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It’s an exciting prospect when one of your favorite games—in a series that typically doesn’t receive direct sequels—gets what’s more or less, well, a direct sequel. Mainline entries in Persona have a sort of definitive conclusion then get spinoffs or reissues, while a brand new storyline starts in the next full game (Persona 2 being an exception). Persona 5 Strikers, however, picks up where the original left off: The Phantom Thieves are back together to fight evil in the Metaverse as the cops keep a watchful eye on their moves. But now we have musou-style action RPG gameplay that’s explosive, frenetic, and at least in the early stages, pretty damn tough.

I’ve spent about five hours with Persona 5 Strikers, which encompasses the opening scenarios and the entire first palace (or dungeon), and it’s a blessing to be kicking ass as these characters again with all the lavish style you’d expect. With what seems to be a story with lower stakes and tiny slices of life simulation elements, it kind of feels like a Persona 5-lite in its narrative. The best way to put it is that Persona 5 Strikers is like the movie companion to your favorite anime.

Return Of The Metaverse And Humanity’s Companion

It’s summer vacation. Makoto and Haru have already started college, while everyone else is finishing up high school (except for Futaba, who broke out of her shell and started high school, props to her). Joker decides to return to Tokyo after a string of group texts, and everyone’s going to have a carefree and lovely time with their leader back in town. Except, that’s a lie.

Here’s the deal: A pop-star and fashion icon named Alice Hiiragi has exploded onto the scene and attained fame and fortune, and fans of hers are acting very obsessive. Turns out she’s using the Metaverse to control people’s desires and basically turn them into stans that devote their lives and bank accounts to support her. Joker and Ryuji were in the right place at the right time to uncover Alice’s sinister Wonderland palace, or jail, as it’s called in Strikers. So, of course, the rest of the gang isn’t going to let it slide either, and like that, the Phantom Thieves are back in business and have told their vacation HOLD UP.

Your new squadmate, Sophia, is a cutesy artificial intelligence that manifests as a human in the Metaverse and a phone app AI in the real world, calling herself “humanity’s companion.” The new evils you face in this game are a bit easier to take on with her assistance and as a playable character. To make things convenient, she’s also your shopkeeper and can order goods from the dark web with instant shipping. An older man named Zenkichi Hasegawa, meanwhile, is a detective tasked with tracking your activity, but there’s certainly more to him than he lets on since his motivations have been kept under wraps in the story thus far.

Whereas Persona 5 hit you with a gut-punch to usher you into its world, attitude to charm you with it, and social commentary to leave a lasting impression, Strikers takes it somewhat easy. And that’s fine, not everything needs to have a traumatic slap to the face to wake you up, get up, get out there. It’s just heartwarming to see everyone happy and together again. I mean, after all the hardships they endured in the original game, they deserve to live without something like the impending doom they faced in their pasts. But, little do they know they’d find themselves back in the Metaverse fighting shadows like they hadn’t missed a beat.

Victory Won’t Come Easy

And boy, does Persona 5 Strikers likes to remind you how stylish and expressive the Phantom Thieves are. Every character’s personality and combat sensibilities are part of how they function during fights. You get the satisfaction of directly controlling them and hitting unique attacks and combos that exhibit their individuality. I’m not going to lie, tearing through mobs using Makoto’s bike persona Johanna and slamming into the ground for high-damage, as well as charging up Ryuji’s bat swing to inflict electricity damage, has been one of the best feelings in the game.

The major shift in gameplay is really the star of the opening hours and the thing you’ll be eager to get more of. With Omega Force and Koei Tecmo as developers, this game takes the real-time action foundation of the Warriors games then layers on almost everything you remember from Persona 5’s combat system: elemental affinities, spell casting, buffs and status ailments, swapping personas, party composition, all-out attacks, Showtime attacks, guns and melee—and it just looks cool as hell.

