This is an advance review from Fantastic Fest. Hold the Dark opens in theaters and streams on Netflix on Sept. 28.
Hold the Dark, Jeremy Saulnier’s first feature since Green Room, is about the complexity and randomness of human behavior compared to that of wild animals, yet no amount of unsettling violence, mythology or gorgeous set pieces can save this beautiful-looking but ultimately disappointing film.
Westworld’s Jeffrey Wright, TV’s most confused-looking actor, stars here as yet another character who has no idea what’s going on. Author Russell Core (Wright) is summoned to a remote Alaskan village by a desperate mother asking him to hunt down a wolf. Medora Slone (Riley Keough) is said grieving mother, whose husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) is away in Iraq. Slone’s village has a history of children being snatched by wolves, making Core her only hope to track down the beast and kill it in revenge – despite Core being an advocate for wolf preservation.
Nintendo’s newest IP, Dragalia Lost, is a mobile role-playing game that can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. You start the game as a young prince who must find a dragon to bond with so that he can become powerful enough to save the kingdom from a growing demonic threat. Joined by his younger sister, and eventually a diverse group of over 60 other party members, the prince grows stronger by taking on quests, completing missions, and killing bosses.
Despite being a mobile game, Dragalia Lost has dozens of mechanics, ranging from party management to dragon rearing. Unlike most triple-A RPGs where a majority of the game’s systems are thrown at the player in rapid succession over a daunting two-hour opening–I’m looking at you Xenoblade Chronicles 2–Draglia Lost introduces each of its mechanics slowly. There also aren’t many cutscenes in the first hour of the game. Although some of the story elements are detailed early on, the game spends a majority of its start having you play in small strikes that reinforce the lessons from the tutorial. By the time Dragalia Lost starts pulling you out of the gameplay to show you a lot more cutscenes, you’ve got a fundamental understanding of the controls.
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Dragalia Lost – Official Announcement Trailer
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It’s all pretty intuitive. By the end of the demo, I had played the first 45 minutes of Dragalia Lost and was quickly swiping through all the features that had befuddled me before. What struck me most about Dragalia Lost’s opening hour was how the game had been designed for two different types of players: RPG veterans and newcomers to the genre. Every lesson has two levels. You can listen to one of the characters explain something and then just go do it, or you can listen to one of the characters explain something and then let the game show you what they mean.
For example, every character has their own advantages and weaknesses, weapon type, and multi-tiered skill tree. You can also equip different items to your characters and dragons, build different types of shrines in your castle, raise new breeds of dragons, and plant a diverse assortment of healthy herbs in your garden. Which characters you have on your team can also affect how your entire party can attack, defend, or heal, and certain enemies are easier to deal with when using specific weapons. These are all of Dragalia Lost’s simpler to grasp mechanics that are introduced within the first hour or so.
You can micromanage it all. You can pull out the spreadsheets and start comparing the percentages if you want. But if any part of the game is too confusing or just not something you want to do, you can ask Dragalia Lost to do it for you. At the push of the button, the game will maximize your characters’ abilities based on team dynamic and even change your roster if there’s a better lineup available to tackle the next mission. You lose some of the challenge if you continuously do it, but it’s a simple and welcome fix if you’re struggling.
Dragalia Lost’s opening hours reminded me a lot of the earlier Pokemon games, specifically Generations I-III. What the player needs to know–catching Pokemon, battling, and type advantages–is detailed out, but the more nuanced mechanics–different balls and every specific type advantage–are hidden away in optional conversations. A Pokemon veteran can tackle Brock with their Squirtle no problem, but a newcomer can ask around town and learn from one of the folks near Brock’s gym that Water- and Grass-type Pokemon are your best bet against someone who solely uses Rock-type Pokemon, as well as where these type of Pokemon can be found. The game teaches you about type advantages whether you want to or not, and newcomers can rely on optional systems to slowly learn the vast assortment of type advantages.
Similarly, in Dragalia Lost, you eventually encounter enemies that rely on shields to protect themselves from initial attacks. When you first confront them, Dragalia Lost teaches you how to use the game’s main character to perform a Force Strike, a move that when perfectly timed can instantly destroy a shield. Knowing that you have a character who can quickly take down shields is all the information you need to beat the harder enemy mobs and bosses down the line. You can identify other means of dealing with powerful targets yourself or ask the game to give you hints and help out. Combat is fairly straightforward to figure out if you’ve played other RPGs, it utilizes several interlocking rock-paper-scissors features, but the game details how all types of advantages work if you’re still learning to juggle multiple in-game systems.
