Category: Games

Apple has announced that Mythic Quest will be getting another pandemic-era standalone special, according to a release. Like last year’s special quarantine episode, the upcoming “Everlight” will not technically be considered part of the show’s standard seasons. However, “Everlight” is set to air on Apple TV+ on April 16, making it a great lead-in to tide fans over until Season 2 finally kicks off on May 7.

Directed by co-creator, executive producer, and star Rob McElhenney and written by star Ashly Burch, the episode “presents a relatable subject that people all over the world are currently facing–the return to offices and co-workers.” In this new, half-hour special episode, “the team behind the biggest multiplayer video game” return for a LARPing tournament–which is probably exactly what we should all expect when we go back to our offices, except for the fact that Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs) is slated to appear in “Everlight.”

“‘Everlight’ is a special episode that addresses the practical and emotional difficulties of returning to normalcy,” said McElhenney. “It’s full of hope and joy and optimism for a bright future. Ahead of our upcoming second season, we felt it was the perfect way (and the perfect time) to invite the audience back.”

Mythic Quest is well-equipped to tackle COVID topics–for these specials and Season 2, the show put into place massive production and logistical changes to assure safety. As for what’s ahead in Season 2, the release indicates that the team will be “attempting to build upon the success of Raven’s Banquet by launching an epic new expansion,” all while struggling with the game’s directions, unresolved issues, and office romances.

Mythic Quest is co-created by Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz. The ensemble cast include McElhenney, Burch, Charlotte Nicdao, F. Murray Abraham, Jesse Ennis, Danny Pudi, Naomi Ekperigin, Caitlin McGee, Humphrey Ker, Chris Naoki Lee, and Jonathan Wiggs.

Universal Studios Orlando’s newest roller coaster is ready to be unleashed on the world. The Jurassic World VelociCoaster at Universal’s Islands of Adventure will open to the public on June 10, bringing guests face-to-face with some seriously terrifying dinosaurs.

The ride sounds like one of Universal’s scariest yet, as a press release notes the coaster reaches speeds of 70 miles per hour and includes an 80-degree drop from 155 feet in the air–the steepest drop of any Universal ride.

There will also be plenty of dinosaurs. According to a press release, the pack of velociraptors from the first Jurassic World movie–Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo–will join those on the ride that sends guests “through the raptor paddock, into the air, just inches above water, and more.” Based on video from the ride, which you can see above, the raptors in the ride seem to be a mix of statues and animatronics–so don’t freak out if they start moving.

You won’t just be seeing dinosaurs from the films, though. Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and BD Wong all reprise their roles from the franchise via videos in the line queue.

The VelociCoaster is the second major roller coaster added to Islands of Adventure in recent years. In 2019, the park added Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure.

You’ll be able to ride the VelicoCoaster beginning June 10. Before that, though, Universal is launching yet another ride. When Universal Studios Hollywood reopens on April 16, after being closed for a year, guests will be able to experience The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash, a new ride that was originally set to open in 2020.

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The Entertainment Software Association has announced plans to transform E3 into an all-digital event this June, and Xbox is one of the participating companies. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has now further commented on the announcement.

He said on Twitter, “Glad to see the game industry coming together again in June for a digital E3.” The executive went on to say that E3, along with other gaming events, demonstrate that “our industry is strongest when we work together.”

He ended his statement with a tease for Microsoft’s own plans for the summer. “Looking forward to sharing what we have in store this summer,” he said.

Microsoft is participating in E3 2021 in some capacity, but the full extent of its involvement remains to be seen. For what it’s worth, Microsoft previously said it would have more news to share about its games, and those from new subsidiary Bethesda, at some point this summer.

It was previously reported that Microsoft and Bethesda would make announcements during events in the summer. These events might take place on the same day, back-to-back, to deliver a big one-two punch, according to the reports.

As for what Bethesda could discuss, it could be updates on new games like Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI, or brand-new games altogether. As for Microsoft, the summer show will be just months before Halo Infinite releases during the holiday, while it was also reported that Xbox has more unannounced games to reveal for 2021.

