Bloodborne is one of the best games on PlayStation 4 and hopeful PC players have been asking for a port for almost as long as the game has been available. That has never happened, but an impressive “demake” has turned it into a SNES-style action-RPG, and the transformation is gorgeous. The free game even gives you a chance to fight some of its iconic bosses.
Available as a free download now, Yarntown takes Bloodborne’s iconic Central Yharnam area and turns it into a 16-bit top-down game. It’s much more than just the basic visual style of Bloodborne that gets converted, however, as you still have a stamina bar and can make use of the pistol, light and heavy attacks, and a dodge roll. The game also contains the Hunter’s Dream hub area, as well as lanterns to travel back to it from the other locations.
The basic enemies certainly evoke that feeling of dread and tension in the 2015 original, but it’s the boss fights that really show how impressive Yarntown is. Father Gascoigne is still a huge pain, with several melee attacks as well as his blunderbuss shot to knock you away if you get directly in front of him. He isn’t as aggressive, however, so you might have more of a shot of defeating him than you did in From Software’s version.
Developer Max Mraz is no stranger to Zelda-like games. He is also developing the game Ocean’s Heart, which follows a girl on a mission to locate her father on a mysterious archipelago.
It appears there could be some changes in the works for Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold program, as the company has discontinued year-long subscription plans. As of now, only monthly and three-month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions are available from Microsoft’s website, and this change was not accidental.
As confirmed by Microsoft to True Achievements, the company has officially delisted the 12-month Xbox Live Gold plan. These were available for $60, while month-long plans are $10 and three-month plans are $25. Because of this, it will apparently cost about $100 to get a year of Xbox Live Gold now, which is just slightly less than a Game Pass Ultimate subscription that bundles a year of Xbox Live Gold with a year of Xbox Game Pass.
Xbox Game Pass has been one of the best values in gaming since its launch back in 2017, and it now receives all first-party Microsoft games on the same day as their official release. It will also include access to Project xCloud starting this fall, but Microsoft hadn’t made any indication it would be moving away from the Xbox Live Gold program. By increasing the price of the service, it could be encouraging more people to simply make the jump to Game Pass, instead.
An Xbox Live Gold subscription is necessary to play online games for Xbox One, as is PlayStation Plus on PS4. The service’s Games With Gold program also gives away four free games per month, including backward compatible Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles.
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I really wish virtual reality was accessible to more people, because folks, I’m here to tell you that Half-Life: Alyx is very good.
I mean, of course it is. It’s a Half-Life game, and Alyx has all the delectable ingredients from those timeless classics: The fantastic atmosphere that emanates from its environments; the tense gun brawls designed to almost always resolve with you on the brink of death; the understated character moments that make its wacky sci-fi narrative feel grounded.
“But there’s no crowbar! No gravity gun!” I hear some of you chuff. “How can this VR sideshow call itself Half-Life!?” My friends, my cynical friends. Those were the crowning tools of the old games. Half-Life, as always, is trying to do new things.
Look around you right now. Find a small object in the distance, and point to it. Yank your wrist back, as if there was a string connecting your finger and the object, and imagine it flying directly towards you. Open up your hand and pretend to catch it. That’s what it’s like to use Half-Life: Alyx’s new signature device, the Gravity Gloves (also affectionately known as “The Russells”).
Now imagine you’re pulling shotgun shells from the floor, slamming them into your gun as soon as they land in your hand with a thud. You’re plucking an airborne grenade from the air and then throwing it back. You’re maneuvering your arm through a crack in the wall and trying to jostle a medical injector, just out of reach, into your hands. It’s an incredibly unique and satisfying series of actions that only has the impact it does because of motion-based hand controllers and the all-encompassing experience of VR. And it never gets old.
Half-Life: Alyx is built around these wonderful “only-in-VR” moments. Physically using your hands to rummage through boxes and lockers for supplies. Cowering behind a pillar with enemies closing in, frantically trying to fumble another magazine into your pistol. Desperately trying not to make a sound in a life-or-death situation and catching a falling glass bottle in the nick of time.
