The only thing better than being on a train is being in charge of one, and if you don’t have several years to dedicate to learning the art of being a locomotive operator, then train simulator games are the next best thing. There’s no shortage of games in this genre, but finding the right hardware to create an authentic experience on the Nintendo Switch for these games can be challenging. Unless you’re in Japan, that is.
The latest Densha de Go!! from 2017 was ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2020 as Densha de Go!! Hashirou Yamanote Sen, and according to Famitsu Magazine via Kotaku, the first peripheral in 14 years is going on sale for the game.
It’s a fairly complex controller outfitted with all manner of buttons, but its primary hardware feature is a one-handed lever equipped with a series of internal gears to change the speed of a train.
Densha De Go!! Dedicated One Handle Controller
Players can learn “intuitive operation” that allows them to concentrate on the screen without looking at their hands, as well as “power acceleration” that allows for a slow but thrilling iterative increase in speed. The controller is probably not intended to be used in other games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, unless you want a weird challenge.
The Densha De Go!! Dedicated One Handle Controller For Nintendo Switch will go on sale in August in Japan for 14,850 yen or roughly $134, but there has been no mention of an international release yet.
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Sega’s video game adaptation of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba will officially head West this year, releasing on October 15 for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Based on the popular manga and anime series, the game stars Tanjiro as one of the titular demon slayers who fights to save his sister from the demonic curse placed upon her, as well as avenge his murdered family.
emon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is an arena brawler that adapts the breathing-powered swordsmanship of the source material to unleash plenty of flashy attacks. CyberConnect2–the studio that has created numerous anime video games over popular franchises such as Naruto and Dragon Ball Z–is handling development on Demon Slayer.
Available in a regular $60 edition, Sega also plans to publish the Demon Slayer in a digital deluxe version package that includes early access to the game and various cosmetics for $70. The game also features both its Japanese and English voice cast, with local and online multiplayer options included.
Demon Slayer has been a breakout anime adaptation recently, with the series earning rave reviews for its story, characters, and groundbreaking animation. The first feature film based on the series also did big numbers, surpassing Spirited Away’s longstanding record to become the highest-grossing movie of all time in Japan, earning over $367 million during its run.
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Halo Infinite’s first multiplayer season will be themed around the “Heroes of Reach”.
The news was revealed in this month’s Inside Infinite blog over on the Halo Waypoint website. Halo Infinite Head of Creative Joseph Staten centred the idea that as well as Master Chief, 343 wants you, the player, to feel “at the very heart of the Halo universe”.
Part of this push to make players part of the story will begin “with the launch of Halo Infinite’s first multiplayer season,” which 343 is calling Heroes of Reach. “At the center of our plans is a goal to deeply root your Multiplayer character in the larger Halo universe and give them a vital, active role in the Halo story moving forward,” Staten said.
343 isn’t ready to share all of the details on how it plans to implement this, but did share why it’s calling the first season Heroes of Reach. “Reach has a rich history; it’s a key location for Spartans of old and a focal point for a new generation of Spartans preparing to wrestle with the perils and mysteries of a galaxy that has fundamentally changed after the events of Halo 5,” Staten explained. “Halo Infinite’s first Multiplayer Season takes place at a transformational moment in Halo history—at the pivot point from one generation of heroes to the next.”
“In this moment, your Multiplayer hero is waiting just offstage, geared up for battle and ready to spring into action,” Staten added. “And their epic story has yet to be told.”
How cryptic. From Staten’s description, it seems like the first season will be a reflective look back on the events of Reach and its generation of heroes at a period in time beyond the events of Halo 5. It appears to be the starting point for a new set of heroes, our multiplayer Spartans, in a narrative that will develop as 343 delivers post-launch support to Halo Infinite.
Halo Reach came out in 2010 and told the story of the fall of the planet Reach through the eyes of a group of legendary supersoldiers called Noble Team. The game is a prequel, its story leading directly into the start of Master Chief’s narrative in 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved,
Former Street Fighter producer and world’s biggest Blanka fan Yoshinori Ono is back in the fighting game development space, having joined game studio DelightWorks as its new chief operating officer and president. The company is currently working with Notes Co., Aniplex, and developer French-Bread to release Melty Blood: Type Lumina on September 30, a prequel to the 2002 fighting game.