It sounds great on paper, and it has mostly translated well in practice. The way this game incorporates Shin Megami Tensei and Persona combat mechanics means things can get messy. Juggling mechanics intended for turn-based combat can be a challenge when the going gets tough. Maybe it’s just the early hours and having to get used to a new, hyper-fast battle system, but fights against harder enemies got overwhelming.

You’ll have to swap between characters in order to use their abilities, manage their SP, constantly get a read on what spells powerful enemies are lining up in order to dodge them, get your combos in while keeping an eye on the party’s HP as you handle mobs that’ll surround you—all in a matter of seconds. It helps that pulling up your persona spells list stops time all together, also giving you breather to assess the situation, but you’re no longer a turn-based tactician in this game. And forget about button mashing your way through tougher fights, it won’t get you very far.

Some of these challenging fights in the opening palace are as wild as they are satisfying when it all comes together, especially when you come to grips with the ways each character works and pull off some slick moves in the process. Just don’t expect to breeze through it all at first.

Living And Exploring Under Less Pressure

While many of Persona 5’s original stylings and structures make up large parts of Strikers, it’s not exactly a one-to-one translation. In this opening chapter, you’re in familiar places in Tokyo, and it’s apparent that you’re not here to grow relationships with Confidants, worry about school, take on jobs, or work on your social skills. Later in the game, you’ll visit different cities across Japan, though I suspect they’ll feel more like hub areas to roam around to push plot points forward, have a few quick conversations with the squad, or stock up on supplies before jumping back into dungeon crawling.

A calendar marks the events of the story but there is no countdown for when you absolutely need to finish a dungeon, or any need to stress about planning how to fit as many meaningful activities into your days. Rather, it’s simply a narrative framing device instead of something to manage. This also means that there are no consequences for leaving a dungeon in order to replenish HP and SP and stock up on items, since time won’t pass and you’re not under a deadline.

To be clear, it can still be quite the challenge to make it to new checkpoints to progress within a dungeon, since the focus shifts to overcoming some difficult battles in between. That’s enough to encourage you to swap party members and get the most out of each character. The fact that this cast is more than just Joker really comes through in Strikers, too.

As you explore dungeons similar to how you would in Persona 5—jumping between cover points, ambushing shadows for the advantage in battles, and solving light puzzles—you can control anyone. It’s a small thing, but it lets you choose who takes charge of pulling off a shadows mask and darting across rooftops in the Metaverse. So, I’m thankful that Makoto can be the star in my Strikers playthrough.

Only Getting Started

Since this is pitched as a game for fans and newcomers alike, it does that thing where it needs to remind you of each character’s quirks and traits in rather tropey ways. Like, yes, we know Yusuke sees art in everything around him, and that Ryuji isn’t the smartest person in the world (but he has heart so relax on roasting my guy for not knowing things). While I’m not expecting the emotional payoffs I experienced in the original game, I am happy that there’s more to do with this band of knuckleheads I know so well.

Technically, you can call Persona 5 Strikers a sequel, but in the same way spinoff or complementary movies of an anime series work, the game seems to be more of a celebration of getting the gang back together to do the cool things you remember them doing. There are some new faces and a new plot to unveil, and that’s as exciting as trying to wrap my head around this new combat system to the tune of remixes and all-new songs that hype me up for the toughest fights–and while there’s no “Life Will Change” here, the new adrenaline-inducing song “Daredevil” is a damn fine theme to get you pumped to take hearts yet again.

It’s quite ambitious as a continuation of a beloved RPG, and while it’s not built as a 100+ hour experience, there is a lot to dig into as we’re just getting started. Persona 5 Strikers launches on February 23—and four days early for special edition owners—for PS4 (with PS5 compatibility), Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam, and we’ll have plenty of coverage in the lead-up to its release.

The news this week about Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV show has seemingly led to an uptick in Lord of the Rings discussion everywhere, and people are now discovering a metal band called Gimli, Son of Gloin.

This is not your average metal band. The group, from Southampton UK, only uses Gimli samples from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings series for vocals like, “‘Cause he’s got my axe embedded in his nervous system!” and, “We dwarves are natural sprinters!”

