Category: Games

It’s hard to believe it’s been 35 years since James Cameron’s Aliens hit theaters, but such is the passage of time. To celebrate this occasion, Nerf is releasing a special edition blaster based on the M41A used by the Colonial Marines in the film. Check out the gallery below to get a better look at this awesome replica.

The Blaster “launches 2 different kinds of darts,” both Elite and Mega darts, with an LCD counter built into the blaster itself so “so you’ll know when it’s time to reload.” Included with the Blaster are 10 Elite and 4 Mega darts, and the whole thing comes in a really slick package featuring the emblem of the United States Space Command Colonial Marine Corps., a schematic-style illustration on the inside cover, and evokes the look of a beaten piece of futuristic military surplus.

The Nerf LMTD Aliens M41A Pulse blaster is available to preorder today at GameStop and HasbroPulse. In Canada, it will be available at EB Games. If you’re a Nerf fan, an Aliens fan, or both, this is a great pick-up.

If you’re hungry for more of the Alien universe, the upcoming FX Alien television series will remain grounded in “the aesthetic that was established by Ridley Scott.” This blaster is a perfect representation of that gritty, terrible future, but in a fun form factor that will scare your cat.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend.

When we’re talking about a game that literally encompasses all of human history, it might seem daunting to know where to start. This guide will help you sift through the cultures of Humankind, and amble through anthropology as you determine what sort of Earthly legend you become: a benevolent leader, master city planner, militaristic warmonger, consensus builder—whatever you decide, the fate of humanity is in your hands. In fact, let’s start there. Know thyself: consider the sort of godly power you wish to wield and proceed accordingly with your placement and culture choices.

NEOLITHIC ERA

Divide and Conquer

When you’ve acquired enough food for a second unit, consider splitting your Neolithic Army into two groups—they can cover more ground and scout for more food and resources. Keeping them together, however, is a good idea if you plan to take on dangerous potential meals such as Woolly Mammoths: you’ll need to wait for the ancient era and the military coordination technology to add multiple armies to the same battle and coordinate attacks from multiple angles.

Exploring in the Neolithic Era when there’s not a bunch of people on the planet yet, means that you can find a great spot to place your capital. While surveying your surroundings, you’ll notice that different types of terrain such as rivers or forests take longer to traverse, so choose your scouting routes wisely to ensure efficient exploration.

When you place new outposts to claim more territory, plop them on rivers—it will allow your armies to cross waterways more quickly. Formal diplomacy with your bordering neighbors is not possible at this early stage, but you can ransack their outposts and steal their food if you’re feeling mean.

CITIES & TERRITORIES

Master Your Domain

Terrain should inform your strategy, so grab what land you can ASAP, and then leverage that real-estate into projecting power. Build cities near natural obstacles such as mountains to make them more difficult to attack, and claim resource-rich lands and waters to fatten your treasury and trade stock.

Also keep in mind that the first city you found will become your empire’s capital, so take care in selecting a location that is rich in resources, and not too accessible to potential enemies.

To start building, click on the city center while keeping in mind that different quarters exploit different resources. For example, the makers quarter will exploit industry which helps you build things faster. The farmers quarter boosts food production, which grows your population faster and makes your city more productive. Also be sure to research calendar to gain access to the artisan quarter, which gives your city the crucial ability to exploit luxury resources for sustainable growth. It will also pave the way for technologies like writing to be discovered, allowing you to stay at the forefront of research.

Pro tip: placing specific quarters next to each other can create synergies that generate bonus resources, so keep this in mind when placing your districts.

CULTURES, FAME & ERA STARS

Crafting a Lineage and Legacy

The goal of this game is to win fame and collect Era Stars. Fame is the sole victory condition of Humankind, and can be accumulated throughout the game by achieving specific objectives. Some of these objectives these objectives earn you Era Stars, which allow you to advance through the eras of human history.

Your fame score is displayed in the upper left corner of the screen, and clicking on the button just above will open a screen which tells you precisely what your objectives are for the current era. Once you’ve earned seven era stars you can advance to the next era, so for instance advance to the Medieval Era from the Classical Era, or to the Industrial Era from the Early Modern Era.

