Category: Games

Rarely is a group of A-list actors so willing to be vicious like the ensemble in The Devil All the Time. Set between two secluded towns — the aptly named Knockemstiff, Ohio, and Coal Creek, West Virginia — Antonio Campos’ film (his fifth feature on a string of critically praised indies) spins a yarn about zealotry during the late 1950’s. Adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s novel of the same title, a wry omniscient narrator (Pollock, himself) strings together the serendipitous The Devil All the Time. But amid the death and the poverty presented on screen, his matter of fact delivery often belies the film’s cruel irony.

The non-linear narrative, which explores the violent vestiges of religious iconography, finds Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) on the Solomon Islands during World War II. It’s here, he discovers a bloodied, fly-infested serviceman crucified. The image changes the once godly soldier to religiously apathetic, but more importantly, makes apparent how closely brutality and sacrifice — exemplified through the image of Jesus tortured on the cross — align. When Willard returns from the war, he meets the love of his life Charlotte (Haley Bennett). Their courtship, which witnesses Willard’s non-secular revival, twirls another thread: Faith unhealthily filling the hole that loss leaves.

Because after the pair marry, they produce a son named Arvin, only to have a tragedy befall them. To avoid the inevitable, Willard resorts to God, and with his son Arvin fervently prays for divine intervention. His situation becomes so bleak he takes an unthinkable action, which results in a haunting animal death. Skarsgård is unflinching in his ferocity, and his Appalachian accent suggests a man never unwound. He sets the tone early for a film whose most joyful moment is a young Arvin citing his father beating two poachers to a bloody pulp as his happiest memory with his dad.

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Campos loves intertwining bliss with blood. For instance, in the same diner where Willard met Charlotte, Carl Henderson (Jason Clarke) encounters Sandy (Riley Keough). The pair form a serial killer duo that slays young hitchhikers by Carl offering Sandy for sex and then taking their picture, a memento, at their peak of fear. For Carl, murder is the only way for him to feel love, not just for Sandy, but God, too. The Devil All the Time never wavers in exploring the manifestation of extremism. Upon Willard’s return to Knockemstiff, he encounters the revivalist preacher Roy Laferty (Harry Melling) who comes to marry a local girl Helen (Mia Wasikowska). She’s taken by his resolute faith, one where he pours spiders upon his face to prove the lord’s healing powers.

The Devil All the Time is an unhurried dirge, and the three opening arcs produce a distressing first act, one where death is always lurking around the bend. As the film’s narrator explains, every person living in these backroads connect by “lust, necessity, or just plain ignorance.” The ignorance, or the incomprehensible indifference of God, spins this world. In fact, unanswered prayers lead nearly every character to madness because they exist in an inflection point: where treatments for most diseases were still undiscovered and two World Wars mercilessly wiped out large populations, religion served as the only recourse. Once more, their economic station — the hard lives they live — is evident in every shack’s cracking paint.

The Devil All the Time is also a multigenerational tale, which asks a teenage Arvin (Tom Holland) and Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) to reckon with the ghosts of their parents’ past. But not everything works in the final two acts. For example, a sloven preacher fresh out of Bible college, Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), arrives in Coal Creek. While other performers play into the gritty milieu, the screen’s next Batman relies on camp. Pattinson operates in a different movie than the other actors, but he’s probably where the film should be with regards to the narrative’s cruelly ironic tone.

The drama’s final act, which morphs into a thriller, sees Arvin employing his father’s vengeful tactics. This is the most violent you’ll see Tom Holland, especially when he beats a bully of Lenora’s with a wrench. But the pieces don’t all fall into place, such as the subplot of Sebastian Stan as a crooked cop. Even when the pieces feel as incongruous as God’s ways, the level of commitment from this heavily English cast, makes it impossible to avert our eyes from the horrors of their secluded existence.

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Sony has reportedly cut its estimated PS5 production for its fiscal year by 3 million units, bringing the new total to around 11 million, following “production issues with its custom-designed system-on-chip for the new console.”

As reported by Bloomberg, Sony had boosted orders with suppliers in “anticipation of heightened demand for gaming in the holiday season and beyond, as people spend more time at home due to the coronavirus.” However, these manufacturing issues are causing “production yields as low as 50%” for its system-on-chip, which have hindered its ability to produce as many PS5s as planned.

Bloomberg’s sources did mention that yields have been “gradually improving” but they have yet to reach a stable level.