Gravity Gloves aside, these ideas aren’t brand-new if you’ve been keeping up with the VR space. But Half-Life: Alyx is the most well-put-together version of these ideas by far, a package of some of the coolest stuff VR has to offer, wrapped up in Valve’s penchant for excellent storytelling and exquisite attention to detail. At the very least, it’s a major landmark for VR games, and like any good landmark, you need to stop and check it out the next time you have the chance to take a VR headset for a drive.
Also, it’s the second game Valve launched this year? What a wild time we live in. | Edmond Tran, Senior Editor
Microsoft has officially stopped selling 12-Month Xbox Live Gold Plans, possibly hinting at a stronger focus on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or a new service that could be on the way in-time for the launch of Xbox Series X.
Microsoft confirmed the change to TrueAchievements, stating that even though the 12-month plan is not being sold “at this time,” the 3-month and 1-month plans are still available for purchase.
“At this time, Xbox has decided to remove the 12 months Xbox Live Gold SKU from the Microsoft online Store.” A Microsoft representative said. “Customers can still sign up for a one month or three month Xbox Live Gold subscription online through the Microsoft Store.”
Could this mean Microsoft will phase out its Xbox Live Gold plans and put all the focus on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass?
Ever since Groundhog Day, which one could argue instantly perfected the “time loop” genre it created, we’ve been blessed with a few awesome updates and evolutions of the concept – like the sci-fi actioner Edge of Tomorrow and the horror comedy Happy Death Day. Rarely, though, has a Groundhog Day-style movie attempted to wander back into rom-com territory, given the large shoes it’d have to fill. But Palm Springs, starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, is a worthy and charming successor, one that raises the stakes, deepens the existential wisdom, and enhances the overall idea.
As the film opens, we’re introduced to Samberg’s Nyles, a low-key, but despondent, man who’s already stuck in a loop. In Palm Springs for a wedding, Nyles has been locked in a never-ending day cycle for a disturbing amount of time. So long that he barely remembers details from his life before the loop. A big way that Palm Springs differs from its predecessors though is that it deals with the ramifications of Nyles accidentally roping someone else into his eternity of chaos and repetition.
With a whip-smart script and courageously funny and bare performances from Samberg and Milioti, the film skips over a lot of well-worn time loop territory to give us an awkward love story about two (kind of selfish) people who wind up only having each other. The Coachella Valley locale is the perfect backdrop as Nyles and Milioti’s Sarah, the older sister of the bride, are forced to mostly reside in a place that could either be paradise, purgatory, or scorched Earth hell. At first, in disbelief, Sarah tries everything Nyles says he’s already tried to escape and when it doesn’t work they both settle into a ride or die life of consequence-free shenanigans.
Palm Spring has dark edges and a soft underbelly. It drives home the defeatist depression of the “trapped in time” scenario while also using it to explore larger themes of kindness. While Nyles didn’t mean for Sarah to get locked into the loop (which happens thanks to a nearby cave that emits as a mysterious red glow), he is actually responsible for one other person being caught in the game: a wedding guest named Roy, played by J. K. Simmons.
Roy, understandably, is now forever angry with Nyles and has been showing up occasionally over the vast swaths of years to torture and/or kill Nyles. Roy lives out of town so it’s not an everyday occurrence, but his inclusion, and Simmons’ dependably fun presence, gives the story a bit more karmic weight. If nothing ever ends, if nothing ever moves forward, then at what point can you forgive someone else or emotionally heal? Simmons’ Roy is a nice supporting role that morphs from a recurring bit into something a lot more meaningful.
Other Palm Springs players include Riverdale’s Camila Mendes and Supergirl’s Tyler Hoechlin as the bride and groom, along with Peter Gallagher, Jacqueline Obradors, and Dummy’s Meredith Hagner. They’re all solid, though the film doesn’t have as much fun with them as it could. Because there’s an actual couple to focus on here and not just one person navigating the rules of the times-capade, there’s less room for the un-stuck characters to shine, but the story’s better for the changes (and the looming Roy of it all).