These lines, and many more, play on top of some crushing and heavy metal guitar riffs and drum beats. You can listen to the group’s new album, At Last; Durin’s Mightiest Son Returns To The Field Of Battle With Axe In Hand And Glory In His Heart!, here on Bandcamp.

Released in December 2020, it’s the band’s second album. “If you liked Gimli, Son of Gloin’s first foray into the art of the riff, you’re in for a great time. If you didn’t, you hate fun and you’ll hate this,” the band said of its sophomore release. “As ever, we strongly recommend listening to with with tongue firmly in cheek.”

Some of the track titles for the second album are truly fantastic, including, “My Body Is Ill​-​Suited For This Pursuit Across The Plains Of The Horselords,” “Death Cannot Come Twice To The Orc Lying Impaled Beneath Mine Blade,” and my personal favorite, “These Accursed Garments Refuse To Accommodate The Mighty Strength Of My Dwarven Form.”

The band says its samples of John Rhys-Davies from the Lord of the Rings movies are covered through fair use parody.

Manufacturers have been able to cram more impressive hardware into gaming laptops over the years, and MSI’s latest devicelatest device–revealed at CES 2021–continues that trend. Having shaved more micro-inches off of its chassis, the Stealth 15M is the world’s thinnest portable gaming PC with a 15-inch screen.

With a height of 0.63 inches high when closed, the MSI Stealth 15M is slightly slimmer than similar products on the market such as the Razer Blade 15 laptop, the Lenovo Legion 7 Slim, or Alienware’s M15.

Ultra-thin gaming laptops usually require some serious concessions in order to be shrunk down to that size, but the Stealth 15M still packs some impressive hardware inside of its aluminum frame. The recently-revealed Intel H35 Tiger Lake CPU Core i7-11375 CPU, 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and an RTX 3060 laptop GPU are all part of the package, which also includes a 1920×1080 IPS display that has a refresh rate of 144Hz.

For input options, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port, a normal USB-C port, two USB-A ports, and an HDMI output in case you want to play your games on a television screen.

Pricing starts at $1399, with the MSI Stealth 15M being available in either Carbon Grey or Pure White color schemes.

As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to grow and evolve, it gets harder and harder to find direct correlations between the shows and movies, and the comics that inspire them–and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the strongest and most interesting things the MCU has brought to the table over the last decade is its twists on comic book storylines that ought to be very old hat to certain fans. From the early days of Iron Man 3’s surprise Mandarin fake-out to the completely unique take on the Civil War storyline, the MCU’s tendency to remix source material shows absolutely no signs of going away or slowing down any time soon.

This presents us with an interesting challenge for a show like WandaVision, however–not only is it the first Disney+ streaming MCU show and the first official entry into the much-delayed Phase 4, it’s also the first of its kind in a purely narrative sense. Put simply, we have absolutely no idea what’s going on here, why it’s happening, how it’s happening, or what it means for anything–even after the debut of the first two episodes, we’ve been left with more questions than ever and no answers for any of them. So, we’re left to return to our tried and true roots: wild speculation and theories.

And, for the MCU, the best place to start brewing these sorts of hypotheses is the comics–even if that means bringing an innate understanding that we’re definitely not going to be dealing with a one-to-one conversion from page to screen.

The Low Hanging Fruit: Vision and House of M

Early on during the WandaVision press cycle, when concept images and vague premises were all that were available, there were two books that fans continued to reference time and time again when trying to get a grasp on what they might be in for: Tom King and Gabriel Walta’s 12-issue limited series simply called Vision, and the 8-issue miniseries House of M by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel. It’s pretty obvious why that is when you take one look at them both.

In House of M, Wanda’s reality-warping powers spiral out of control and create an alternate reality where Magneto and his extended family rule mutant kind. It’s one in a long line of stories dealing with the “threat” of having a person like Wanda lose control–and it generally meets the concept of a surreal-yet-familiar alternate dimension where (almost) no one seems to know or remember that they’re not living in the “real world” head on.

