Category: Games

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Actress Allison Williams is back with Blumhouse to star in and executive produce its upcoming tech horror movie M3GAN, the company announced today.

According to Deadline, the movie has Williams playing Gemma, a roboticist at a toy company.

“She uses artificial intelligence to develop M3GAN, a life-like doll programmed to be a kid’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. After unexpectedly gaining custody of her orphaned niece, Gemma enlists the help of the M3GAN prototype – a decision that has unimaginable consequences,” according to the report.

The movie puts together a crew of horror alum. Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) will direct, while Akela Cooper (Malignant, Luke Cage) is providing the script. The original story concept comes from horror director James Wan (The Conjuring), who will produce the film alongside Jason Blum. Other producers include Michael Clear (from Wan’s production company Atomic Monster), Judson Scott, and Blumhouse’s Ryan Turek, who will executive produce.

Williams’ last Blumhouse joint, Get Out, raked in $255 million at the worldwide box office along with an Academy Award for best screenplay for writer/director Jordan Peele, as well as a number of other nominations and awards. Williams most recently appeared in the Netflix thriller Perfection, as well as Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Blumhouse has not yet set a release window for M3GAN

With next-gen consoles only a few weeks away, FIFA 21 feels like a swan song for the current generation of sports games. It ostensibly wraps up an era that was defined by the increasing prevalence of microtransactions and the game modes designed around them, and FIFA 21 is no different in this regard. Ultimate Team is still front and center as the main draw for many players, but this year’s game is also the most robust version of FIFA in series history. Volta Football has been expanded after debuting last year, Career Mode has finally received some much-needed new additions, and there are even new ways to play Ultimate Team. None of this is revelatory–and that remains true on the pitch, where subtle attacking changes make for a more dynamic game of football–but each of these aspects sets FIFA up for the future while also ensuring that this year’s game is still worth playing.

The latest gameplay changes aren’t immediately obvious when you step onto the pitch for the first time, mainly because FIFA 21 isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, new features in attack supplement the strong foundations of last year’s game, with player responsiveness and passing also undergoing slight tweaks. There’s an immediacy to everything you do that makes performing sweeping attacking moves a joy to execute. Passing has been sharpened up, with fewer instances of the ball missing your intended target. Through balls are also more effective when playing a runner in behind the defensive line, with well-timed and incisive passes managing to find the feet of onrushing attackers at a more consistent rate. Even heading has returned after its metaphorical absence in FIFA 20 on accord of how useless it was, with aerially strong players able to power crosses into the back of the net with increased frequency.

These gameplay tweaks improve upon the core pillars of FIFA 21’s on-pitch action, while marquee new features, such as Agile Dribbling, elevate its creativity and attacking dynamism. This new dribbling technique gives you greater control when faced with an eager defender by enhancing the speed and responsiveness of your player’s footwork. It’s designed to help you retain possession and create space in tight one-on-one situations, emulating the play of diminutive playmakers and fleet-footed wingers. Players who excel in these moments like Lionel Messi and Bernardo Silva are more adept at using Agile Dribbling than others, utilizing sharp changes of direction and a delicate touch to escape the clutches of aggressive defenders. It can be a powerful tool at the feet of the sport’s best dribblers, but there’s also a palpable learning curve that applies to using it successfully and consistently. Once you do get the hang of it, however, there are few better feelings in FIFA 21 than being able to lure an opponent in close before shifting the ball past their outstretched leg and exploding past their hapless frame into open space.

This increased degree of control is evident throughout FIFA 21’s other new on-pitch additions as well. You’ve always been able to instruct teammates to make off-the-ball runs, but these forward sprints were always static, with players only able to burst up the pitch in a straight line. This ability still exists in FIFA 21, only now you also have the option to choose which direction they run in. This is incredibly useful for moving your teammates into dangerous positions to receive a pass, or to drag defenders out of position and create space for yourself. Player lock is another function of this ability, allowing you to temporarily maintain control of a player after passing the ball to a teammate. This lets you move into pockets of space on the pitch or run beyond the defensive line before instructing the AI to pass the ball back to you. It can be a tad risky leaving possession at the feet of the AI, but your teammates are generally good enough at keeping the ball, so long as you don’t force them to maintain possession for too long.