Melty Blood: Type Lumina will launch with a roster of 10 characters and will be available in two versions: a $50 standard edition and a $70 deluxe package which includes a digital copy of Melty Blood Archives which chronicle the history of the series and a digital soundtrack. Melty Blood has established itself as a cult classic game in the fighting game community over the years, although one with a niche appeal among diehard supporters.
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As for Ono, the producer and developer of Street Fighter led the franchise through several console generations for more than two decades and formally announced his departure in 2020. Having joined DelightWorks in 2021, Ono began working for a company that had found massive success with the mobile game Fate/Grand Order, which has since become a massive franchise across several other forms of media.
Back in April, Ono had tweeted that he was looking forward to being involved in the fighting game scene again, possibly referring to the new Melty Blood game at the time.
Fighting games are still quite popular, as Sony and esports venture RTS made headlines earlier this year when it acquired Evo.
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The Ice Road premieres Friday, June 25 on Netflix.
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Liam Neeson’s latest, a modestly exciting disaster flick about a treacherous trek through Canadian tundra, is a Netflix-only deal that fires on partial cylinders. At times marred by subpar CGI, The Ice Road is a by-the-numbers thriller that exists nicely as empty calories, briefly formidable but ultimately forgettable.
Assembled algorithmically, and dispensed derivatively, there’s nothing truly shiny about The Ice Road. In another life, this film would have taken a straight-to-Redbox route, providing a cool-headed compromise for those unable to decide on what to watch on a given Friday night. The grotty effects are ia curious layer here; there are parts of The Ice Road that work well because of — you guessed it — the ice road. Whenever the film can convince you that it’s actually employing practical efforts to showcase the dangers, it’s instantly better. When you believe the characters are in the midst of the elements, and trickily traversing the harsh climate and rickety off-season ice, there’s a sheen of suspense. But then horrid-looking explosions, ice cracks, and avalanches zip you out of the tension pretty quickly and undermine a lot of the action.
After a diamond mine in remote Manitoba experiences a tunnel collapse, three truck drivers are tasked with hauling wellheads (three identical ones to ensure that at least one makes it) over thinning April ice to rescue the trapped miners. The clock is ticking and they’re going to hit every obstacle available. Because little do these emergency truckers know but the mining company has employed devious assassins (lol) to stop them. Killers who can only take out our heroes in ways that’ll look like accidents, mind you. Hitmen employed by those in charge because they need to cover up the fact that the company took shortcuts and inadvertently caused the cave-in. So The Ice Road has smushed together a disaster movie with a crime story in a manner akin to 1993’s Cliffhanger, but somehow here the parts just don’t quite fit and the movie feels a little dumber because of it.
Jonathan Hensleigh (writer of Die Hard with a Vengeance and Armageddon) directs the adventure earnestly, from his own script that offers up few surprises. Any pertinent information about methane, mining, trucking, ice roads, and more get exposition’d to heck, and then all that information comes back in some fashion, usually weaponized against the villains. The baddies themselves are unintentionally comical, and the mid-point twist of the movie is too easy to spot ahead of time. Occasionally though, The Ice Road is able to pile up, and pile on, enough challenges and problems for our heroes that it can suck you into its frosty drama.
Neeson’s character, Mike, is a gritty elder who cares for his veteran brother (Marcus Thomas) whose combat injuries have caused him to have aphasia. Bouncing from job to job, like a modern era George and Lennie, the siblings have been ostracized from legit trucking gigs. Neeson basically does his thing here, which is to say he’s a gruff hard-ass with “someone to care about,” while the film itself sort of cheats at the end and offers up a disturbing solution for their challenges.
Legion’s Amber Midthunder plays the most interesting character of the batch, nicely sprucing up the supporting players as Tantoo, a no-nonsense indigenous driver who has a police record due to protesting. Tantoo allows this antiquated actioner to feel a bit more youthful while also getting in, and spreading out the information dump, which is divided up between her, Neeson, and Laurence Fishburne’s dispatcher.
There’s nothing dreadful about The Ice Road (aside from some CGI shots), just formulaic elements that make you realize there are better thrillers out there involving snow. Or trucks. Or Liam Neeson. Honestly, and it’s more darkly comedic, you’d do better with 2019’s Cold Pursuit.
The Trials of Osiris returns in Destiny 2 with the Friday reset, and with it comes another slate of some of the best gear in the game for players to earn. The trouble is, you’ll need to wade into Destiny 2’s toughest PvP challenge for a chance at the goods.