However, looking at the first two episodes of WandaVision a bit closer make the House of M parallels a bit harder to pick out–aside from the fact that it is most certainly not the “real” world, there’s very little to establish that Wanda herself is generating it. After all, why would a Sokovian 20-something be this deeply invested in a spot-on recreation of American pop culture tropes that predate her own birth by decades? And why would there be a disembodied voice asking her to explain who is “doing this” to her?

Of course, elements of House of M could be borrowed and repurposed as the MCU is wont to do–but there might be a more streamlined inspirational link to the comics that would require a bit less retrofitting. More on this in a second.

For Vision, not only is it the most recent Vision solo series Marvel’s put out, it literally deals with Vision settling down into a quietly surreal suburban life, trying to blend in like a normal human with a normal human family.

The family in this case is a group of synthezoid robots he’s created, of course, complete with a green, artificial dog–and the dream of suburban bliss obviously doesn’t last long–but the aesthetic sensibilities are all still there, on the surface. It’s just that, in Vision the series, Vision and his fake family aren’t living through any sort of alternate reality or retro-future. They’re also not directly involved with Wanda herself (though she does play a major role in the story later on).

So, while the stylistic elements and some themes from Vision are likely to crop up in WandaVision, it’s unlikely that it’s the book to look at in terms of actually cracking the case–after all, WandaVision’s story seems to be literally occurring in a sitcom-inspired version of the past, right down to the costumes and the dialogue. This isn’t a show about Wanda and Vision escaping the superhero life to go live in a quaint little neighborhood outside of Washington DC–there’s something much more insidious (and likely supernatural, or technological) at play.

Thankfully, this is a premise that isn’t entirely foreign in recent Marvel history–if you know where to look.

The Dark Horse: Avengers: Standoff

On the surface, the Avengers: Standoff doesn’t seem like a very viable candidate to inspire a show about Wanda or Vision–neither of them are featured players in the event. It revolves almost exclusively around Captain America-adjacent heroes like Bucky Barnes and B and C list villains pulled from various Thunderbolts rosters, but hear me out for a second.

The premise of Avengers: Standoff is (relatively) simple. It revolves around SHIELD’s Maria Hill, functioning as Director, using a Cosmic Cube project to create a sort of “alternate reality” prison for villains called Pleasant Hill. Using the Cosmic Cube (made sentient and turned into a child named Kobik) Hill was able to functionally re-write the memories, appearances, and personal histories of anyone she saw fit, placing them into a constructed, idyllic town where they could go about their daily lives believing themselves to be just regular, everyday citizens.

Of course, they couldn’t leave Pleasant Hill and the Truman Show-style theatricality of it wasn’t always perfect–but it largely did the job, at least until people started to realize just how well and truly insidious the whole thing was while some of Pleasant Hill’s most “clever” (read: evil) residents began to wake up and understand something was very, very wrong with their reality.

So what does this have to do with WandaVision? Well, possibly nothing–the MCU’s version of the Cosmic Cube, the Tesseract, is one of the Infinity Stones and doesn’t function the same way it does in the comics. It’s very unlikely that a character like Kobik is going to make a big screen debut, and it’s similarly unlikely that Maria Hill is going to get such a dramatic heel turn any time soon–especially with Nick Fury still around.

However.

We can intuit from the first two episodes of WandaVision that someone is “doing” something to Wanda–“who’s doing this to you?” is a question that seems to disrupt this strange version of reality over and over again. And it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there’s something out of sorts with everything else about Westview, and we know from the end of episode 1 that someone working with the organization SWORD is surveilling Wanda and Vision by “watching” their “TV show.”