Speaking of the AI, Positioning Personality is another new feature that’s designed to allow world-class players to stand out with their use of intelligent movement and penchant for finding space. This essentially heightens the importance of the positional awareness attribute, creating a gap between the best and the rest when it comes to the way certain players move across the pitch. Top forwards, for instance, are less likely to be called offside, able to hold their runs and penetrate the backline at just the right moment. Hardworking wingers, meanwhile, will track back to help their fullback, showing up lazier wingers who neglect their defensive responsibilities in favor of staying further up the pitch. Other players will find pockets of space between the lines to kickstart attacks, while the top defenders are able to close down passing lanes and read danger more effectively than their average counterparts.

Defending hasn’t been completely neglected in FIFA 21, although the vast majority of new additions are geared towards infusing the attacking side of the game with more control, creativity, and dynamism. Positioning Personality helps if you’ve got a player like Virgil van Dijk on your team, or a midfield destroyer who excels at tracking runs into the box and intercepting passes. The art of defending hasn’t changed all that much from FIFA 20, however, especially when playing against others online. The tried and trusted strategy of maintaining control over a defensive midfielder is still the best course of action, lest you attempt a tackle with one of your center backs and leave acres of space in behind for the opposition to exploit.

Tackles are slightly more consistent at winning back possession, but with the deluge of options available to attacking players, FIFA 21 still promotes caution on defense. A reimagined player collision system creates smoother interactions across the pitch, so at least you don’t have to worry about conceding because your entire defense and goalkeeper fell over each other. Players now have the wherewithal to jump over fallen players. Blocking shots has also become more pronounced, allowing you to focus on staying in front of the opposition instead of risking a potentially catastrophic tackle. Despite these changes, there’s still a large skill gap associated with defending. It’s only a small sample size, but low scoring games are currently a rarity online, with most games quickly turning into eight-goal thrillers. If you’re looking for high octane attacking football and plenty of goals, FIFA 21 certainly delivers, but it’s easy to feel outmatched when defending.

Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone. Ultimate Team has remained almost unchanged from last year’s game, but co-op is a welcome new addition. You’re now able to team up with friends and earn weekly progress in both Division Rivals and Squad Battles. There are also new co-op specific objectives that feed into FIFA’s version of the battle pass, rewarding you and your friends for playing together. Even if you don’t play Ultimate Team, co-op gives you the opportunity to engage with it in a potentially less frustrating environment.

As for other game modes, Volta Football has been expanded since first appearing in FIFA 20. This unique mode is essentially a more grounded version of FIFA Street, ditching the massive stadiums for small pitches and a focus on skill moves. The Debut is a brief story mode found within Volta, acting as an introduction to FIFA 21’s brand of street football. There are cutscenes and the smallest semblance of a narrative, but finding any substance is more difficult than packing Cristiano Ronaldo in Ultimate Team. It’s worth playing just to unlock cosmetic items and a star player at the end, but there are more enjoyable ways to engage with Volta.

Featured Battles are a notable new addition, repurposing Ultimate Team’s Squad Battles with a street football twist. By playing and defeating AI-controlled squads, you’ll accumulate points towards unlocking matches against special weekly teams with unique rewards. The first week, for instance, gives you the chance to earn a Liverpool kit and PSG star Kylian Mbappe. The latter is obviously more exciting as you’re able to insert him into your Volta Team. Hopefully more star players will be added each week to give you a compelling reason to keep coming back to Featured Battles. It’s just a shame you can only play one star at a time, because who doesn’t want to recreate a modern version of that iconic Nike commercial from 2002?

