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If you’re thinking about jumping into the PC gaming scene for the first time or looking to replace a creaky display that’s starting to show its age, there are several decisions you’ll have to make before you even start your search for a new gaming monitor. One consideration involves curved vs. flat monitors–for PC gamers looking to up their immersion, curved monitors are an increasingly popular option, both in standard 16:9 resolution and in their ultrawide format. But which display, curved or flat, is better for gaming, and what are the key differences? The answer, of course, depends on your gaming habits, your budget, and a number of other factors, but here we’ve broken down the key things to keep in mind about curved and flat gaming monitors to help you determine which display best suits your lifestyle.

Benefits of a curved gaming monitor

Pros

• Added immersion for supported games
• Ultrawide screen is great for having multiple open tabs
• Supports high resolutions
• Improved picture quality
• Reduces eye strain
• Improved color consistency

Cons

• The wider the monitor, the heavier it is
• More demand on graphics card
• Takes up a lot of desk real estate
• Curved shape can make it difficult to assess visual work

If you haven’t used a curved monitor before, you may be wondering what advantages this kind of display has over the traditional flat-screen monitor. The most basic answer is that curved monitors are designed to extend the image in an arc around your field of vision so that you view the edges of the screen with your peripheral vision, instead of viewing it as a flat image. As a result, curved monitors are primarily beneficial for their heightened immersion–the image (or what’s happening in your game) surrounds you instead of just being in front of you.

For those seeking better productivity, curved ultrawide monitors can be great for multitasking or working on a project that requires you to have multiple tabs open at once. Some studies even suggest that curved monitors may also reduce eye strain, which can help decrease fatigue over long, competitive gaming sessions. The curved screen also ensures that each pixel is angled toward you, providing better color consistency than a similarly sized flat-screen display.

On the other hand, a larger curved monitor won’t natively display all of your PC games at the right resolution. In order to take advantage of the full display, a game will need to include support for ultrawide resolutions like 3440×1440 or 2560×1080, which can make supported games look great. However, curved monitors will add black bars to the side of the screen while playing unsupported games. And if you intend to use your PC for art or video editing, a curved monitor may make it difficult to tell if your lines or crops are straight. Alternatively, what looks good on an ultrawide monitor may look off on a standard display or phone screen.

Benefits of a flat gaming monitor

Pros

• Tends to be more lightweight
• Better for certain kinds of work
• Natively supports aspect ratios for the vast majority of games
• Generally cheaper
• Good for dual-monitor setups

Cons

• Loses the immersion of ultrawide displays
• Picture quality and color consistency worsen near the edges of the screen

While a flat monitor can’t provide the added immersion that a curved monitor does, it has the benefit of being able to display the vast majority of games without any tweaks–and for less money, as they’re generally smaller and cheaper. Most games are designed with a flat monitor’s 16:9 aspect ratio in mind, so they will look great out of the box with a wide variety of resolutions. Additionally, if you plan to use your PC for creative work–such as digital art or video editing–a flat monitor will give you a much better idea of what your typical audience will see when they interact with it. And if you plan to have more than one person view your monitor, whether you’re watching a movie or playing co-op, a flat screen works better.

Of course, if you want some of the benefits of an ultrawide curved monitor, you can shell out for a second screen and accomplish a similar effect with a dual-monitor setup. However, using one flat-screen monitor won’t get you the same immersion as a curved screen. Whereas a curved display hugs your peripheral vision and provides a more consistent image and color quality, these aspects get slightly worse toward the edges on a flat-screen display.

Curved vs. flat monitors: How they compare

Though one isn’t inherently better than the other, there are a few key aspects that affect your overall gaming experience with a curved or flat monitor. Here’s a closer look at how they compare:

Size and weight

Curved monitors are usually significantly wider than flat-screen monitors, and, as mentioned above, this is designed to heighten immersion–the screen needs to be wide in order to encompass the player’s peripheral vision. Compared to a flat monitor, the curved edges also make it easier to see the whole screen at once while sitting close to your monitor.