July 18, 2020 marks the 12th anniversary of the release of The Dark Knight. In honor of that occasion, we have republished this piece from the film’s 10th anniversary.
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When The Dark Knight was released in the U.S. on July 18, 2008, it was immediately clear that not only had director Christopher Nolan elevated the superhero movie genre to something approaching high art, but that an iconic take on a classic character had also emerged from the endeavor: Heath Ledger’s dark, scary and more realistic take on Batman’s age-old nemesis, the Joker.
On the occasion of The Dark Knight’s 10th anniversary, we spoke with make-up artist John Caglione, Jr., who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Dark Knight along with Conor O’Sullivan. Caglione had previously won an Oscar for his makeup on Dick Tracy back in 1991, so he came into The Dark Knight with some very relevant experience in the realm of creating grotesqueries. But when it came to birthing a new version of the Joker, the makeup artist quickly realized that he would be crossing into some new and uncomfortable terrain.
“So I read the script for The Dark Knight, and having seen the first one of Chris Nolan’s trilogy, I got the feeling it was going to be more of kind of an organic-looking thing,” Caglione explains. “It was going to be kind of real, not so comic book-y. Going in, and then talking to Chris, meeting him, it became a more realistic approach to the makeup. … What would it be if this guy slept in this makeup? You know, this psychopath. If he didn’t spruce up his makeup for two or three weeks. And, you know, he never changes his clothes in the film. … It was those kinds of organic details that really helps.”
When Caglione joined the production, Ledger was already signed on to play the iconic villain. The makeup designer’s earliest meetings were with the actor, director, and costume designer Lindy Hemming, followed by Caglione creating five or six color sketches as overlays of headshots of Ledger complete with green hair, different kinds of clown makeup, scars, and so on. This was followed with some makeup tests with Ledger in London, but as the process continued, it became clear that Caglione had to abandon his artist’s instinct to get everything just right.
“You know, you go into it, and you’re trying, as a makeup artist, I’m always trained to do every little detail,” he says. “And you think of a clown makeup, and for the most part they’re pretty detailed with sharp lines, but this had to be the opposite of that. It had to look very broken down, very… very lived in. So, yeah, my first few times were too perfect, so I had to kind of let my hand go. And it was hard, it was really hard to do that. And I remember the first week, the first few days on set, I would look at the makeup, and you don’t know the context of the film and the overall vision, and you’re looking at it as a makeup artist. And I’m saying, this is the worst makeup in the world here! You know? And, it was like, oh, am I doing the right thing?
“And you’re looking at all the great makeups in history,” he continues. “Not just the Joker, but Clarabell and so many other greats — you know, Emmett Kelly. And they’re always just very accurate, very precise makeups, and then here comes this. Ahhh! But, thank God it all worked out, right?”
It’s easy to forget now, but before The Dark Knight was released, the standard bearer of Joker makeups was the Jack Nicholson version from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. But Caglione says that as far as he can recall, that design was never really discussed when creating the Ledger Joker. In fact, even the idea of the Joker’s white face being the result of an accident — which is clearly the case in the Burton film — just didn’t fit in the Nolan world of Batman.
“The first Batman was amazing,” says Caglione. “I love Nicholson’s makeup. And I love the whole approach that Tim Burton [took] … the comic book style of the film, it worked. Everything about that film was great. So, in the back of my mind, maybe subconsciously it was there, but no, it never came up in meetings or discussions. It was, let’s roll up our sleeves and make this thing look like a real person could have done this to themselves. … I think it was always discussed, that this was a possible — you know, just a psychopath. A real person that just gets into this whole thing. It’s almost like a split personality. And so, yeah, it’s a madman in makeup. It’s that concept.”
Part of the “doing this to themselves” aspect of the character includes the question of those scars on either side of this Joker’s face. Of course, the film itself leaves the question of where the scars came from open to interpretation, as unknowable as the Joker’s ever-changing origin.
“I always got the impression that it was self-inflicted,” says Caglione. “But it’s up to you to decide. Was he punished, was it abuse? Was it an abusive situation? It could have been [and] that just tipped him over the edge. Mutilation, self-mutilation. We never really know for sure.”
