbusters, Tammy) to play sea witch Ursula. Subsequently, THR reported earlier this month that both Nora “Awkwafina” Lum (Crazy Rich Asians, Ocean’s 8) and Jacob Tremblay (Room, Wonder) are in talks to play Scuttle and Flounder, respectively.

Rob Marshall (Mary Poppins Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) sits in the director chair, with John DeLuca (It Remains, Mary Poppins Returns) producing and David Magee (Life of Pi, Mary Poppins Returns) writing the script. Famed Disney Animation composer Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Ralph Breaks the Internet), who scored the 1989 original and Guy Ritchie’s recent Aladdin remake, will write the music for the live-action adaptation. Lin-Manuel Miranda (Moana, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) will assist Menken by writing lyrics.

AMC and Netflix teamed up in 2018 to release The Little Mermaid, written and directed by Blake Harris. This version starred Gina Gershon (Blockers, Riverdale), Poppy Drayton (Unhallowed Ground, Writers Retreat), Shanna Collins (Breaking the Girls, Sassy Pants), Shirley MacLaine (The Last Word, Valentine’s Day), and William Moseley (Friend Request, The Silent Mountain).

Production on the new The Little Mermaid reboot is expected to begin in early 2020.

If you’ve ever played Mario Kart or Mario Party, you’re probably familiar with the vicious tactics required to win. By design, those games encourage you to be ruthless to your competitors, charting a path to victory by any means possible–even if that means stabbing them in the back. This approach to design is precisely what Rooster Teeth’s upcoming PC multiplayer shooter Vicious Circle thrives upon. Described as an “uncooperative shooter,” it’s somewhat of an unusual breed against its contemporaries. Other shooters encourage jolly cooperation or heated PvP battles, but Vicious Circle is more about playing dirty and screwing over your friends–while being as entertaining to watch as possible.

At a glance, Vicious Circle resembles an asymmetrical multiplayer shooter, pitting a team of four mercenaries against a player-controlled giant chicken monster. If the monster kills all the mercenaries, it wins. On the other hand, the mercenaries win not by killing the monster but gathering a special resource called nuggets scattered across the map. Once they’ve collected enough, they can call in an evac and end the match, but there’s a catch: only one mercenary can escape and emerge the winner.

That chicken monster is actually the least of your worries.

This twist creates a competitive dynamic that encourages you to troll other players. If you’re the monster, this is as easy as causing chaos to the opposing team by virtue of being a hulking beast. However, the mercenaries have it harder, not being able to harm each other with their weapons physically. Instead, they have to be crafty. As a mercenary, there are several strategies and tools available to facilitate your effort to throw other players under the bus. Gadgets like a vacuum suck the nuggets out of other mercenaries, while a teleporter grenade can zap mercenaries or the monster to the opposite side of the map. These mischievous plays felt distinctly Mario Kart in nature, and according to Senior Game Engineer Casey Connellan, that was the point.

“There’s a lot of Mario Kart influence in [Vicious Circle],” said Donnellan. “That was really like a huge part of the design of this game. We took to it for inspiration. That’s why we have all these gadgets that allow you to ruin somebody else’s day, basically. It’s so much worse than getting shot.”

Though, the chicken monster is well worth freaking out about.

Thinking about how to work alongside and contend against a team of players all looking out for their own self-interest felt overwhelming at first. Despite my best efforts, my natural inclination was to immediately shoot my “teammates,” which, of course, did absolutely nothing. Instead, I had to think of other ways to stop them from stealing my precious nuggets. Sometimes this meant breaking the line of sight–a strategy that became increasingly important the more I played and observed subsequent matches. Special doors on the map allowed you to do just that, temporarily closing the way behind you to block pursuing players. And the mercenary I used–the four playable each have unique abilities–had a blink-like skill that allowed me to navigate in and out of danger easily.

Even death offers unique ways to rain on people’s parades. If you die as a mercenary, you respawn as a small alien called a Little Dipper. As this snarling, highly-mobile tentacle creature, you can possess other mercenaries to inherit their skills, abilities, and more importantly, their nugget supply. However, successfully hijacking someone’s body turns them into a Little Dipper themselves, inevitably encouraging them to possess you, others, or both. One person in the match I played got possessed as they were in the lead, and as you’d expect, things got delightfully salty.