In addition to Xbox, E3 2021’s list of early commitments include Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Warner Bros., and Koch Media. The show is slated to take place June 12-15, and its programming will be free for everyone to watch.

After an extended internet campaign to make director Zack Snyder’s version of Justice League a reality, and then a lengthy runway of it actually going into production and then being marketed, numbers are starting to come out about how the movie has actually been landing with audiences. It’s only one metric, but Smart TV viewer-tracking application and audience aggregator Samba TV has recently released data showing that both in the US and the UK, less than half of those who started watching the four-hour epic stuck around for the whole thing.

Luiz Fernando, a data and box-office enthusiast, dug deep on the data in a Twitter thread and revealed that of the 2.2 million households that started watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max, only 36% in the US finished it–whereas in the UK, of 954,000 households only 48% finished. The thread excerpted below has other contrasting data, like the fact that this information means that Wonder Woman 1984 performed better both in its full week debut and after its opening weekend–with 3 million and 400,000 viewers respectively in those categories.

Some other data also worth reflecting on is the recent report that HBO Asia had reportedly crashed as a result of apparent demand for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. In a self-reporting Facebook post on the outage, HBO Asia said its HBO GO service experienced “an unprecedented surge in traffic for the exclusive premiere of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.”

All of this information may point to there being wisdom in Snyder’s pre-release, but still very publicly discussed plans to have multiple theatrical and home releases of the DC movie. It’s unlikely a black and white version–which Snyder has hyped the most–would offer a different result, but it’s also a safe bet others are either waiting in the wings or being worked on as of this writing.

The final trailer for the upcoming thriller Without Remorse has been released. The movie is based on the Tom Clancy novel and hits Amazon Video on April 30.

Without Remorse stars Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther) as Navy SEAL John Clark, who we are told “is more dangerous and effective than any man we have in the field.” Clark is mourning the death of his wife, but is pulled back into the world of covert ops for a dangerous new mission. Inevitably, nothing about the mission is what it seems and Clark is forced to take matters into his own hands. Plotwise this is familiar territory, but Jordan’s intense charisma and the skill of director Stefano Sollima (Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Gomorrah) at delivering thrilling action should make it an exciting watch. Check the trailer out below:

Without Remorse also stars Jamie Bell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Guy Pierce. It’s written by Taylor Sherdian, who wrote both Sicario movies. The novel Without Remorse was published in 1993 and was an origin story for John Clark, who had appeared as a supporting character in Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. Clark has previously been played on screen by Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber.

In related news, it was recently announced that Jordan will make his directorial debut with Creed 3, as well as taking on the lead role once more. The next Rocky spin-off is set for a November 2022 release. However, Rocky creator Sylvester Stallone has also confirmed that he won’t be appearing in this latest movie.

For more, check out the biggest upcoming movies to watch in 2021.

After I ask him what Flight School Studio is all about, creative director Adam Volker laughs and says that the studio’s brand is that of “peculiarity.” Which, given the studio’s track record, makes perfect sense. “We like to make interesting things, and we find interest in oddity, interest in weirdness, and interest in differentness,” he said. “I think we love art, and we love storytelling, and we think there are all sorts of ways to do that that haven’t been done. And so we’re just trying stuff, seeing if it sticks.”

Ahead of the release of a new trailer for Stonefly, Flight School’s latest project, I sat down with Volker to talk about the game, as well as Flight School’s history and identity as a developer. Stonefly is just the most recent game in Flight School’s attempts to make something that’s a bit out there–it’s an intriguingly difficult game to define.

Stonefly is also the second time that Flight School has gone for a more traditional console and PC game than the virtual reality games that defined the studio’s origins. When I asked why Flight School decided to move away from VR games, Volker said, “Well, there’s a boring answer and then an interesting answer. The boring answer is that money dried up in VR.”

Beyond the boring financial reasons, the team also just really wanted to take a stab at a game that would be available on more mainstream platforms. That game turned out to be 2019’s Creature in the Well, a game that the team affectionately refers to as a “pinbrawler.”