Advancing to a new era allows you to choose a new culture from that time period and become emperor of that population. Entering a new era also provides access to this era’s Cultural Wonders: want to build the Pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, or countless other human historical wonders and reap the fame and adulation that comes with it? Go for it!

BATTLES & WAR

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized” -Sun Tzu

When building an empire, war is pretty much inevitable, as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and many other great leaders can attest. In Humankind you, as emperor, command all of your military units through a simple interface that lets you confront, attack, defend, and outflank enemies.

Select a battle to choose whether duke it out manually, auto-play the conflict, or retreat. At the start of a manual battle there’s a deployment phase which allows you to position your ranged units such as archers, and close combat units such as warriors.

Try to pick advantageous terrain so you can, for instance, attack from high ground, before launching an assault. Battles can take several turns and last until all of your enemy’s units are eliminated or you’ve captured their flag—or you lose. Clever use of your units’ abilities and an awareness of the terrain they’re fighting on can improve your chances for glory.

Since battles take place on the world map in Humankind, rather than a separate battle map, the ‘where’ and ‘when’ of battles matter as much as the ‘how’. You want to expand your empire and attack when your population’s support for war is highest and you feel you’ll have an advantage with a first strike. A successful surprise attack can also lead to a swift victory which is key, as the longer a war drags on, the less support and stability you’ll enjoy from your followers.

Finally, knowing a bit of history can come in handy during the heat of combat. For example, the dreaded Testudo formation of the Roman legionnaires, or the fearsome Phalanx formation of ancient Greeks, are proven to be devastatingly effective warfare tactics that can turn the tide of battle.

Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to navigate the incredible accomplishments and complexities of humanity, and determine what sort of influence you would exert in the evolution of Humankind.

Published by Sega and developed by Amplitude Studios, the game drops August 17th and will be available on Steam, Epic, Game Pass for PC, Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Google Stadia.

The Night House will hit theaters on Aug. 20.

The Night House may not always pay off its tension in satisfying ways, but the way it builds and holds that tension makes for a gripping experience. Led by a stellar performance from Rebecca Hall as a woman reeling from the loss of her husband, the film has an eerie, metaphysical bent and an occasionally dreamlike feel, as it captures the slow unraveling of a grief-stricken mind.

Filmmaker David Brucker introduces us to a damp, lonely environment, using little more than empty spaces where it feels like people should be. Before we meet high school teacher Beth (Hall), we meet her fancy lakeside duplex, where most of the film is set, and where her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) recently took his own life. His death was unexpected, and while he left a note for Beth, she can’t make much sense of it. She spends her days trying to keep her head above water and get back to life as usual, though the camera often catches hints of chairs and other foreground objects out of focus, obscuring her, as if she’s drowning in her environment.

After sunset, things begin to go bump in the night, and Beth starts to hear and see things that may or may not be there. The mystery of her husband’s sudden suicide makes this presence feel both welcome and unsettling. If Owen has really lingered on somehow, she may be able to find some semblance of closure, or at the very least, a good night’s sleep. Time has begun to slip away from her. She now sleepwalks — the way Owen used to.

Initially, the film maintains an air of ambiguity about whether Beth’s experiences are real or a coping mechanism; her best friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) and her neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) are certainly worried for her health. Regardless of what the answer is, Beth knows what she wants it to be. However, her approach to the supposedly supernatural presence changes dramatically when she begins searching through Owen’s phone and his old notebooks. What she finds only leads to more questions. Before long, Beth’s days and nights start to blend together, and become connected by haunting dreams and visions of a secret world Owen built and kept out of view.

