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Comedian and actor Amy Schumer has set a new unscripted series at HBO Max, according to a release. Spanning eight half-hour episodes, Amy Learns To… sees Schumer “step out of her comfort zone and into someone else’s.” This is the comedian’s second unscripted series for HBO, after the 2020 docuseries Expecting Amy, which chronicled her pregnancy journey.

As a synopsis, that’s still admittedly pretty vague–all that’s known is that the show promises to have Schumer “learn a new skill, craft, or trade from a local expert in her husband’s hometown of Martha’s Vineyard.” This show extends a brand Schumer has been building for herself since the start of the pandemic, when she pivoted on the Food Network to with the aptly titled Amy Schumer Learns to Cook, in which she similarly pushed herself to be a fish out of water and tried to learn the culinary arts from her husband, Chris Fischer, who is a farmer and chef.

“We are thrilled to be working with Amy again,” said Jennifer O’Connell, executive vice president of non-fiction and live-action family programming for HBO Max. “She is sure to surprise and amaze us with her willingness to push boundaries and try something new, always with a hilarious spin.”

Schumer added that she is “pumped” to “dive for clams, sell real estate, perform a magic trick, or (sort of) repair a roof.” No release date for the upcoming series has yet been announced.

343 Industries doesn’t want players to feel like they have to “grind it like it’s a job” to complete Halo Infinite’s seasons and battle passes. In the latest Inside Infinite, developers from 343 Industries discussed some of the multiplayer content revealed over the past few weeks.

In the blog post, live team design director Ryan Paradis and lead progression designer Christopher Blohm discussed how Halo Infinite will be handling regular content updates. They said that Halo Infinite’s seasons will last for roughly three months because it regularly gives players new content to enjoy without there being constant changes.

In addition to that Blohm said, “We want players to have cool content, activities, events, and rewards over the course of the season, but we do not want to demand that players play a ton of hours every week of the season to complete everything. We want players having fun in Halo, not grind it like it’s a job.”

Another key component to avoiding Halo Infinite from feeling like a grind is that battle passes will never expire. Even after the first season ends, players will be able to purchase and level up the season one battle pass.

“We looked at other titles, where you buy something that provides time-limited access to the pass, and now you feel obligated to play… That’s not fun, and it’s not player-first,” Paradis said. “If you put the trust in us, and purchase something from us, it’s yours. No strings attached.”

Throughout each season there will be events–much shorter experiences with new rewards for players to earn. These events will come with special reward tracks, which Blohm said will be free. The samurai-inspired armor shown during the multiplayer reveal trailer is part of a Fracture event, which are specially-themed events with customizations outside the regular Halo canon. Blohm said that the regular battle passes and “other main vectors” will provide canonical customizations.

They also said that gear can be acquired in a number of ways outside of the paid and free tiers of the battle pass. Gear can be earned from challenges, skill rewards, event reward tracks, legacy rewards, and campaign rewards.

Halo Infinite launches Holiday 2021 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The multiplayer will be free-to-play and the campaign will launch the same day on Xbox Game Pass. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that he is confident Halo Infinite will hit that release window and that it has been narrowed down to just a few weeks.

The genre of “Action-RPG” is a big umbrella that covers everything from soulslikes to first-person stealth-action games like Deus Ex to isometric RPGs like Diablo, and many more. But even within that wide spectrum, there’s nothing quite like Scarlet Nexus – a game that combines inspirations from fast-paced character-action games of the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta school with epic JRPGs the likes of the Persona and “Tales of” series. It’s a surprisingly ambitious undertaking, and perhaps even more surprising is that Scarlet Nexus hits far more often than it misses.

So when I say that Scarlet Nexus is an action RPG, calling it that doesn’t really paint the full picture of what it’s about. Its moment-to-moment gameplay is a straight-up action game, through and through, like something you’d expect out of Platinum Games – its completely linear levels are structured so that you’re basically just moving from one closed-off battle to another while combat is fast, flashy, and reflex-driven.