Flat screens tend to range in width from 23 to 27 inches (though you can still find plenty ranging from 32 to 43 inches and even bigger). At 27 inches, the Acer Nitro XV272U is a fairly average size for a flat-screen monitor. Curved monitors, on the other hand, typically begin at 27 inches and stretch out from there. Samsung’s CHG9 Series ultrawide, for example, is staggering at 49 inches wide–over four feet.

With added width comes added weight, of course–that Samsung display weighs in at 33.1 pounds. The LG 34WN80C-B, a more typical ultrawide monitor that measures 34 inches wide, is still quite heavy at 23.3 pounds. Though obviously smaller, the 27-inch Acer is significantly lighter, at 10.82 pounds. So if you plan to mount an ultrawide monitor, it goes without saying that you will need a sturdier wall mount than you would for a smaller display. If you don’t plan to mount it, you’ll need to make room on your gaming desk and, depending on how wide the screen is, potentially to the left and right of your battle station as well. As you make a decision about whether a curved or flat monitor is right for you, make sure you look into the quality of their stands. With an ultrawide monitor, the last thing you want is a wobbly stand.

Color quality

The quality and quantity of colors that flat-screen and curved monitors can display vary with each individual monitor. An increasing number of gaming monitors support HDR, allowing for high-quality luminosity with bright whites and dark blacks. It is worth noting, though, that a curved monitor’s screen can provide better color consistency because every pixel is, ideally, angled toward you. On a flat screen, colors can appear slightly off the further they get away from you and the more extreme the angle from which you’re viewing them.

Hardware

As the width of the monitor increases, the number of pixels on the display increases as well. So in order to run games on an ultrawide monitor at high frame rates, you will need a graphics card that can handle the additional output. If you can find one, any of Nvidia’s 3000 series of graphics cards should be up to the challenge.

Refresh rates

Regardless of whether you go with a curved or flat monitor, refresh rates obviously vary widely, from the standard 60Hz of budget monitors up to 144Hz, 240Hz, and even higher if you aim to play competitively. Because of the size of curved monitors, however–at least if you’re wanting the full experience–you’ll likely end up paying more for a higher refresh rate curved monitor than you would for a flat-screen one.

Final thoughts on curved vs. flat monitors

When it comes to picking the best gaming monitor for you, your mileage may vary depending on which games you play and what you use your monitor for outside of gaming. Flat-screen monitors are reliably useful for a variety of tasks, including video editing and digital art, but curved monitors provide some extra oomph for the games that can make good use of their added pixels. These ultrawide displays can be great for work and play, but it’s up to each buyer to decide if they need the added width and consider the weight and real estate that goes along with it. If you really care about maxing out your visuals, for your own personal enjoyment or for that extra competitive edge, an ultrawide monitor might be the way to go. That said, you should also be prepared to pay more for a good-quality curved monitor than the average flat screen.

If you plan to play games locally or watch movies on it with friends, a flat screen is a better way to go as all participants will be able to see the whole screen. And because flat screens tend to be cheaper, you may want to consider opting for an angled dual-monitor display that achieves a very similar effect to a curved ultrawide, though the angle will be much sharper. Both setups can be great for competitive online gaming, but a curved monitor may make it easier to notice details that you might otherwise miss on the edges of a flat screen. That said, it can take slightly longer to move your cursor across an ultrawide screen, slowing response time.

Productivity is a bit of a wash. The added width of a curved monitor is great for viewing multiple full-sized tabs at once, which can be great if you’re doing research or working in a spreadsheet. But if your work is visual in nature, the curvature of the screen may be unhelpful as you attempt to assess your work.

Curved and flat monitors to consider

For the PC gamer who’s willing to spend for max performance, we recommend the Asus Rog Swift PG35VQ. This 31.5-inch curved ultrawide monitor boasts a 200Hz refresh rate, HDR, a fully adjustable stand, and native support for G-Sync. It’s ideal for anyone serious about competitive performance who doesn’t need to worry about price.