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Sony’s shares dropped by as much as 3.5% following this news, which is its biggest intraday drop since August.

Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, has stated that this production delay will “hit PS5 supply during 2021,” and Sony is planning on using Air Freight to “meet demand this holiday and ship as many units as possible in the launch period.”

Ahmad notes that “production yield issues will always exist, especially at the beginning of a console launch, though this does seem more severe than expected.”

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This news follows both Sony’s announcement of its PlayStation 5 Showcase event this Wednesday, September 16, and Microsoft revealing both the price and release date of the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

We have yet to learn the price and release date of the PS5, but we now know that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will cost $499 and $299, respectively. Bloomberg’s intelligence analyst Masahiro Wakasugi says the PS5 could be priced as low as $449, while the PS5 Digital Edition could possibly “dip below $400.”

If we do learn the price and release date for the PS5 this Wednesday, we will keep you up-to-date with our PS5 preorder guide.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

This is a mostly spoiler-free review of HBO’s We Are Who We Are, created by Luca Guadagnino.

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After remaking Dario Argento’s occult dance horror Suspiria, Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino returns with his first television series, We Are Who We Are, a wandering endless summer among teens. For those familiar with Call Me By Your Name, his HBO show explores similar themes: teens discovering their identity, hormonal horniness, and the mundanity of American expats living in Italy. Set on a military base in 2016, We Are Who We Are follows two teens — Fraser Wilson (Jack Dylan Grazer) and Caitlin Harper (Jordan Kristine Seamon) — who are coming of age.

Even with the familiar guide of Call Me By Your Name, the show’s conceit withers under its myopic lens. The premiere, “Right Here, Right Now I” (each episode carries the same title) tracks Fraser restlessly wandering the base for hijinks, and though he won’t admit it, for friends. Fraser, an androgynous kid with semi-bleached hair and black-and-yellow colored nails, arrives on the American base with his two mothers: Sarah (Chloë Sevigny) and Maggie (Alice Braga) — more on them later  — heartbroken that he’s left his friend Mark in New York. Through Fraser we meet Caitlin, a confident girl who, on the surface, appears to be his complete opposite.

Guadagnino, and his co-writers Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri, struggle to build out the supporting characters around Fraser and Caitlin. Though Sarah and Maggie are two women in a committed relationship, with thriving careers in a military that once instituted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the lens rarely points their way unless Fraser occupies their space. Confoundingly, their family nucleus is far-fetched. Fraser and Sarah share an overly close relationship, something bordering on an Oedipus Complex, except the young teen loves Maggie — the gentler parent — too. Fraser is often abusive; in one scene he viciously slaps Sarah, yet still culls affection from her. The idea of a stern base commander as a laissez-faire mother slapped around, and totally at the behest of her young teenage son, while her dutiful wife watches, never tracks.

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The show suffers from other thin characters, too. While we learn that Caitlin loves wearing boy clothes, refers to herself under the gender-neutral name of Harper, and is especially close with her army father Richard (Kid Cudi), the people around her lack complexity. For instance, Caitlin’s older brother Danny suffers from depression and anger issues — he doesn’t care for his sister’s perceived promiscuity — but the only explanation given for such frustration comes from “loving God.” We also learn that Caitlin’s cheery Nigerian mother, Jennifer (Faith Alabi), was once Muslim. Are we meant to assume his rage stems from his religion? The answers linger just out of sight. Caitlin’s father Richard — who she lovingly spars with — operates a motorboat with her, and the pair perform smuggling missions. But his sternness, and covert homophobia, do not make a three-dimensional character. Instead, her family is composed of interesting ideas, but nothing fully thought through.

Even the center of the series — the teens — lack any defining characteristics other than their horniness. And We Are Who We Are is an extremely horny show. Every teen is involved in some lover’s quarrel. Caitlin’s boyfriend Sam (Ben Taylor) is extremely possessive, yet mostly mopes when his affections aren’t reciprocated. Her best friend Britney (Francesca Scorsese) is openly interested in pretty much everyone: Sam, Enrico (whose sole character traits are his interest in Britney and his Veneto heritage), and Fraser — who the group often refers to as t-shirt, due to him not removing his shirt while at the beach. Other characters possess even less dynamism, such as Danny’s best friend Craig, a soldier in his twenties attracted to Caitlin, and hanging with teens.

