During Parsons’ tenure on the show, he has racked up “four Emmy wins, one Golden Globe, a voice-over role in the spin-off Young Sheldon, and choice gigs in film and on Broadway.”
DICE has received backlash since the announcement that women would be included in Battlefield 5. There are many who accuse the developer of pursuing an agenda, bending historical accuracy to jump on “the bandwagon” of gender and racial inclusivity. DICE executive producer Aleksander Grondal disagrees, even saying he wishes his team had initially included women in 2016’s Battlefield 1.
“I mean, if we were getting on the bandwagon, I created Battlefield 1, and we could’ve ‘jumped on the bandwagon’ that time around,” Grondal told GamesRadar+. DICE did eventually add female Russian soldiers to Battlefield 1 in the In The Name of the Tsar DLC, but women were not prominently featured in the multiplayer prior.
Grondal continued, “I think it’s a shame we didn’t [add women], because that perhaps would’ve been better for us. I don’t think it’s a bandwagon thing, I think it’s about gamers wanting to express themselves in different ways. If you take a look at Battlefield historically, it’s been about expressing yourself through gameplay, solving problems the way you want to, and these characters fall perfectly in line with that thinking.”
The Fullbright Company and Annapurna Interactive have announced that Gone Home is coming to Switch. First releasing in 2013, Gone Home is a first-person exploration game that rose to critical acclaim for its powerful story that addresses LGBTQ issues. [Update: Gone Home will not release on August 23 as originally announced. Instead, Annapurna says it’s due out on September 6 in both North America and Europe. The publisher teases, “We might have some additional news to share then, so stay tuned!”]
Gone Home puts you into the role of Katie Greenbriar, a 21-year-old woman who’s returned from overseas to visit her family’s new home for the first time. You find the Greenbriar house abandoned, with a note from Katie’s younger sister, Samantha, begging Katie to leave well enough alone and not snoop into what happened between her and their parents in Katie’s absence.
We think the game is superb, giving it a 9.5/10. In our Gone Home review, Carolyn Petit wrote, “Gone Home executes on its ambitions flawlessly. The things in the Greenbriars’ home take on an emotional heft as you come to understand the stories they tell, and although they’re absent, you feel the presence of the Greenbriars all around you. Gone Home is an important game because it does something games rarely do: it tells a believable story, grounded in the real world, that focuses on women and treats all of its characters, women and men alike, as complex individuals. But the reason to play Gone Home is not for its importance. It’s for the elegance with which its tale is constructed and communicated, and the captivating way that it makes you an active participant in peeling back the layers of one family’s ordinary lives as their home tells you their stories. Like many of our own memories, those stories cut deep.”
Gone Home first launched on PC, before getting Xbox One and PS4 ports in 2016. The Switch port releases August 23.
A new mode is on the horizon for the PC version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. As part of its “Fix PUBG” initiative, the developer is planning to introduce a “fervently” requested feature to the battle royale game next month: a training mode.
In this new mode, players will be able to leisurely test out different vehicles and weapons, as well as practice the various skills they need to succeed at the game, from parachuting to vaulting. The mode supports five to 20 players and is set on a new, 2×2 km desert map that encompasses a shooting range, several vehicle tracks, a parkour course, and even an open water area for aquatic vehicles.
“Training Mode was designed from the very beginning to have a living map–with room to introduce new areas as well as ideas players want to see implemented in the future,” Dave Osei, senior designer at PUBG Madison, wrote in a post on Steam. “We wanted to go beyond what players were asking for, so we didn’t want the map to be just a shooting range, but an open, living map where players can test a variety of skills to their heart’s content.”
PUBG Corp. hasn’t announced an exact date for when training mode will arrive in the game, but the developer says it is planning to launch it sometime in September. In the meantime, you can read more details about the proposed features and areas the mode will contain on Steam. You can also take a look at some screenshots of the new training mode map in the gallery above.
The “Fix PUBG” campaign was first announced earlier this month and will be a “months-long” initiative to improve the battle royale game by implementing common fan-requested features, bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and more. The campaign is set to run through October. You can learn more about the campaign on the Fix PUBG website.
When the first trailer for The Happytime Murders arrived, it was clear what kind of movie this was going to be. It’s a dirty version of the Muppets. What’s more, it’s from director Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson. The potential for something cool and different was obvious. The only question is whether the movie would hit the mark or not.
As it turns out, for the most part, it lands pretty well. The Happytime Murders is set in a world where humans and puppets coexist. When the former stars of a 1980s TV show get murdered, disgraced former puppet cop Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) and human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) are forced to work together to find the killer. It’s a pretty straightforward murder mystery that just so happens to be loaded with foul-mouthed puppets, lots of violence, and one wildly awkward sex scene.
Still, the story actually works. While it’s not hard to figure out who the villain of the film is, figuring out their motivations is a different story. The plot also opens up a world that would be very interesting to visit again in future movies, should that be in the cards.
As simple and interesting as the story is, though, there is one major problem with The Happytime Murders. This adult puppet movie is simply too adult. There is a certain novelty to the idea of puppets that curse, have sex, and do horrible things. In practice, though, it’s very easy to take the joke too far. Throughout the film, puppets and humans let the cursing fly so gratuitously and frequently that the impact of it simply wears off. It happens so often that it ceases being funny and instead seems like the movie is trying too hard to be edgy. How many times can a character drop an F-bomb in the span of two minutes before it means absolutely nothing? That’s something The Happytime Murders is keen to explore.