Each week, the Trials of Osiris map and rewards are randomized when the event launches with Destiny 2’s daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Friday. We’ll update this post with a rundown of the gear you can earn from this week’s Trials of Osiris matches, and which map you’ll take on when the event kicks off.
The Trials of Osiris offers some of the toughest PvP challenges in Destiny 2. It runs from Friday to Tuesday, and the goal in each competition is to assemble your team of three–there’s no matchmaking in the mode–and win as many matches as possible before you suffer three total losses. Once you’ve got three L’s to your name, you’re forced to reset your Trials run, or Passage, and try again. You’ll earn loot at certain points as you rack up victories, so minimizing your losses is key to grabbing new gear. But the best rewards in the event come when you go on a winning streak of seven matches in a row–a “Flawless” run.
While the goal in Trials is to hit that flawless run, the reality is that Trials is very tough, and most players may never achieve a flawless run. But the event isn’t just for the very best players in the game. You can still earn Trials rewards, some of the best weapons available, just by playing matches, win or lose. The End Game bounty from Saint-14 awards each week’s three-win reward just for participating.
If you can manage to go Flawless, you’ll visit the Lighthouse and earn exclusive rewards. Opening the chest in the Lighthouse now gets you an “Adept” weapon, which has extra stat boosts you can’t get almost anywhere else. Visit Saint-14 to pick up a Trials Passage and bounties to get started, but remember that you have to spend any Trials tokens you earn for wins with Saint-14 before the weekly reset on Tuesday, June 22. These tokens expire at the end of the weekend you earned them, so get your rewards while you can.
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The weekend has arrived in Destiny 2, so it’s time for Xur to return to the solar system with another crop of Exotic weapons and armor for players to add to their collections. The Iron Banner kicks off again on June 29, so this is another great time to grab new items that can help you get an edge.
Xur returns to the solar system every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET each Friday. The thing is, where he’ll land isn’t known until he actually arrives. Xur can hang out at one of several locations, including in the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ. Xur’s inventory also changes each week, so it’s worth revisiting him on the weekends for new weapons and rolls on Exotic armor. You can visit him any time between his arrival Friday and the weekly reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET the following Tuesday when Xur departs the solar system.
We’ll update this post as soon as Xur arrives with a full rundown of where you can find him and what he’s offering.
Each week, Xur offers one Exotic weapon and three pieces of Exotic armor: one for each character class. The inventory is random, as are the stat rolls you can expect on each of his armor offerings, so if you’re looking to fill out your collection or if you’re hoping for better versions of Exotics you already have, it’s worth visiting him. Xur also brings an Exotic Engram, which is guaranteed to drop something you don’t already have, if there are Exotics missing from your collection on that particular character–but that doesn’t include Exotics you have to earn through activities, including the new Exotic armors added each season, which can only be claimed from Legendary or Master Lost Sectors.
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Finally, F9: The Fast Saga is in theaters, so make sure to check out GameSpot’s review of the film. It may be over a year late thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Fast 9–the latest film in the Fast and Furious franchise–has finally seen the light of day, reuniting fans with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family. And while the film was stuffed with all kinds of intense action, plot twists, and surprises, we need to talk about that ending.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for F9. If you haven’t gone to see the movie yet, stop reading now. If you’re fine with finding out what happens at the end of the film, carry on.
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First thing’s first, yes there is a mid-credits scene in Fast 9. So don’t bolt out of your seat the moment the movie ends. Besides, you should stick around for the credits anyway. A lot of people worked hard to make this movie a reality and you should give them the attention they deserve.
As for the ending, the final moments of the film set the course for what to expect in the next two films–and those movies are supposedly going to be the final entries in the main series.
Jakob Toretto
Firstly, after being the antagonist throughout the film, Jakob sides with his family and helps them stop Cipher (Charlize Theron) and Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) from gaining control of technology that can hack into any weapons system in the world. Granted, Jakob abandoning his evil cause to help out his brother isn’t a moment that’s entirely earned. It’s pretty obvious that he probably would have remained a bad guy had Cipher and Otto not turned on him, but there’s no way this movie was going to end with a Toretto being a villain.
After the day is saved and Cipher escapes to presumably plot her revenge, Dom and Mia (Jordana Brewster) let their brother escape. Chances are that means we’ll see him again in the next movie. Sure, Jakob may be a terrorist who attempted to overthrow the world’s governments, but Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) wasn’t the nicest guy either and now he’s one of the family.