If you’re interested in a curved monitor but price is an object, we recommend the Acer ED323QUR Abidpx. With a manageable price tag, this competitive display still boasts a 144Hz refresh rate and includes support for both HDMI and DisplayPort. With native support for FreeSync, this monitor was designed with AMD graphics cards in mind.

However, if you want to forego the curved screen, the Razer Raptor 27 Gaming Monitor is a great option at a mid-to-high price range. This G-Sync-enabled display features a 144Hz refresh rate, a sturdy aluminum base, and HDR support. See our full Razer Raptor 27 review for more of our thoughts on Razer’s debut gaming monitor.

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For more solid options that won’t break the bank, see our picks for the best cheap gaming monitors, and for console gamers, the best monitors for PS5 and Xbox Series X. For more on what to look for in a new gaming monitor, check out our guide to monitor technologies in 2021, from G-Sync and FreeSync to HDR in monitors, refresh rates and response times, DisplayPort vs. HDMI, and more.

Sub-Zero Joe Taslim has spoken about the physical nature of working on the Mortal Kombat movie, including his sweat-inducing costume and getting hit in the face. Taslim also shared that he’s signed on for four additional sequels, but it remains to be seen if they’ll be made.

Speaking to Variety, Taslim said what makes a great fight scene is the possibility that you, as an actor, might actually get whacked in the face.

“Sometimes you get hit in the face or you hit someone in the face, but for me that’s the fun of it. I know it’s probably weird, but to create a beautiful work, sometimes it has to happen,” he said. “The last thing you want to do it hurt your co-actor, but sometimes it happens. It’s beautiful because it was intentional. Both of you want to make a great fight scene. … It’s beautiful and it’s dangerous.”

One of the biggest hurdles for Taslim during the process of filming Mortal Kombat was wearing the Sub-Zero suit. He said it weighed about 33 pounds.

“It looks so dope, an amazing design and then I tried to walk,” he said. “I couldn’t walk. It was so heavy. I was like, ‘How am I going to fight in this costume?'”

Taslim wore a lighter suit during Mortal Kombat’s stunts, but he still remarked that he lost five pounds during the shoot. “At the end of the day, you take it off and your body is just flooded [with sweat],” he said. “I walked around like a grandpa every day.”

Regarding the Mortal Kombat sequels, Taslim is apparently signed on four the option of making four additional sequels, though whether or not they come to be remains to be seen.

Mortal Kombat releases on HBO Max and in theaters on April 23. It’s already available in international markets. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more, including our full review. For now, you can watch the first seven minutes of the movie in the video above.

The serial-killer dramedy Dexter has a brand-new teaser for its upcoming revival sometime on Showtime in 2021. Of course, it picks up right where the series left off, with the titular character enjoying life as a lumberjack.

When Showtime’s Dexter came to an end back in 2013, some fans were left deeply unsatisfied with the series finale. Now, however, they’re being given a second chance–Showtime is releasing a 10-part revival series to finally close out the story for good and hopefully, in a way that doesn’t feel quite as counter to the show’s otherwise beloved legacy. The project is already underway and the network has begun teasing it on social media. Check out the first promo teaser below.

Obviously, it’s not much to work with. The tweet reads “nature is calling,” and we see a brief video of an ax buried in a tree stump. It’s a clear double entendre, nodding to the series finale which saw Dexter faking his death to become a lumberjack. Nature, in this case, is Dexter’s “dark passenger” that compels him to kill–apparently turning his back on his real identity isn’t working out so great.

Details about the revival remain relatively sparse. Michael C. Hall will be returning to the titular role and has commented that the 10-episode series will pick up several years after the events of the finale. Currently Hall is the only member of the original cast confirmed to be making a return. Actor Clancy Brown will be playing the show’s antagonist. Paralympian actor Katy Sullivan is among the most recent additions to the cast.

