Category: Games

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Almost a year after the console’s unveiling, the retail box that the next-gen Xbox Series X will be shipped in has been revealed. Best Buy Canada’s Jon Scarr grabbed a photo of the cardboard container and tweeted it online.

As seen above, the box is constructed from cutting-edge heavy-duty paper products and features photorealistic images printed onto its frame. Compared to previous boxes that Xbox consoles shipped in, it’s also a more subdued design.

On the box, the Xbox Series X’s square design and the ventilated cover are shown off, while also reminding consumers that it has a 1TB solid-state drive and games can run at 120 FPS on it at a 4K resolution.

Compared to the original Xbox One retail box from 2014, which was very, very green, the design is far more subtle.

It still has a splash of green on the bottom of the box, which also contains a few paragraphs of fine text. The design is reminiscent of the Xbox One X and the original Xbox console retail boxes, which used cleaner graphic design to stand out on store shelves when they were released.

The Xbox Series X and Series S will launch on November 10. Check out our Xbox Series X preorder guide to see if what’s inside the box is right for you.

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As the coronavirus crisis continues and movie theaters are imperiled as a result, Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins has held firm that her new movie will still open in theaters rather than streaming services. Speaking with Reuters, Jenkins talks about her film being delayed three times due to COVID-19 and how important it is to not let moviegoing become extinct.

“I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where the only option is to take your kids to watch a movie in your own living room, and not have a place to go for a date,” Jenkins said. “I really hope that we are able to be one of the very first [films] to come back and bring that into everyone’s life.”

Director Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated Tenet tried to plant a similar flag after many, many delays–but time-bending marvel has in hindsight not proven to be much of a litmus test for whether theaters are back since releasing September 3. Variety recently clocked Tenet as netting $250 million globally, but characterized its performance in the US as “stalling.”

Jenkins sees these numbers as a natural reaction to the pandemic and theaters struggling to get into lockstep over safety procedures–and still being in denial over how seismic 2020 has been in thinking about the movie business. Instead, Jenkins says she can see a near-future where streaming will be the home for less expensive films and theaters being the home for big-budget action movies.

“If we shut this down, this will not be a reversible process,” Jenkins warned. “We could lose movie theater-going forever.”

Wonder Woman 1984 is slated for a Christmas Day release this year.

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The humble Slinky–the metal spring toy–is getting the Hollywood star treatment. Variety is reporting that director Tamra Davis (Billy Madison, Half Baked) will be helming an upcoming film all about the Slinky, and the movie will be eschewing a Toy Story-like whimsical approach to instead focus on its inception and creation.

The Slinky was co-invented in the 1940s by couple Betty and Dick James. Said Davis in a statement: “I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to tell the story of Betty James; a female inventor, business woman and dedicated mother who with her husband Dick James invented the Slinky… Betty James’ life is a moment in American history where women proved they could not only survive in the face of despair but flourish when the opportunity presented itself.”

The film is co-written by Chris Sivertson (Wash Me in the River), Ann Carli (Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-12), and Cristina Curbelo (Fast Food Nation). Joanne Rubino (Hollywood Divas) will produce, and principal photography is expected to begin sometime in 2021.

The Slinky movie, which might seem a tad WTF? at first glance, is actually part of a well-established trend of films based on popular toys–admittedly with mixed results historically. There’s been 2012’s forgettable Battleship, 2014’s smash hit The Lego Movie (and its 2019 sequel), and a number of G.I. Joe movies including the upcoming Snake Eyes. And who could forget the Monopoly movie, which was first announced in 2015, and is supposedly still in the works.

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I expected Bugnsax to be lighthearted and funny. Its reveal trailer sprays cute into the atmosphere; it radiates cute like some kind of cuteness bomb. What I didn’t expect was its underlying narrative drive, or the potentially darker bits of media its developers counts among their inspirations–the likes of Lost, Apocalypse Now, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. But, despite the unexpectedly dark inspirations, and I can’t emphasize this enough–Bugsnax is still extremely cute, lighthearted, and funny.