The four episodes provided to critics are also without true arcs. They meander like the teens, with a feeling of ennui during an endless summer. By the time audiences arrive at the rudderless fourth episode, involving a wedding between two characters who have rarely appeared together in the show, nothing feels remotely earned. In fact, episode four features zero character development among the thrusting dancing bodies partying in the commandeered white modernist home of a rich Russian. The lurid images of teen libido and full-frontal nudity try to buoy the weak storytelling, but the entire scene is just useless debauchery.

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No one can fault Guadagnino for the visuals. We Are Who We Are bursts with evocative tracking shots and pans, and striking tableaus. Guadagnino builds out Fraser’s character by capturing, through pans, the posters dedicated to The Last Tango in Paris, Blue Velvet, and Klaus Nomi hanging on his wall. Often, the director employs freeze frames of characters during the height of their happiness, as if to trap them in the amber of youth. And the way he juxtaposes the manicured suburban image of a man mowing his lawn with the distant screams of an altercation, or when he contrasts Caitlin reading Leaves of Grass while soldiers talk of gang rape on the other side of a wall, explains the two competing realities of the regimented base.

And of course, what’s a Guadagnino work without a dance sequence? In this instance, it’s Caitlin grooving to Raf’s Self Control. But amongst the images and dialogue, there is no meaningful conflict. No provoking incident that binds the swirl of sunny beaches and teen sex together to signify anything meaningful.

The Jackbox Party Pack 7 has revealed a release date, and it’s not far off. The next collection of multiplayer party games from Jackbox will release on October 16, 2020, and all five games it contains have been revealed and detailed. The game is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. Here’s everything you need to know about it.

The first is Quiplash 3 (3-8 players), which is, as the name suggests, the third installment in the popular series. As in previous entries, you’ll be given prompts and asked to come up with fun responses to it, with winners decided with player votes. Here’s an extended video of how it’ll look–it’s not so different from past Quiplash titles.

The Devils and the Details (3-8 players) is a co-operative game with a distinct aesthetic. According to the description on Steam, it’s about “the daily torture of human life,” and it seems like it will involve players needing to collaborate to complete basic tasks.

Champ’d Up (3-8 players) is the next Jackbox drawing game, and it looks a lot like Tee KO. You’re asked to draw something from a prompt you’re given, and everyone’s drawings are then pitted against each other. You vote on a winner, and get to watch the two drawings battle. Tee KO is a popular Jackbox title, so it’ll be interesting to see if this one is similarly successful.

Talking Points (3-8 players) is an “on the spot speech game,” and the key is to keep talking regardless of whether what you’re saying makes sense or not. It seems that this game will combine drawing, talking, and user voting.

Blather ‘Round (2-6 players) is the final game in the pack, and it’s about showing off your pop culture credentials. You have to try and describe a specific thing with very vague terms, and every other player has to take turns trying to guess what you’re talking about. The video below shows an example of how a round with the prompt “Moby Dick” might look.

If you’re social distancing, Jackbox can be played easily through Zoom or similar services–you can each use a phone as a controller, so it works well as a long-distance party game.

The next generation of Xbox, including the Xbox Series X and Series S, is going all-in on subscriptions and payment plans, with both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox All Access providing customers with over a hundred games, and potentially a whole new console, for a nominal fee each month. Xbox’s revenue is on the rise, and many developers seem very happy with the deals they’ve made with Microsoft, but not everyone is convinced.

Speaking to Barron’s for a piece about Microsoft’s strategy with the next Xbox models, Strauss Zelnick, who is the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software (the parent company that owns Grand Theft Auto V developer Rockstar Games), has expressed some caution towards this strategy.

“I think it may be somewhat hard to do in the interactive entertainment business,” Zelnick said. He cites the fact that TV and movie subscription services make more sense because, on average, people watch far more content than they play–150 hours a month of TV and film against 45 hours of gameplay. This makes something like Netflix far more attractive than Game Pass, he argues.

“It’s not clear that it would be a great deal to spend $35 a month to have one of the two platforms, even with a good deal of content,” Zelnick argues.

Curiously, two major Rockstar titles, Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption II, have both appeared on Xbox Game Pass in the past. Neither title was available on the service for long, though, and judging by Zelnick’s comments it’s unlikely that their games will join a service like Game Pass long-term.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will expand on September 15 in many territories with Cloud Gaming. The next wave of Xbox Game Pass titles has also been announced.