Deckard Shaw
Speaking of Deckard Shaw, he pops up in a mid-credits scene in the film. Technically we last saw him in Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, the spin-off he starred in alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Deckard has some unfinished business in the main series, though. While he may have buried the hatchet with Dom in Fate of the Furious, prior to that we all knew him as the guy who killed Han.
However, now we know Han isn’t dead; he was just in hiding. After Shaw attempted to kill him, Han was enlisted by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). Still, Han has plenty to be mad at Shaw about, given that he tried to blow him up–and now he’s come calling.
In the mid-credits scene, Shaw is working over a punching bag (which we learn has someone he doesn’t like stuffed inside, taking a beating). When there’s a knock at his door, he opens it to find himself face-to-face with Han.
Clearly, we’re going to see those two hash out their differences in the next film, be it with words or fists. That is, of course, unless Shaw already knew Han was alive. After all, Deckard is no stranger to Mr. Nobody. It could easily be revealed that he was working with Nobody to help make Han disappear. That would be a pretty massive retcon, but hey, we are talking about the Fast and Furious series here.. Alternatively, they could just have the two characters punch each other a bunch until they’re best friends. Then, they could find a way to bring Giselle (Gal Gadot) back.
You can go home again
As the movie comes to a close, the family returns to Los Angeles for what feels like the first time since Furious 7. We see the Toretto house being rebuilt, with a BBQ happening in the backyard. It’s a sweet moment that harkens back to the original film and includes a moment that could very well bring some fans to tears.
While sitting down to say grace before their meal, Dom mentions that they’re still waiting on one person to arrive for the meal. As the camera pulls out, we see Brian’s car arrive, quickly pulling into the driveway.
Brian was, of course, played by the late Paul Walker. The actor died before the release of Furious 7, and his character was sidelined in Fate of the Furious, alongside his wife Mia. This last moment is a touching tribute to the character, as well as the actor. While we won’t see Brian again in the movies, it’s good to see the spirit of the character kept alive in these little ways.
F9: The Fast Saga is in theaters now.
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The full trailer for Halloween Kills is here. The latest movie in the long-running horror series hits theaters on October 15.
Halloween Kills picks up minutes after the end of 2018’s reboot/sequel. Laurie Strode, her daughter Karen, and granddaughter Allyson have escaped from Michael Myers and seemingly burned him alive in Laurie’s house. But of course, he escapes, and sets out on another night of gory mayhem. But this time the Strodes have no intention of running away, and so three generations of women set about trying to stop Michael for the last time. The trailer delivers plenty of bloody action and it looks like an intense follow-up to the 2018 hit. Check it out below:
Halloween Kills stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie, Judy Greer as Karen, and Andi Matichak as Allyson, with Michael played by both James Jude Courtney and original actor Nick Castle. The cast also features several other cast members who will be familiar to long-time fans of the series. Nancy Stephens appears as Marion Chambers, a role she played in 1981’s Halloween 2 and again in 1998’s Halloween H20, Charles Cyphers will reprise his role as Leigh Brackett, the Sheriff from the original 1978 film, and Kyle Richards returns as Lindsey Wallace, one of the kids that Laurie is babysitting in the original.
The movie is directed by David Gordon Green, who also helmed the 2018 film, with a script by Green, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems. It’s also got a score by John Carpenter, who directed the original Halloween and wrote the series’s iconic theme. Halloween Kills was originally set for release in October last year, but was delayed due to the pandemic.
There’s another Halloween movie on the way too. Halloween Ends will also be directed by Green, and that’s currently set to arrive on October 14, 2022. The initial plan was to make the movie back-to-back with Halloween Kills, but it will now shoot separately. For more, check out GameSpot’s guide to the biggest upcoming horror movies of 2021.
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings trailer #2 spoiler follows:
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Marvel’s latest trailer for September 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has revealed a brief glimpse at the return of an original MCU Phase 1 villain who’s been benched since 2008.
Abomination (or Emil Blonsky, portrayed by Tim Roth in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk) hasn’t been spotted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the second film in the Infinity Saga, but he’s appeared in a brief tease in the final moments of the newest trailer, which arrived today.
It’s the first new look at the powerful villain in well over a decade, although Abomination was discussed during the 2011 Marvel One-Shot ‘The Consultant’ and mentioned in passing during a 2014 episode of the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Arriving in cinemas on September 2 in Australia and September 3 in North America and the UK, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be the second feature film in Marvel’s Phase 4 following Black Widow (which arrives next month).