Bugsnax is much more story-driven than it might appear to be at first blush. We got a chance to try about an hour of the game, which introduces the narrative and outlines what the hell Bugsnax is all about pretty well. You play a journalist who previously covered the famed, eccentric, possibly prone-to-exaggeration Elizabert Megafig, an explorer and cryptozoologist. Elizabeth invites you to the island where she and her colleagues discovered a species of insect called bugsnax, and after some convincing, your editor lets you go to try and get the scoop–despite the fact that your last story about an Elizabert Megafig discovery turned out to be a hoax.

As you journey to the island, disaster strikes. You fall off your airship on arrival and, as you start to explore, the place is plagued by earthquakes. You soon discover Filbo, one of the inhabitants of Elizabert’s town of Snaxburg, lying on the ground and injured, asking for food. He introduces you to what you’ll be doing for the rest of your time on the island: seeking out and capturing elusive bugsnax.

It quickly becomes apparent that Bugsnax is something of a role-playing game, as you receive quests from various inhabitants of the island (a furry, Muppet-like species called Grumpuses, of which you are also one), and a puzzle game. The puzzle part comes from interacting with the bugs on the island, of which there are 100 varieties. If you want to catch one to feed to one of the grumpuses you meet, you’ll need to figure out its behaviors, something you can do with a scanner that gives you information about each bug species. The first snack you encounter is a strawberry-flavored strabby, which walks a preset circular path but flees into a bush when you approach. To grab it, you need to leave behind a trap and trigger it from somewhere out of sight. Then you bring it back to Filbo and feed it to him, pepping him up (while also transforming one of the grumpus’s limbs into a strawberry, at least temporarily).

That’s the core of Bugsnax: meet grumpuses, find out their deals, help them catch bugsnax. It’s easy to recognize gameplay inspirations that include Pokemon Snap, Viva Pinata, and Animal Crossing. You quickly find out from Filbo that Elizabert has disappeared into the wilderness of the island, and as a result, the community she’s built on the island, Snaxburg, has pretty much disintegrated. Everyone has wandered off on their own and nobody is working together anymore (or gathering bugsnax to feed everyone). In order to find Elizabert, your job becomes meeting each of the grumpuses, of which there are 14 in total, and solving their problems in order to convince them to return to Snaxburg. Eventually, you’ll get to interview each of them and try to piece together the story of what’s going on with Elizabert, the island, and the bugsnax. It turns out, the game is much more driven by narrative than it might have seemed at first blush.

“I feel like we kind of did the same thing with Octodad, where people initially thought it was just a physics toy sort of thing, or just a slapstick comedy thing, and then we hit with the launch trailer that has some more, heavy story stuff,” Young Horses president Phil Tibitoski said in an interview with GameSpot. “I think at Young Horses, our whole thing is world-building and storytelling. We do the mechanics thing and we do the weird thing, but a lot of it is about our games having heart and being relatable.”

There’s also a lot of complexity in Bugsnax that’s not immediately apparent, as well. Sometimes you’ll have to use the behavior of one bug to trap another. In one puzzle situation, I used ketchup packets growing on a bush and a slingshot to convince the hamburger-like bunger to slam into a bush, scaring out a shishkabug so I could catch it. At another point, I sent a strabby in a hamster ball into a burrow to flush out an orange peelbug, then lured it back to its pen by covering the ball in chocolate with my slingshot.

The island has several different biomes where you’ll find different kinds of bugs, as well as a day-night cycle that affects when you see bugs and grumpuses and what they’re up to at that time. At one point, I finished a grumpus’s quest and sent him back to Snaxburg. When I returned to the town, I watched him have a conversation with another grumpus, sit around a campfire, and eventually head off to bed–before then wandering around town for a few hours, sleepwalking. It gave Bugsnax a very Skyrim vibe, suggesting that each of the characters is doing more than just standing around, waiting to provide a quest prompt.

“We kind of accidentally made an RPG, without fully intending to do that at the start,” Tibitoski said.