FIFA 21’s new gameplay features also improve upon Volta’s flashy football. Agile Dribbling functions as a relatively simple way to perform skill moves, while the new blocking system makes defending more rewarding. There’s an increased variety to Volta this year, too, with multiple figurations of matches, whether it’s 5v5, 3v3, walls, no walls, rush goalkeeper, and so on. You’ll go from playing within the confines of a concrete pitch in a public park in London to performing in front of fans in an official indoor arena in Berlin. The size of the pitch alters the way you play, as skill moves become less of a necessity when there’s space to pass to your teammates. Walls add a new dimension as well, giving you the ability to ricochet passes off their flat surfaces, while the size of the teams forces you to adapt your strategy. FIFA 21 fleshes out Volta in meaningful ways, turning it into an enjoyable side dish that will hopefully become a staple of the series’ suite of game modes.

Career mode has been around longer than any other mode, but it’s also faced the most criticism for a lack of changes and improvements in recent years. FIFA 20 moved the needle with the introduction of a shallow morale mechanic and overhauled pre- and post-match interviews, but FIFA 21 takes it a step further by adding a raft of new features. The first of these is a Football Manager-esque Interactive Match Sim that gives you control over the outcome of each match, even if you don’t play it yourself. You can sim any match and watch 2D dots play it out at an accelerated pace. There are contextual prompts that let you jump in and take control of key moments like free kicks and penalties, or you can opt to jump in and out at any time. If you decide to sim the entire match, you can still make informed tactical changes since match data reveals your player’s fitness levels and performance rating, so you can still impact the final score even if you can’t be bothered to play Stoke in a cup game on a wet and windy Wednesday night yourself.

Player development has been overhauled with a revamped growth system that lets you change the position of youngsters in your academy to fulfill team needs. When it comes to the first team, training has also been reworked, giving you the option to set up group training sessions that can improve specific player attributes before a game, such as your striker’s ability to finish big chances. There’s a new match sharpness attribute that determines how likely players are to perform in the most crucial moments of a match. You’ll want to schedule each training session in order to balance your player’s sharpness, fitness, and morale, but you’ll still inevitably have some decisions to make come match day when it’s time to pick your starting-11. This makes Career mode more involved than before, forcing you to manage your players on a weekly basis and ensure your best are ready to play.

Unfortunately, the training minigames you need to play each week just aren’t very fun, particularly once they begin to repeat. It doesn’t take long before you’re tempted to sim each one, but even this is a bit of a slog as you’re forced to mash your way through multiple menus each match week. The UI is similarly sluggish elsewhere, with one menu required to scout a player, and a completely separate one needed to bid for them. That’s a lot of unnecessary navigation for two aspects of football management that are intertwined. Buying players is still a needless grind as well, as you watch the same few unskippable cutscenes over and over again with all of the important information appearing in between via BioWare-esque dialogue wheels.

Career mode is still a mixed bag, then, but it’s reassuring that EA has made some additional moves to try and freshen it up. If you do grow tired of simming through training sessions and managing sharpness, FIFA 21 is still chock full of other stuff to do, whether you want to head to the streets of Paris to show off your skills, hop into Ultimate Team with a friend, or play through a season on Pro Clubs. This is a substantial package that’s propped up by exciting gameplay that puts the onus squarely on attacking football. There are moments of frustration on defense when the balance doesn’t feel quite right, but then you’ll go down the other end and score a Puskás Award contender that makes you forget why you were mad in the first place.

In this video, Persia talks about a since-deleted blurb from a French PlayStation Blog post that mentions a trophy tracking system coming to the PS5 along with additional updates coming to the PS4 this week. This means you’ll now know your exact progress for individual trophies for compatible PS5 games. Other trophy system changes include an update to icons and the level cap being upped to 999. Current trophy levels will scale to a comparable level after the update and will not impact any trophies you’ve already earned.

Persia also talks about Microsoft poking fun at Sony after its teardown video, because you’ll have to do a bit of adjusting to turn the console on its side. A cheeky tweet from Xbox showed how you can simply rotate the Series X onto its side because of its box shape.

Lastly, Persia talks about some of the Exotic weapons and gear that were revealed for Destiny 2: Beyond Light. The Cloudstrike, Lament, Dawn Chorus, and Icefall Mantel are just a few of the new items featured, and they all have their own special effects that benefit their respective classes.

This is your Save State for Wednesday, October 7th.