Little Dipper + Unsuspecting Mercenary = Big Success.

Winning is more about being crafty, intelligent, and highly adaptable.

With so many different tools and strategies at your disposal, a lot can happen in a single round, and since each only lasts about 4-5 minutes, it all happens rather quickly. I was constantly challenged to strategize while remaining swift and spontaneous. Did I want to establish a temporary truce with other players to kill the monster to secure a wealth of nuggets only to risk being betrayed later? Or maybe I could purposefully get myself killed to become a Little Dipper and hijack the winning player’s body right before evac? Heck, both these strategies could very well play out in a single match amid several other unexpected twists and turns. That’s what excites me the most about Vicious Circle; rather than speedy reflexes and brute force alone, winning is more about being crafty, intelligent, and highly adaptable.

But I need to be honest; I had to drop out of playing after a few matches or so. As someone easily prone to motion sickness, the high frame rate in combination with the mouse and keyboard setup made me nauseous real quick. As I regained my composure on the sidelines, I observed that Vicious Circle’s speed and intensity makes it highly entertaining to watch. The cartoony art style and Rooster Teeth brand of over-the-top humor certainly kept things fun and light, but it was the diversity of strategies and battles ensuing that kept me continuously engaged.

At random, a gnarly appendage like this will briefly spawn on to the map and spew nuggets.

“We designed the game to be fun to watch from day one,” said Donnellan. “The whole drama where you die, you come back as this other thing, and now you’re pitted against the people that you were with. It was always very central to the game. “

It was amusing to watch folks get ambushed by the ridiculous chicken monster, whose powerful charge move easily flustered the greedy mercenaries. I’d hear groaning from those possessed by Little Dippers at inopportune moments, and then be on edge as I anticipated their comeback. Persistent nugget drop events kept players sprinting around the map, contributing to the chaos of a given round. All the while, a clearly-defined UI made it easy to keep track of who was currently in the lead, who was a Little Dipper, and how much health the monster has, ensuring I was rarely lost in the action.

Vicious Circle’s wild antics make it a joy to simply watch.

Whether you’re playing or watching, everything in Vicious Circle seems built to facilitate good-natured silliness and salt. At times, it almost seemed unfair how the game’s tools allow players to quickly gain the lead regardless of how well you might be doing in a match, but the resulting misfortunes rarely kept me frustrated for long. Terrorizing others is a big part of why a game like Mario Kart is so enjoyable, and to see it enacted in an Overwatch-like, Evolve-ish multiplayer shooter like this is refreshing. Vicious Circle’s merits still need to be tested by my buddies (many of which are easily susceptible to being upset and bitter) and me, but what I played has me more than enthusiastic about double-crossing them once it arrives later this Summer.

When Konami revealed PES 2020, many fans noticed the game had a new naming convention. Gone was the full Pro Evolution Soccer title, to be replaced by the new eFootball moniker. Now, Konami has discussed its reasons for changing the series’ name.

“The full product name moving forward will be “eFootball: PES,” the franchise’s European brand manager, Lennart Bobzien, told GameSpot. “For this year we’ve announced eFootball PES 2020. We want to put a bigger focus on esports moving forward. In the past we’ve already shown [this] by having competitions such as PES League and eFootball Pro, the professional club competition. Moving forward, there will be bigger esports competitions coming up. We simply thought that by including it in the product naming, we’re making a statement and showing our community of fans, but also the wider audience, that esports will play a very big part moving forward.

“Talking about Pro Evolution Soccer–in Europe, it was always a tricky one, and when we discussed this repositioning we thought, let’s call it football, it’s a European market [so] we want to have football. We still keep PES in the product name since we feel that’s still part of the heritage and we want to keep it in there. Therefore, the combination will be eFootball: PES.”

Konami announced just recently that Manchester United will be officially licensed in this year’s game, with Scott McTominay a cover star in some regions. The club’s Old Trafford stadium will be fully scanned into the game, along with the entire first team squad.

PES 2020 launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 10. A demo version, which includes online and offline match types as well as the game’s edit mode, will launch on July 30. Stay tuned to GameSpot for a full PES 2020 gameplay preview.