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But the key difference between this and Platinum’s style is that Scarlet Nexus is just as focused on its story, worldbuilding, and character development as it is on combat; perhaps even more so in some regards. First off, it’s split up into two separate 20-hour campaigns that each follow the story of one of the two main characters: Yuito and Kasane. While their journeys do overlap from time to time these are, for all intents and purposes, two distinct and equally essential campaigns that you can play in either order, and completing them both is required to get a full understanding of Scarlet Nexus’s story.

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And it’s a story worth experiencing – one which takes place in a fascinating world where the vast majority of the population are gifted with powers of the mind. City streets are colored with augmented-reality advertisements, people are able to send messages directly to each others’ brains, and those with exceptional combat abilities are drafted into a Special Forces-like organization called the OSF (Others Suppression Force) to do battle against otherworldly monstrosities known as “Others.”

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Both Yuito and Kasane begin as newly minted members of the OSF and are placed onto two different platoons, each with their own squadmates and leaders; from that starting point, their journeys branch out in ways that have each character experiencing one side of a dense and complex plot full of conspiracies, ulterior motives, and surprising twists. Bandai Namco does an outstanding job of posing questions in one character’s playthrough and then answering them in the other by providing added context that better explains what led to certain events in ways that lead to some really satisfying pay-offs.

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While the overarching story is great, what really makes Scarlet Nexus special is the amount of care taken to develop its large supporting cast of eight characters who join Yuito and Kasane’s parties. After most big missions, you’re brought back to your hideout for a “stand-by phase” that gives you an opportunity to converse with your teammates, give them gifts (which they amusingly occasionally play with,) and trigger “bond episodes” that allow you to increase your bond level with each one. This is nothing super new to fans of the Mass Effect or Persona series, but what’s interesting about the way it’s handled here in Scarlet Nexus is that the bond episodes are very often tied to what’s happening in the main story, are entirely different depending on which campaign you’re playing, and are not always about improving a relationship. Sometimes the interactions in these bond episodes are outright hostile, but the important thing is that you always learn something about the character and why they act the way they do, or something that better explains the actions they just took in the main story.

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Even though most of the characters in Scarlet Nexus do fall into very tropey anime archetypes (the childhood friend/romantic interest, the snooty elitist brat, the shy and soft-spoken girl, and so on) these bond episodes do a wonderful job of developing them, to a point where they wind up becoming more than just their tropes. By the end, even the ones that I rolled my eyes at initially – like the aforementioned snooty elitist prick, Shiden – became characters that I grew to really care about. 

While these scenes are rewards unto themselves, increasing your bond with a party member will also improve their special powers and open up more opportunities for them to help you in battle. That’s a nice extra incentive that also ties into the idea that your relationships with these characters are growing stronger. 

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The story is also helped by wonderful performances in both English and Japanese, with the ability to choose whichever one strikes your fancy from the main menu. While it would’ve been nice to have more animated cutscenes as opposed to the static storyboard animatics, it’s an understandable compromise considering the sheer mountain of dialogue there is in Scarlet Nexus. 

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Psy-Kicking Some Ass

Scarlet Nexus’ biggest hurdle to overcome as a straight-up action game with a 40-hour, RPG-like story is making its combat engaging throughout that epic length. Remember, most character-action games only have to plan out around 10-12 hours’ worth of satisfying progression, so this is a rare thing to attempt. And while Scarlet Nexus does clear that hurdle, it definitely clips it on the way. 

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At a basic level, combat is a lot of fun. Both Yuito and Kasane have the Jedi-like power of psychokinesis which allows them to telekinetically grab objects and hurl them towards enemies, but they use different weapons, and that’s enough to give them their own unique flavor in a fight. Yuito uses a sword with faster attacks and a supporting skill set that makes him better suited for close-range combat, while Kasane uses a handful of knives that she controls telekinetically. She’s a bit slower but well suited for mid-range combat, and her supporting skill set makes her a little trickier to handle than Yuito, but equally enjoyable.