Not surprisingly, Ledger himself was very involved in creating the makeup with Nolan and Caglione. Indeed, he was essential to getting the worn and cracked look of his Joker just right.
“It was great with Heath, it was just a great experience,” says Caglione. “He was a great person to work with every day. It was like a dance, because certain parts of the makeup, to get those cracks and all the drippy stuff, you really need the cooperation of the actor’s facial gestures when laying down the makeup and the paint. So we had a lot of fun together on that movie.”
Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight
Achieving the desired effect essentially involved Ledger acting in the makeup chair.
“He would contort his face or raise his eyebrows,” recalls Caglione. “Or I would even take one hand and kind of scrunch the corner of his eyes to create crows’ feet, you know, draw those wrinkles, and brush grays and white colors over it, and he would relax and you would get all these expressive lines and details that just come naturally. Listen, it’s an old theater trick. They were doing it in the turn of the century, the 1920s in theater. Actors would put white makeup on and scrunch their face and let it go, and then paint little brown lines. So it’s nothing that we really invented. It was a throwback to old makeup techniques.”
Another throwback in the design process came in the famous interrogation scene, where things get real rough between the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime.
“So, Heath and I would always be like, gee, what could we do a little different toward the end of the sequence?” recalls Caglione. “And I remember one time we’re talking about the scene where he gets beat up by Batman. He’s in the jail cell. And at the end of the scene, he wanted to have a different look, Heath. And I was thinking about what we can do with the eyes, the black and stuff. And I went, you know, there was this great villain in the Chaplin films, he was played — the actor was Eric Campbell, and he always played the big heavy in all the Chaplin movies. And he always had these big, black eyes that kind of had these black eyebrows. And Heath was like, well, let me see a picture. So I pulled it up, and we kind of went for that kind of look. It was a throwback to an old Chaplin villain from the silent screen days.”
According to Caglione, Christopher Nolan wasn’t the kind of director who said “I want you to do exactly this.” Instead, he would offer inspiration and guidance. Take, for example, the paintings of Francis Bacon that he brought to Ledger and Caglione early in the design process.
“I think it was his way of saying, let’s blur this, let’s loosen this up,” says Caglione. “Here’s a book, look at it, and maybe you’ll find some inspiration. And it really helped, you know, we turned a corner. He didn’t have to say much, but that was the way it kind of went. And then Heath helped me to relax. The great actors help you relax so you can really bring it, and you can just try different things and feel free to do it. But that Francis Bacon painting, that day that Chris came in and plopped that down and we went through some pages… He said, yeah, maybe look at this picture, look at that picture. I think he actually had some of the pictures tagged with Post-its that he likes. Just for inspiration.”
Funny enough, it was a Francis Bacon painting in the 1989 Batman that the Jack Nicholson Joker spared during his gang’s rampage in the Gotham City museum. Coincidence? Who can say?
Of course, sadly Heath Ledger passed away before The Dark Knight was released. He went on to receive a posthumous Oscar for the role, but had he not died, the actor could’ve returned as the Joker. Caglione recalls Ledger talking about his ideas for the character beyond The Dark Knight.
“Yes, he did, he actually did talk to me about it,” he says. “He wanted to… start at the Arkham Asylum. And his idea — I don’t know if he ever talked to Chris. This is just private moments in the chair with Heath, and conversations like, wouldn’t it be great to go back and see what really happened to this guy, how he became what he became? And why he just, you know, flipped out and became maniacal? And he always thought it would be great to go back to the asylum, or even before that. So it was just chit-chat in the chair. … Because I’m sure as an actor, he needs to know the origins of the character; it’s really important to him.
“He was excited about the idea of going back in time, and seeing how he became the Joker. You know, the evolution of the character,” says Caglione. “It would have been cool. It would have been cool.”
Indeed, it would’ve been cool. But at least we’ll always have Heath Ledger’s amazing performance from The Dark Knight, and the unforgettable look of the character created by Christopher Nolan, John Caglione, Jr., Conor O’Sullivan, Lindy Hemming and, of course, Ledger himself.