Over the course of an hour or so playing the game, I interacted with several grumpuses and got a sense of some of the interpersonal relationships that are at the core of the Bugsnax story. Some characters, like Filbo, are trying and failing to hold the community together. Others are going their own way on the island and only looking out for themselves.

Throughout my time with it, the tone of Bugsnax remained light, bright, and funny. But there also is an inkling of darker or more adult ideas at play, it seems. Wambus, a seemingly grumpy grumpus, had been left by his wife, another resident of Snaxburg, as Filbo explained. I ran into Gramble, a grumpus who had befriended bugsnax and didn’t want to see them eaten, while another, Wiggle, serenaded him with romantic overtures, seemingly in an attempt to convince him to offer up his bugsnax pals as snacks–or to let his guard down.

And Snaxburg itself has a bit of a cultish vibe to it. After all, it’s an idyllic community far from the rest of civilization, created by a charismatic leader and the people who upended their lives to follow her. Even though it’s a light, comedic game, Tibitoski mentioned a few interesting, darker inspirations for Bugsnax, and likened the approach to the one Pixar takes with its movies.

“I can say that inspiration-wise to varying degrees, we’ve taken from all sorts of different media and sources, things like Adventure Time, or [on] the other end, Apocalypse Now. Also things like Island of Dr. Moreau [and] Ferngully,” he explained. “But I think something that a lot of people on our team enjoy about Pixar films is that you could watch them, whether you’re a younger kid or if you’re an adult and find something to like and enjoy about them at like both levels and everywhere in between. And we try to kind of hit that same varied accessible mark.”

Though the preview didn’t show nearly everything Bugsnax has to offer–Tibitoski said completing it will probably take the average player about eight hours–the impression the beginning of the game presented was that Bugsnax is likely to stay pretty light in its tone. But that doesn’t mean the game won’t deal with heavier concepts. Tibitoski explained that he thinks that, when presented in the right way, kids are able to understand complex themes in media, and that media that’s geared toward kids doesn’t have to be simplistic.

There seem to be complex themes to explore, like a group of people’s ecological relationship with an island full of edible bugs, and the interpersonal struggles of creating a community.

“We were definitely drawing inspiration from real-life insects and bugs and arachnids and all sorts of things,” Tibitoski said. “But also the theme of exploration in this and of, I don’t know if you’d call it Gonzo journalism, of believing in something, having no one else in your immediate vicinity believe in that too. And then having to try and either prove it or find a new group of people to relate to and be associated with.”

It turns out, there are some mysteries to solve while you’re talkin’ ’bout Bugsnax. The game is set to release on November 12 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on the Epic Games Store.

When Bugsnax debuted during the Sony PS5 reveal event, we had lots of questions. What are these little edible creatures? What’s happening on this island? Why is the theme song so damn catchy?

We don’t have all the answers yet, but we did get some hands-on time with the game, and it might be darker than its cute look suggests. Tony and Phil discuss this in the video above, talking about the game’s influences, voice talent, and more.

Bugsnax releases for PS5, PS4, and PC on November 12. It joins the growing list of confirmed PS5 launch games.

Bugsnax is a bright, colorful game about bugs that are also snacks. But with our first hands-on preview of the game, we discovered that it’s also a pretty involved, narrative-driven game, and that understanding and capturing each of the 100 bugsnax scattered throughout the game’s island is going to take some brainpower.

Check out the first 31 minutes of Bugsnax in the video above, with a little light commentary from Wild Horses president Philip Tibitoski and GameSpot’s Phil Hornshaw as he plays the game on PC. The opening portion shows how you’ll venture to the island of Bugsnax, encounter other grumpses, the Muppet-like people of Bugsnax’s world, and help them solve problems. Those problems tend to involve catching and eating bugsnax, but to do that, you’ll have to observe the behavior of each variety and learn how to catch them.

It’s all in service of a larger story in which you meet Bugsnax’s 14 inhabitants, learn their stories, and help them with their problems. But your ultimate goal is to solve the mystery of what happened to their leader, Elizabert Megafig, and uncover the full story of the island.