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What really makes Scarlet Nexus’s combat stand out is how the telekinetic moves flow with the weapon-based attacks. At any point of a weapon combo, you can press the right trigger to immediately hop back and throw an object, then follow that with a weapon attack that brings you right back into melee range. The result of the ease of transition between the two is a really exciting and smooth mix of long-range and close-range combat. And then there are the crazy environmental interactables that you can use, like grabbing a train with your mind and causing it to crash through a crowd of enemies, taking them all out in a single go.

On top of that, you’re able to borrow the abilities of your squadmates through the Struggle Arms System (SAS), which allows you to target key weaknesses of certain enemies or take advantage of specific status ailments, like when you use Hanabi’s pyrokinesis to ignite a group of enemies that have been doused with oil. When going up against tougher enemies, you really need to put it all together by mixing in regular attacks, psychokinetic attacks, and SAS abilities that target enemy weaknesses in order to succeed, which leads to some really satisfying fights that feel like you’re firing on all cylinders. 

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The one place that Scarlet Nexus feels like it slips up on the fundamentals of combat is that targeting isn’t the greatest. I sometimes found myself swinging at air despite feeling like my attack should’ve connected, but not often enough to become more than a little frustrating.

A bigger issue is that while the combat itself is highly dynamic, with lots of different abilities and powers that can each be upgraded in meaningful ways that change how they’re used over the course of the campaign, the enemies that you fight are not. There’s just not enough variety among them to healthily sustain a game of this length, especially since so many of them are of the “lock and key” variety: once you figure out the right ability to use against them, every fight thereafter always plays out the same.

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I do wish there were more of them, but I have to at least shout out the fact that the visual design of the enemies we do have to battle against is fantastic. The Others are a fantastical mix of beauty and monstrosity, combining the organic and inorganic in wildly inventive ways that are always unsettling to look at. 

The result of the lack of mechanical variety is that by the end of Yuito’s campaign, which is punctuated by multiple hours of very similar fights against very similar enemies, I was pretty exhausted from Scarlet Nexus’ combat and was not looking forward to immediately fighting through another one of a similar length (speaking strictly from a combat perspective). Fortunately, beating one campaign allows you to carry over your progress to the other, much like a New Game+. Not having to start from zero allowed me to blast through Kasane’s combat encounters much faster and get to the story, which was what I was really interested in at that point.

Deja Vu

In contrast to the inventive enemy designs, Scarlet Nexus’ levels are very often visually drab – we see areas like a mostly empty construction yard, an abandoned subway, and a broken-down highway with nothing done to really make them feel distinct. They make up for it with some terrifically fun environmental interactables, like the aforementioned train in the underground subway, the crane in the construction yard, or the bus that you can ride along a highway, crashing through groups of Others as you go. However, once again, variety remains an issue for a game of this length. 

That’s exacerbated by the fact that you’re regularly expected to travel through the same exact parts of the same exact levels, fighting the same or very similarly placed enemies. Yuito and Kasane at least get to visit a few unique locations that the other doesn’t ever get to see, so there is some added variety between the two campaigns, but I still found myself walking through the same AR bands of yellow tape, cruising past the same group of Others, or working my way to the same rooftop far too often.

It’s been a little more than two years since the Game of Thrones finale on HBO, and it seems George R.R. Martin has had plenty of time for reflection.

In a new interview with Chicago’s PBS station, Martin admitted that that “looking back, I wish I’d stayed ahead of the books.” He talked about the large head start he had when Game of Thrones first aired in 2011, and reiterated that he never thought the show would move past the books.

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“When they began that series, I had four books already in print, and the fifth one came out just as the series was starting in 2011,” Martin said. “I had a five book head start. And these are gigantic books, as you know. I never thought they would catch up with me, but they did. They caught up with me and passed me, and, you know, that made it a little strange — because now, the show was ahead of me, and the show was going in somewhat different directions.”

The Game of Thrones series officially passed the books after “Mother’s Mercy” aired in 2015, and began charting its own course from there. The following season featured a notably quicker pace as the series sought to resolve many of the plot threads left hanging in the books. It culminated in a finale that fans and critics alike found rushed and disappointing.