The Dexter revival currently has no set release date, but is expected to premiere sometime in fall of this year.

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I’m a little surprised by just how cinematic Last Stop is. Developer Variable State wrestles the camera away from the player to frame every scene in different ways. Much like Silent Hill or The Medium, this is sometimes utilized to achieve a disturbing voyeuristic effect, but as Last Stop is a supernatural adventure game and not horror, the camera is used to convey more feelings beyond fear or dread.

It’s a totally different vibe from Variable State’s debut game, 2016’s Virginia. Virginia is portrayed in first-person, and gives the player control of the camera to observe and focus on the finer subtleties of its ambiguous plot. That, coupled with the lack of any spoken dialogue, allows Virginia to also be fairly open to interpretation–just Google “Virginia game ending” and you’ll find plenty of different theories of what players think that game’s story is about.

“It was really interesting for us, because to us, there’s a version of Virginia on the page, and our development documentation was very specific,” Variable State co-founder Jonathan Burroughs told me, following a showcase of Last Stop. “So it’s not that I never want to share that with people–I love it, I’m down with these many interpretations.”

Last Stop writer and composer Lyndon Holland added that there shouldn’t be as open an interpretation when it comes to this game. “Hopefully there’ll be stuff to read into and interpret when it comes to the motivations of the characters,” Holland said. “But I think it will be less polarizing. It should be. There shouldn’t be any confusion about what’s happening.”

Which certainly seems true: Last Stop feels a lot more strict in what it wants to deliver to the player. Almost every shot is carefully framed in a specific way, and the player has no control over it. In this way, Variable State can guide the player to specific places via the camera or convey certais emotions via specific angles.

For example, one scene sees you stealthily approaching a hole in a fence to sneak through. The camera is positioned just on the other side of the hole, severely limiting your view. You can’t see anything if you wander to the left or right, implying that you should walk forward towards the camera and the hole. But the framing also invokes a sense of dread–with so much of your surroundings blocked off, you have so little agency but to walk forwards to the camera. It feels like some unknown force is guiding your hand and slowly pulling you into a trap, or that someone is secretly spying on you.

Last Stop’s story also seems to be a lot more straightforward than Virginia’s thanks to it having spoken dialogue. “Just by the nature of [Last Stop] having dialogue makes it obviously much less open to interpretation,” Holland said. “Characters are more specific with what their intentions are.”

So far, I like it. I enjoy how intentional Variable State is with the stories of Last Stop’s three protagonists because it allows me to understand exactly what’s going on in the three separate storylines. That, in turn, makes it easier to craft theories as to how they will all connect.

“The stories do converge and the characters do meet at the end of the story,” Variable State co-founder Terry Kenny said. “If the characters didn’t meet, I think it would be unsatisfying. One of the more interesting things we got plenty of feedback on was in regards to the mystery of Last Stop in it of itself: How do these three characters meet, how are they going to end up connecting? So that’s part of the story.”

John, a single dad, is stuck in a Freaky Friday situation where he’s somehow switched bodies with his young bachelor neighbor. Meena, a ruthless businesswoman seeking a promotion, discovers a supernatural secret in the basement of the company she works for. And Donna, a high schooler, stumbles into trouble after she and her friends accidentally kidnap a man they believe to have superpowers. I can’t yet see how any of those three storylines connect, but I do have theories–ones I doubt I would have if this early preview for Last Stop’s story wasn’t delivered as straightforward as it is. Though, there seems to be a lot of set up for twists and turns from what I saw in the opening for each character’s plots.

As the interview was wrapping up, I asked the team how they had arrived at a game like Last Stop, as it seems to be such a departure from Virginia in terms of structure. As it happens, Last Stop did initially look a lot more like Virginia, but then Variable State fell in love with the idea of moving to a third-person perspective and that adjusted the idea of what the game could be.