For all its qualities, it’s not uncommon for people’s launch-era PS4s to sound like a jet engine every time they turn it on now, partly because it’s difficult to clean out any accumulated dust that has built up inside the console. This is true of any vented system, but the PS5 is introducing a very helpful new feature into its design–a “dust catcher” that makes it easy to regularly clean your system out.

In Sony’s teardown video of the PS5, two holes on the console are shown off. These are the dust catchers, where any dust collected by the system’s fan is filtered to. This means that getting rid of the dust in your system–and avoiding a horribly loud fan–is simply a matter of vacuuming them out of these holes.

Removing dust from a system can often be a finnicky job, so this is good news.

The outer facade of the system will need to be removed to access the holes, but as the teardown shows, this is not a complicated procedure. This hopefully means that a launch-model PS5 will have a longer life than has been the case with some previous systems.

The video also highlights the disc drive in the PS5 (if you don’t opt for the digital-only version), which features double insulation to keep down vibration and noise. Hopefully, the PS5 will be a quieter console than the PS4.

The PlayStation 5 begins its international rollout on November 12. Here’s our complete launch guide for Sony’s new system.

Hey there, my name is Max Blumenthal, aka RinHara5aki. If you haven’t heard of me, I’m an American The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild player that has spent over 2300 hours battling in Hyrule. Gold Lynels are my favorite sparring buddy, and I’ve spent a whole lot of time making combat videos and pioneering several BotW techniques. The Bow Spin, for example, is one of my most notable. With that background, you can imagine that when a game comes along that everyone touts as a “Breath of the Wild clone,” my interest immediately piqued. Naturally, I had to see what it was like for myself.

Since its first reveal, Genshin Impact got both a lot of attention and flak for its BotW-like appearance and gameplay, making people question its originality. They would ask: “Why would I play this game if it’s just a ‘lesser’ version of BotW?” After playing the game for 50+ hours, I can confirm that, yes, it does have similarities to BotW, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play it–there’s a lot of interesting things going on, which I’ll go over. To make this easier to digest, I’ll be splitting this comparison into three main sections of analysis: exploration, combat, and my overall thoughts. And be sure to watch the video version of this feature in the player below for a more visual look at what I mean.

Exploration

Exploration is where I feel Genshin Impact is the most similar to Breath of the Wild. It’s also what was most often shown in trailers leading up to the game’s release, making people angry to the point of destroying PS4s in protest of its development. Genshin Impact’s similarities to BotW’s navigation techniques are blatant–the gliding mechanics are pretty much the same, and both games have options to climb or jump up most surfaces, jump off walls, attack while falling, use stamina to sprint, and much more.

Genshin Impact feels familiar in that respect, and it’s easy to get accustomed to the exploration when you know exactly what you’re doing. It can sometimes feel alarmingly similar, mainly when you reach parts of the map, such as Mt. Hulao and Cape Oath, which are nearly identical to Satori Mountain and Cape Cales from BotW. Taking inspiration from a game as well-received as BotW is understandable, and honestly, more games should do so. In fact, Ubisoft’s upcoming Immortals: Fenyx Rising bears notable similarities to BotW–much like Genshin Impact.

Genshin Impact even keeps some of BotW’s issues, such as automatically clambering onto objects you didn’t mean to. But, to its credit, Genshin Impact also streamlines things from BotW’s systems, offering a fast swimming option instead of BotW’s swim-dash option, which limits your ability to steer Link. Mercifully, you can also climb in the rain, making it much less stressful to traverse when the weather isn’t ideal, even if that restriction is part of the appeal of BotW’s system.

Even though some people disliked the rain climbing limitations in BotW, difficulties like these did make you think a little more about how to traverse the world and whether there were other ways to get around that weren’t yet available or you hadn’t thought of. In many cases, it pushed players into BotW’s other mechanics, such as camping until the weather clears, using Revali’s Gale, and other unconventional solutions that can present alternative ways to get places. One of the wonders of BotW is its playground-like world, and it’s so engrossing because its multiple tools let you manipulate that world in different ways. While Genshin Impact doesn’t have many of those elements, I still don’t think it’s entirely necessary, as its developer miHoYo seemed focused on making an RPG first, and an open-world adventure game second, and that’s okay.