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Two years later, Martin still hasn’t released the Winds of Winter, though he does say that it will end in a “somewhat different direction” from the HBO show. In a blog post reacting to the original finale, Martin wrote, “How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different? Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. I am working in a very different medium than David and Dan, never forget. They had six hours for this final season. I expect these last two books of mine will fill 3000 manuscript pages between them before I’m done… and if more pages and chapters and scenes are needed, I’ll add them.”

In the meantime, Martin is contributing to games like Elden Ring and generally living his best life. He says that he’s still working on the books and that he wrote “hundreds and hundreds of pages of The Winds of Winter” in 2020, but that he won’t give a timeline for completion. He’s also working with HBO on House of the Dragon, which is set to release in early 2022.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, and Goodwill North Central Texas certainly demonstrated that when an employee discovered an extremely rare video game in its inventory. The organization managed to sell the game on its website for more than $10,000, with the proceeds going toward free job placement and training for underprivileged individuals.

E-commerce item processor Alex Juarez explained in a video on GoodwillNCT’s YouTube channel (via Kotaku) that he and his father had watched videos on expensive old video games, and he immediately recognized the Atari 2600 game Air Raid when he was going through the inventory.

It became the highest-selling single-piece item the organization ever had after it was put online for auction. It ran for a week, and the final price was over $10,500. What’s funny is that when Juarez is showing off the box of Atari games he found Air Raid in, you can also see E.T., which was such an infamous failure that Atari ended up burying unsold copies in New Mexico. It would be more than 30 years before those were eventually dug up for the Atari: Game Over documentary.

$10,500 sounds like a whole lot of money, but it’s far from the biggest sum ever spent on a single video game. Back in April, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES managed to go for $660,000, becoming the most expensive video game ever by an enormous margin.

Nintendo has released a day one update for Mario Golf: Super Rush. The version 1.1.0 patch makes a number of adjustments to the newly released golf game, including adding new lessons to Golf Adventure mode and other tweaks.

As the patch notes on Nintendo’s support website detail, the 1.1.0 update has added lessons detailing spin use and strategies for wind direction to the single-player adventure mode, Golf Adventure. Nintendo says it has also “adjusted several scenes” in that mode and added new challenges focused on shots off tee, approaches, and putting.

Beyond that, the 1.1.0 update has also made some adjustments to various other aspects of the game. Nintendo says it has “adjusted the game balance around swing inputs” when using motion controls, and the company has added an option to enable or disable Rush Events. The results screen and general text placement have been tweaked as well. You can read the full patch notes below.

Super Rush is the latest entry in the long-running Mario Golf series, and it’s earn generally positive reviews from critics. GameSpot awarded it a 7/10 in our Mario Golf: Super Rush review. “With three radically different styles of play and some seriously inventive courses, Mario Golf: Super Rush is a compellingly original sports game. Speed Golf and Battle Golf actively make you adapt to wildly different conditions while balancing technique and speediness. The button swing system still feels great, though if you desire an accurate motion-controlled golf game, this isn’t it,” critic Steven Petite wrote.

There’s more content on the way to Mario Golf: Super Rush. During its E3 2021 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo confirmed it will be releasing a regular stream of free content updates for the game following its launch. The updates will include new playable characters and courses, such as New Donk City from Super Mario Odyssey.

Mario Golf: Super Rush Ver. 1.1.0 Patch Notes

• Battle Golf
  • Added “Enable/Disable” for Rush Events. Selecting “Enable” will cause Rush Events to occur at fixed times during play.
• Golf Adventure (Adventure Mode)
  • Added Challenges for Shots off tee, Approaches, and Putting. The new challenges can be accepted from the Fire Bros in each area’s practice area.
  • Added lessons that teach spin use, and strategies for wind direction. The new challenges can be accepted from the Hammer Bros in each area’s practice area.
  • Adjusted several scenes encountered during the Golf Adventure mode of the game.
• Motion Controls
  • “Practice Swing” now displays on the screen when trying out practice swings.
  • Adjusted the game balance around swing inputs.
• Online and Local Wireless Play
  • Names of online opponents will now display.
  • Connection errors occurring mid-game will now display.
• General Changes
  • Adjusted the display position of text and other information displayed during play.
  • Adjusted the results screen.
  • In addition, adjustments have been made to the game balance, and issues have been fixed to make the game experience more enjoyable.