“[Last Stop] is an accumulation of just five years of decision-making,” Burroughs said. “Actually, if you were to see the original pitch for Last Stop, it is much more explicitly a spiritual successor to Virginia. But the ambition was always there to move from first-person to third-person. We were excited about this idea of jump cuts in Virginia, asking, ‘Could we do something with interactive cinematography? Like with how the frame is composed in a film or how the camera moves in a movie?'”

He continued: “And then we got really excited about the idea of doing something with dialogue. And so Virginia, plus third-person, plus dialogue, that’s where we started. And then a variety of decisions and conversations and changes over these past five years. And very early on, the most profound idea of being able to relocate. As pitched, [Last Stop] was set in the United States, but we relocated it to London. And then from there, that opened up a lot of opportunities and presented a lot of problem-solving that led to Last Stop as it is now.”

Virginia ended up being a little too open-ended for interpretation in its storytelling for me, so I’m excited to see how Variable State handles the opposite of the spectrum with Last Stop, utilizing a more cinematic camera and including dialogue to help the player better follow the plot. Last Stop is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC in July.

The Simpsons character Julio has been recast. The character is a gay Cuban man and was previously voiced by Hank Azaria. Julio will now be played by gay Cuban-American actor Tony Rodriguez.

As reported by Pride, Julio is the latest Simpsons character to be revoiced by a more representative actor. Rodriguez made his Simpsons debut last month in an episode of the current 32nd season titled “Uncut Femmes.”

The recasting of Julio was commented on by Simpsons producer Matt Selman on Twitter. Selman made reference to the supercut video “Every LGBT Joke On the Simpsons Ever,” which runs for 2 hours 20 minutes and was put together by Gayest Episode Ever podcast, on which Rodriguez has previously appeared. Selman stated that seeing the video “definitely had a hand in this magic coming together.”

The recasting of Julio follows last year’s decision by Simpsons producers to no longer use white actors for non-white characters. Azaria has stepped down from the role of Apu, which is yet to be recast, while Kevin Michael Richardson has replaced Harry Shearer as Dr Hibbert.

Earlier this month, Azaria stated that he wanted to apologize to “every single Indian person” for his portrayal of Apu. The actor appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast and admitted that he “really didn’t know any better before.”

In March, it was announced that The Simpsons had been renewed for Seasons 33 and 34. The show is the longest-running primetime scripted show in the history of TV, and the next two seasons will bring the total number of episodes to 757.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Although Netflix has still yet to announce when Stranger Things will come back for Season 4, actor Finn Wolfhard (It, The Addams Family) said in a recent video call with a fan that it “should be out sometime next year, hopefully.” While 2022 is obviously quite a ways away, that’s at least a more solid date than we last heard in March, when actor Gaten Matarazzo (The Blacklist, Drop the Mic) said in an interview that he couldn’t even guess when the next season would be done.

“There’s very few dates that are reliable,” Matarazzo said. “[Due to the pandemic] we still don’t know day-to-day if we’re gonna be filming next week.” Matarazzo further explained that because of how staggered and unpredictable shoots have become, “there’s really no way to figure out when we’re gonna be wrapping.”

To date, the gap between Season 3 and the upcoming Season 4 is the longest in the show’s run. Season 1 was released in 2016, with Season 2 following the next year in 2017. While COVID-19 and the resulting quarantine was obviously a factor in the delay, which both only further warps everyone’s sense of time, it might shock readers to learn Season 3 came out in 2019.

Fortunately, the Netflix series has benefited from all these delays by being able to cook more fully. Director Shawn Levy recently confirmed that “the quality of these screenplays are exceptional, maybe better than ever.” Matarazzo notes that the Duffer Brothers’s directing has also been thrilling: “They’ve been able to relish in directing in their day-to-day… it takes up their entire minds when they’re making this.” With the writing apparently now out of the way, when the cameras are rolling, Matarazzo says the Duffer Brothers can “focus on how they’re going to deliver. And I think it shows.”

In the meantime, Netflix has plenty of exciting new content dropping next month in May, including the much-awaited return of the Aziz Ansari dramedy Master of None.

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