One thing Genshin Impact does right with its exploration is that, like BotW, its breadcrumb-like open-world design often grabs hold of your curiosity.

One thing Genshin Impact does right with its exploration is that, like BotW, its breadcrumb-like open-world design often grabs hold of your curiosity. The fact that you can get distracted so easily when going from place to place makes the game’s world extremely fun to explore and satisfying to go out of your way to scavenge materials on your way to an objective. And while the “finding a tower to unlock parts of the map” design philosophy is nothing new or exclusive to BotW, it’s an integral part of exploration that also appears in Genshin Impact. It’s certainly welcome, as it makes progression across the map much more visual and rewarding.

So is exploration in Genshin Impact as good as it is in BotW? Not really, it’s perhaps a bit more intuitive, but not as well-considered. Regardless, you will definitely still get lost in Genshin Impact and probably enjoy exploring the vast, colorful world on display. And the fact that you get to have that in a game that can be played for free is a HUGE plus in my book.

Combat

My definition of Breath of the Wild’s combat will be completely skewed compared to the average player, so I’ll try to approach this from a more general top-down view. I can safely say that this is where Genshin Impact deviates the most from BotW, and it is immensely fun in its own distinct way. Combat focuses on using and switching between multiple characters to leverage elemental properties during a fight. While BotW also heavily uses elemental properties in its combat, Genshin Impact uses them differently, rewarding you for swapping mid-combat to gain buffs and encouraging you to mix elemental attacks. This is done by tying each character to a specific element, and when combined with weapons and artifact effects, it creates satisfying depth. Genshin Impact’s RPG mechanics shine in this regard and makes your ability to handle the different elements a key component in combat encounters.

The general combat is also somewhat different. Besides one counter-stance character, there is no proper “guarding” or “parry” button, leaving dash as your only defensive maneuver. And while there are falling attacks, you’re unable to do any other actions while jumping, making most advanced air maneuvers like jump cancels relatively useless. In this respect, BotW has the edge in this aspect thanks to more options and versatility of tools, which is what gives BotW its combat more depth and intricacy. The control scheme in Genshin Impact is also completely different, but it still feels good to perfectly dodge an attack, and then blast foes with a mix of elements. Ultimately, both games are fun in their own unique way and have rewarding combat. BotW just has the kind of room for creativity that appeals to combat lab monsters like me.

One of Genshin Impact’s other significant differences comes from the rolling and leveling of multiple characters and the progression of artifacts and weapons–a system that channels its design roots as a gacha game. While acquiring these characters feels pretty unnatural and completely breaks story immersion, it all plays into diversifying the experience. The new characters you obtain are all very distinct, and all can be viable in a team. Seeing this character system in Genshin Impact almost makes me want something similar in BotW’s upcoming sequel. Still, unless Link and Zelda are on-screen at all times, I think it would feel a bit unnatural to switch between them continually. After all, when it comes to the mainline Zelda series, narrative immersion is incredibly important to me.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned above, Genshin Impact is an RPG first and an open-world adventure game second. As someone who likes both genres very much, this marriage does work out in Genshin Impact’s case. There are a ton of RPG’s out there that kill the exploration factor for me with limiting design decisions, such as invisible barriers and overly simplistic dungeon crawls, and Genshin Impact doesn’t do any of that. While the story isn’t much to write home about (even when compared to BotW’s light narrative), the pleasant visual aesthetic, involved combat, and bread-crumb exploration really pulls me into what it’s trying to do. And while, yes, Genshin Impact’s BotW inspirations border on imitation, that shouldn’t inspire anger or objections. Why wouldn’t you want more games to take inspiration from one of the greatest games of all time?

And remember, if Genshin Impact’s gacha elements turn you off, this game is entirely free, and it doesn’t require any money to be spent on it, so it’s well worth trying out for a little bit, at least. Whether or not I’ve quelled any doubts you might’ve had jumping into this feature, I cannot deny that Genshin Impact is still an excellent open-world RPG in its own right, and a great way to keep you busy until the Breath of the Wild sequel shows up–whenever that is.