“Pinbrawler was a word that somebody at PAX said to us after playing [Creature in the Well], a term we had not ever heard of,” Volker said. “And we’re like, ‘That’s perfect,’ and started marketing it as a pinbrawler.” Flight School counts the experience as a blessing. The team’s games have always been a bit difficult to define in that they take inspiration from many sources but don’t easily compare to other games out there. But describing Creature in the Well as a pinbrawler–shorthand for a game that adds pinball and brawler mechanics to a Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler–is catchy and easy to market.

It’s magic that Flight School has unfortunately not been able to capture a second time for Stonefly. With the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling all the major gaming events in the latter half of 2020 and the former half of 2021, there hasn’t been a chance for large groups of people to try Stonefly and let Flight School know what specifically about the game is the most enjoyable. “We get a ton of how we market our games from people playing,” Volker said.

On top of that, COVID-19 has changed how Flight School works on games. Flight School has a centralized office location in Dallas with a few folks going to an office space in Montreal. So unlike many indie studios that were already remote working from home operations, Flight School did have to go through the transition of changing where and how people work. Volker said that the team had experienced positive and negative changes since the start of the pandemic–the most noticeable difference is the unfortunate loss of the option for teammates to just call each other over to their desks for quick and easy feedback.

“We started the production [on Stonefly] before [COVID-19], but only by maybe six months or so,” Volker said. “I feel so horrible for [game designer Mel Ramsden] because she came to interview at the studio and we were like, ‘Check out our space, we’ve got this cool coffee machine and lounge area on the sixth floor of this beautiful building in Montreal,’ and then she’s never worked in the studio. We hired her, and then I think it was either the week or like the week after that we went into quarantine in Canada. I feel like she hasn’t even gotten the full experience.”

Part of that full experience is how Flight School pulls from so many sources for its games. Volker said that rather than try to craft unique game mechanics, he and Flight School Studio’s Bohdon Sayre talk about aspects of play. “Play is a much larger space than video games,” Volker said. “And so we’ll look at things like tag or board games–that’s why we talked about sumo wrestling for Stonefly.” During our conversation, Volker threw a lot of other brainstorms at me that he and the team have had for their games, including sports like soccer and baseball and activities like archery, axe throwing, and beer pong.

“Why do people keep doing this–what is beer pong?” he asked me. “Why do people keep playing it all the time? Is it just the social aspect–pretending you’re cooler than everyone in the room–is that the only reason people play? Do people play because they get to drink?” Flight School believes that if you can get at the heart of why someone finds a kind of “play” fun, then you can try and capture that kind of experience in a video game–like making pinball into a combat mechanic.

In terms of more traditional inspirations, Volker mentioned that Stonefly pulls from Super Smash Bros., Dynasty Warriors, and anime, among other sources. For anime, he specifically mentioned Studio Ghibli–which makes a lot of sense, given that when I first laid eyes on the game and saw it in action, I felt like I was seeing Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty taking place in the same universe as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Gundam. “It’s funny that you mentioned mecha, because I’ve got a Gundam right above my desk,” Volker said.

That sci-fi-inspired setting and story is the only easily apparent connection that Stonefly has to Creature in the Well (when I asked if the team had any sci-fi fans, Volker said, “Oh yeah, totally,” without any hesitation). In practically every other way, Stonefly is a completely different game, which fits Flight School’s pattern of creating games that are very different from what the team has done before.

“It’s kind of our self-preservation,” Volker said. “We would never feel confident going toe-to-toe with BioWare or Bethesda or whatever, and make a giant, traditional third-person action RPG. Because there’s only a few of us, and those other studios employ like hundreds of super talented, brilliant artists. I feel like Bo and I–I don’t know that we’ve ever said this out loud–we have to make something different out there, because otherwise it would just get buried.”

Here’s hoping that Stonefly won’t get buried. I enjoyed the hell out of Creature in the Well and it’s unique implementation of pinball mechanics, so I’m looking forward to seeing how Flight School Studio manages to capture its brand of peculiarity this time around. Stonefly is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, PC, and Switch in 2021.

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