Likewise, with graphic content, this movie doesn’t seem to know when to stop. In the red band trailer, there is a sequence where one of the puppets has an orgasm that lasts so long it overstays its welcome a bit. Somehow, though, it’s even longer in the movie. There’s an audience for gross-out humor that will undoubtedly find themselves giggling at these moments in the film, but just a bit of restraint would have greatly improved the movie.
There’s still plenty to like about The Happytime Murders, though. Strangely, building this odd world where humans and puppets live together in something far less than harmony is where The Happytime Murders excels most. From the beginning of the film, it’s explained that puppets are seen as less than, and often subservient to, humans. They’re the target of verbal and physical abuse, and some of them spend their time and money in an attempt to transform their looks to appear more human, while others have bought into the idea that they exist only to entertain humans.
Chances are you’re not expecting the dirty puppet movie to examine racism in America at all. However imperfect a comparison it may be, though, it’s one of the things The Happytime Murders does well. What’s more, setting the film in Los Angeles, a city with a massive immigrant population, goes a long way in illustrating the divide.
The cast is another piece of the puzzle that fits well. While Melissa McCarthy is mostly doing the same thing she always does–yelling and falling down, while cursing–she somehow manages to have chemistry with a puppet. However, there is an odd running joke throughout the film that everyone thinks she’s a man. It might have been funny once or twice, but by the third, fourth, or fifth time that particular joke is revisited, it’s just tired.
The biggest standout of the of the movie is Maya Rudolph, who plays Phillips’ secretary Bubbles. She serves as a potential love interest for the former cop and manages to have many of the movie’s funniest moments, whether at her desk in Phillips’ office or out in the field helping to solve the mystery.
If you’re expecting to see some of your favorite Muppets in the film, you’ll be disappointed. None of them make cameo appearances. After all, the Muppets are owned by Disney. Still, it will be impossible to look at the puppets in this film without knowing they were designed by The Jim Henson Company. Likewise, Muppet veterans Barretta, Julianne Buescher, Kevin Klash, and Alice Dinnean make up the puppet voice cast.
In all, The Happytime Murders is a fun and very interesting film to watch. It’s as close as you’ll ever get to a Rated-R Muppet movie and sets up what could become a potential franchise that would be exciting to revisit–just maybe with a little restraint next time.
The Good
The Bad
A simple, easy-to-follow plot
There’s so much cursing that it makes the foul language mean nothing
The use of notable Los Angeles locations helps ground the movie
It’s not hard to figure out who the killer is
Its examination of racism was very unexpected
The puppet sex scene lasts way too long
Maya Rudolph blows the rest of the cast out of the water
Like 2016, 2019 will be a year without an Assassin’s Creed game. Speaking with GameSpot during Gamescom, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that his company will not release a new entry in the (usually) annualized franchise.
“On Assassin’s, we had a game
, and we have one this year, but we are not going to have a full-fledged Assassin’s next year,” said Guillemot. “It’s just because the team were
working separately, so we have two games now, one year after the other. But next year you’re not going to have a fully fledged one.”
There won’t just not be a new “main” Assassin’s Creed entry, either; Ubisoft also won’t release any sort of spin-off or smaller game. Instead, explained Guillemot, Ubisoft plans to extend this year’s entry, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, as much as possible through DLC.
Kadokawa Games is remaking the first two Langrisser titles for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
Per Gematsu, the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu reveals Langrisser I & II, the first two games in the tactical role-playing series, will be fully remade.
The remakes will feature new character designs, an optimized UI, update mechanics, and more. More details will be revealed on August 29 during a presentation event, but development is reportedly 50 percent complete.
The first Langrisser released in 1991 while the sequel came out in 1994. Both titles feature large scale battles, allowing players to control over thirty units. The series also features a fantasy-Germanic setting.
As August rolls on and summer begins coming to a close, Netflix has quite a few new things for you to stream this week. In addition to a bunch of new originals movies and shows, something the service can’t seem to get enough of, there are also a couple TV shows and films ready for you to enjoy.
For films, the 2009 Jack Black comedy Year One arrives this week. Additionally, original films Deadwind, The After Party, and a new stand-up comedy special Bert Kreischer are being added to the streaming service.
For TV fans, new seasons of Young & Hungry, Great News, and Trolls: The Beat Goes On are on the schedule. Other arrivals include Ghoul, a new Indian horror series from Blumhouse, as well as Ask the StoryBots.
After seeing it for the first time, Left Alive already feels like some strange relic of the PS2 age, and I mean that both as a positive and a negative.
Watching a series of clips and speaking to its director, Toshifumi Nabeshima, it’s clear how ambitious this game aims to be. At its core, this is much more of a third-person shooter than I went in expecting. But it’s also aiming to be a mech game, a narrative experience, even survival horror in some small way.
That shooter core is intriguing, if not immediately engaging. At its heart, this is a cover shooter and, right now, it doesn’t look like a hugely slick one; animations click into place unnaturally, and the spaces we were shown were very much of the “brown corridor” variety. On the other hand, the potential’s there for far more interesting interactions than “pull trigger.”
It’s not a great feeling, being at the bottom of the food chain, but that’s exactly where you sit in Metro Exodus. Everyone wants a piece of you, whether it’s the wolves that roam the plains, hunting in packs, or the pirate bandits who react very badly when someone moves in on their turf. You’re alone, in this Gamescom demo at least, and ammo and supplies are in short supply.
As with previous Metro games, survival is the key to success. Part of that is surviving the world around you – in the instance of this demo, a swamp wasteland – but primarily it’s against the survivors you’ll encounter throughout. Armed bandits control the area, patrolling the derelict buildings on the lookout for drifters.