His name is Nathan Fielder, and he graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades. The comedian who made a name for himself with Comedy Central’s Nathan For You has a new series that was just ordered by HBO called The Rehearsal.

Fielder is the only person cast for the upcoming half-hour show, according to Variety. The Rehearsal will feature Fielder guiding people’s lives: “In a world where nothing seems to ever work out as you had hoped, Nathan Fielder gives people the opportunity to rehearse for their own lives,” reads the official description.

Prior to this, Fielder’s Nathan For You ran for four seasons on Comedy Central. The series featured Fielder helping out struggling business with some out-of-the-box thinking. Once, he marketed an unappealing toy for children in a way that stated owning it would be the only way to prove you’re not a baby. He also attempted to help out cab drivers losing rides to Uber by planting sleeper cell drivers within Uber.

More recently, Fielder was the executive producer of the wildly entertaining How To With John Wilson, which aired on HBO Max late last year. The titular Wilson would give advice on topics like making small talk and cooking risotto–the latter was one of GameSpot’s favorite TV episodes of 2020.

As an actor, Fielder has appeared in numerous episodes of the sketch comedy series Kroll Show, HBO’s Tour de Pharmacy, and the movie The Disaster Artist. Fielder was also a writer on the Canadian sketch comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Fans who were anxiously awaiting the theatrical release of the Denis Villeneuve adaptation of Dune are unfortunately going to need to be a little more patient, as Variety is reporting that it has now been pushed back to October 22. Before this latest announcement, it was previously set for October 1.

Of course, the start of October was itself the date the movie landed on following its original hopeful release in 2020. But if the pandemic and its many world-shaking impacts in entertainment has taught audiences anything, it’s to not trust that these sorts of delays are set in stone. Dune alone had its release date pushed back multiple times last year, and while there have been a few cases where release dates were pushed up–it’s gonna be hard to predict what will happen with this sci-fi epic. For what it’s worth, Dune’s shuffling was part of an announcement relating to other titles also moving around.

Dune’s cast is stacked with big names like Timothee Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Jason Momoa, and Stellan Skarsgard. The movie commands a lot of hype–Villeneuve previously directed the acclaimed sci-fi films Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.

While expectations and hopes are high for this interpretation of the classic 1965 Frank Herbert novel, it has also been buffeted with its share of speed bumps aside from when it will simply come out. In December, when it was announced that Dune would premiere on streaming service HBO Max, both Villeneuve and Kyle MacLachlan (star of the 1984 David Lynch adaptation) condemned the decision. Surrounding this, there is a swirling skepticism from fans of the book that all its complexity can even be adapted to the screen. We all still have many more months to wait before any of us will know for sure.

Apple TV+ has finally dropped the first official trailer for Schmigadoon, an upcoming musical series starring Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong as a couple on the outs who suddenly find themselves in a magical town that looks like a musical from the 1940s, full of people singing. However, the couple is unable to leave until they find their true love. The six-episode comedy hits the streaming service on July 16.

In addition to Key and Strong, the trailer also showcases roles from Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Aaron Tveit, Dove Cameron, Ariana DeBose, Fred Armisen, Jaime Camil, Jane Krakowski, Ann Harada, and Martin Short. The show, full of original songs and a great over-the-top premise, will certainly pack the performers to execute it expertly. Check out the trailer below and see for yourself.

Co-created by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul (who together wrote the screenplays for the Despicable Me trilogy), who serves as showrunner and wrote all of the original songs, Schmigadoon is also executive produced and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black trilogy). Lorne Michaels is also a co-executive producer. In addition to starring, Strong also produces. Schmigadoon will air weekly starting July 16 through to August 13.

During the TCA winter press tour earlier this year, Key joked that the series has been “one of the greatest acting challenges of my career” as someone who loves musicals but whose character can barely tolerate them–and must remain perplexed by the townspeople around him who are constantly speaking.