The film’s real horror emanates from the idea that even after 14 years of marriage, and sharing a home, Beth may not have known who Owen truly was. As the possibility of closure slips further out of reach, Beth spirals down an obsessive rabbit hole of speculation, about other women in Owen’s life, about the reasons he killed himself, and about whether she had an unintentional hand in his demise. An equally unsettling notion emerges when Beth’s friends point out the ways she and Owen became increasingly similar over time, as if they had become reflections of one another. After a while, their problems may have begun to overlap and infect each other, the way an unhealthy (though completely normal seeming) relationship can be a ticking time bomb or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hall’s performance is powerful and measured. She creates an intriguing emotional journey for Beth by capturing the unpredictable nature of grief, and the ways it can suddenly pierce even the most mundane interactions. What she does with the role as the story goes on is utterly delightful. She peppers surprisingly humorous (though completely fitting) moments atop the film’s emotional mystery, which make it feel more recognizably human. However, what truly sells this mystery is the film’s use of negative space. Bruckner and cinematographer Elisha Christian make emptiness feel aggressive, and almost dangerous. They create alternating pools of light and darkness as Beth moves about her house, and they frame pillars and household objects in ways that play tricks on the mind. Their unusual use of focus also makes the eye wander towards empty parts of the frame that only make sense if there’s someone standing there. Some of this trickery is also the work of the visual effects team, but the result is chilling all the same, as even nothingness is made to resemble something familiar.

However, despite skillfully building in intensity, the film occasionally lets its tension dissipate, instead of either keeping the viewer immersed within it or paying it off with something frightening or thrilling (despite the best efforts of composer Ben Lovett, whose work here is suitably jagged). The story is by no means a puzzle box, so the fact that it’s easy to figure out isn’t really a problem — not when Hall’s performance is so consistently enticing. However, there comes a point where the film’s abstract visions become literal enough that viewers will have no trouble putting two and two together, which can lead to mild frustration as Beth takes her time catching up; moments of discovery that ought to feel sudden and horrifying end up feeling inevitable. When the film does seek to provide answers, even abstract ones, the result feels slightly muddled — not because the pieces don’t line up logistically, but because they seem to uncomplicate Beth’s feelings about what she discovers. This issue might be temporary, but it occurs during a vital climactic sequence where things ought to make emotional sense.

The Night House weaves its metaphors for depression and marital infidelity into something occasionally resembling a giallo, and while it never goes all-out with its hints of colorful stylization, it does feature a few surprising moments of spiritually tinged sensuality. Ultimately, it’s a standard Hollywood horror film that frequently threatens to break out into something more operatic. It never fully does, but it prods at its own aesthetic boundaries enough times that these attempts — whether failed or restrained — make it visually and emotionally engaging.

Scuf Gaming, the company best-known for customizing high-end gamepads, has announced its first two controllers with a design based on Microsoft’s official Xbox Series X|S controller.

The Scuf Instinct and Instinct Pro are compatible with Xbox Series X|S, PC, and mobile devices. Both gamepads feature four paddles on the back of the controller. Unlike the other controllers released by Scuf, such as the Prestige Xbox One controller (which also works on Series X|S), or the Vantage PS4 controller, the paddles on the Instinct and Instinct Pro are smaller, with placement similar to the Xbox Elite and Elite Series 2 controllers.

Both controllers offer three different button remapping profiles, wired and wireless connection support, a 3.5mm audio jack, a removable D-pad, and interchangeable thumbsticks. Additionally, both controllers have a removable faceplate, meaning you can change the color of your controller by removing the controller’s chassis.

Although both controllers look very similar, there are two differences between both controllers. Only the Instinct Pro offers adjustable instant triggers, which Scuf says are supposed to act as a “mouse click for faster shots.” And a performance grip for a non-slip feel aimed at gamers who enjoy extended gameplay sessions.

Instinct and Instinct Pro are the Scuf’s first Xbox Series X|S-designed controllers since the ninth-gen console switch over, though older controllers will still work with the latest console. While it is unknown when the company plans to release, let alone unveil a third-party DualSense controller, Corsair’s CEO confirmed that Scuf is working on its own version of the PS5 controller during its Q1 earnings call in May.

The Instinct and Instinct Pro are available for purchase now, exclusively on Scuf’s official website. The Instinct’s retail price starts at $170, while the Instinct Pro starts at $200.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.