Dragalia extends this to all its features, which is most helpful when balancing your four-person party, managing every characters’ multi-tiered skill tree, or choosing the correct fighter for handling a particularly troublesome enemy. Dragalia Lost wants you to have the game experience you want, whether you’re looking for complex RPG mechanics, straight story, or something in between. I left my time with the game’s demo with a smile on my face and eager to play more, which is not common for me when it comes to RPGs.
Releasing a game like Dragalia Lost to the huge audience on mobile devices is a smart choice. This makes it more accessible to a wider audience, especially kids or people who don’t normally play games outside the Apple or Google Play stores. Dragalia Lost has goofy humor, an easy to follow story, a colorful cast of characters, and really catchy music. I can see it finding a foothold in the non-RPG crowd and helping new players discover the joy behind micromanaging complex video game mechanics.
Dragalia Lost launches on September 27 for Android and iOS devices.
Some say they are happy that The Walking Dead: The Final Season could be completed, while others are dismayed that Telltale is choosing to go ahead and finish it without so many of the developers who worked on it. According to reports, Telltale laid off more than 200 staffers without any severance pay, leading to a rally on social media and elsewhere of people calling on Telltale to do right by its employees. That side has now received a big jolt of prominence, as God of War director and industry veteran Cory Barlog has called on Telltale to make things right with its now former employees.
“I would hope this means that you will first pay your entire team their severance, and then proceed to finish the final episodes,” Barlog wrote on Twitter. “I would be fine waiting however long it took to ensure we first treated those who worked so hard with the humanity and respect they deserve.”
Someone pointed out that it is unknown if Telltale employees affected by the layoffs had terms in their contracts that included guaranteed severance pay. Even if this wasn’t in their contracts, Barlog said he hopes the decision-makers are respectful enough to do right by their employees during a hard time.
“I think what I am suggesting is that when you look people in the eye and ask for their best, to come together and create something great, you should take on that task as well,” he said. “Treating others with respect is not a law, but how great would the world be for our kids if it were.”
There is no word on who the mysterious potential partners are that Telltale could work with to complete The Walking Dead: The Final Season. Telltale was upfront about how it is making no promises about the final season, adding that even if Episodes Three and Four are released, they might only come out “in some form.”
Everything about the Telltale situation appears to be a developing story, so keep checking back with GameSpot for more.
The beta for Bethesda’s much-anticipated Fallout 76 begins in October, but we still don’t know all that much about when in October it’ll launch, what it will contain, and how long it will run for. It sounds like more details are coming about the beta soon.
Responding to a fan’s question about the Fallout 76 beta length, Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines said on Twitter, “We’ll have more information for you on that soon. Hopefully this week.”
Pre-ordering Fallout 76 is the only way to play the beta. The beta starts in October, and thanks to a deal with Microsoft, it starts on Xbox One, followed by PlayStation 4 and PC.
Intriguingly, the Fallout 76 beta website states that the beta will contain the “full game.” This is noteworthy considering betas often feature only a slice of a final product. Another piece of good news is that all of your progress in the Fallout 76 beta will carry forward.
Fallout 76 launches in full on November 14 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. On PC, the game will only be available through Bethesda’s own launcher, not Steam.
Considering all of Nintendo’s last mobile efforts featured pre-existing properties, like Mario and Fire Emblem, I never imagined their next wireless foray would feature a brand new IP. Dragalia Lost, co-developed by mobile-games-veteran Cygames, seems to borrow some of the commonly best elements of popular mobile games and ties them into an action RPG with seemingly deep systems.
I played through some of Dragalia Lost’s early chapters, and for my first task, I turned in my free summon – which is guaranteed to grant a new character. Yes, much like Fire Emblem Heroes and Puzzle and Dragons, Dragalia Lost mainly relies on a gacha-style summoning system to bolster your character roster.
Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are stepping down from the company they formed in 2010.
In a statement on the platform, Systrom didn’t give a reason for the departure, but said the pair were “ready for
next chapter”.
“We’ve grown from 13 people to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion,” wrote Systrom.
“We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.”
Forza Horizon 4 retains almost everything that made Forza Horizon 3 the best racer in its class and bakes it into a game that doesn’t ever want you to stop playing. The stunning visual quality and sound design, the massive array of automobiles, and the extensive and completely customisable career mode that have become hallmarks of the Horizon series are all here. What’s new is just how much more effectively Forza Horizon 4 encourages us to return thanks to its shifting seasons, regularly refreshed challenges, and steady stream of rewards.
Every real-time week the in-game season will change and bring a whole new look to the world, alongside a bunch of season-specific challenges. Every day there are still more new Forzathon challenges to complete, and every hour there is a live, online event to participate in alongside up to 11 other drivers who we work with cooperatively in order to chip away at a shared goal.