It’s impossible to tell whether or not SWORD is behind the strange break in reality or if they’re trying to solve it, not to mention whether Wanda is a victim, like the question “who’s doing this to you?” seems to imply, or the source of Westview all together. But if we look at Avengers: Standoff as a possible blueprint, and fudge some of the more nitpicky details–say, adjusting SHIELD and Maria Hill for either SWORD or HYDRA (both seem to have a presence in this reality one way or another) and Kobik’s reality-warping abilities for Wanda and her own–we might just be on to something.

After all, in Captain America: Civil War, the question as to whether or not someone as powerful as Wanda should be trusted to just roam the streets was posed and never directly answered–Thanos interrupted any possible resolution to that story with the snap. But now that the world is, presumably, returning to mostly normal, Wanda’s still an issue that needs to be dealt with. And if we reflect back to Wanda’s MCU origin in Age of Ultron, we can confirm that an organization like HYDRA is not only aware of her existence, but keenly aware of her abilities.

And what better way to imprison a person with functionally unlimited power than by making them believe they’re somewhere they actually want to be?

The bigger question becomes: If Westview is the MCU’s version of Pleasant Hill with a more villainous twist, are Wanda and Vision’s neighbors prisoners, too? What about Vision himself–is he simply a construct of whatever reality they’re living in, or was his consciousness somehow preserved after the events of Avengers: Infinity War? Or is there something even more devious going on under the surface?

HYDRA, SWORD, and Baron Strucker all have a place in the retro-sitcom surrealism of the MCU Phase 4’s first TV show.

The Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks in California remain closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, once they open there will be a massive change at both parks: Disney has announced it’s ending its long-running annual pass program.

In an email sent to annual pass holders, Disneyland Resort president Ken Potrock said, “For nearly four decades, our Annual Passport program has been an important part of connecting with some of our most valued Guests. We are incredibly honored and grateful for that legacy, and the memories and magical moments you have helped us create over the years… I know that sunsetting the Annual Passport program will be disappointing to many of our Passholders who are just as anxious as we are to reopen our gates and welcome Guests back when the time is right.” The company also released a statement on Twitter, which you can see below.

Those who have active passes will receive refunds from the company and, according to Disney, there will be “membership offerings” announced at some point. It remains to be seen what those would entail.

This news comes as Disneyland has been closed for 10 months. The company’s parks at Florida’s Walt Disney World are open, though operating at reduced capacities. It’s not just the theme park restrictions that have financially impacted Disney during the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s also the long list of movies that have been delayed due to theaters being closed.

While there’s no telling when Disneyland will open again, the park’s parking lot is about to get pretty busy. It was recently announced the lot would become a site supplying the COVID-19 vaccine to local residents. It’s expected that the location will be able to administer thousands of vaccine doses each day, once up and running.

In the age of social media, we get movie leaks from social media and forums. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is going for a decidedly old-school look, so it feels appropriate that we get our first official look at one of its main characters in an old-school way: on a soda label.

Spotted by BestProducts, The Riddler is getting his own flavor of Mountain Dew. This flavor actually surfaced a few months back, but quickly disappeared, as noted on the Mountain Dew wiki, which is a thing that exists. Back then, keen-eyed Redditors spotted the Riddler’s Brew along with a Catwoman-themed Mountain Dew Zero Sugar and a standard Mountain Dew with Batman on the label.

The drink is called Riddler’s Brew, and the label features a look at the villain, who looks much as he did in the first moments of the Batman teaser we got during DC Fandome earlier this year. The extra space around him is adorned with his favorite punctuation mark. We did get a clear look at him in the trailer, but this is the first official marrying of the goggled character and the Riddler name that we’re aware of.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Batman and Mountain Dew have joined marketing forces, and it’s not the first time Batman has had a dark blue soda. Back in 2021, a Dark Berry flavor was released in partnership with The Dark Knight Rises, and was described as “Dew with a blast of mixed berry and other natural flavors.” The product shot obtained by BestProducts only describes Riddler’s Brew as having “natural and artificial flavors,” which is a description you can apply to every object that exists. If we were pressed, though, we’d bet that Mountain Dew is resurrecting its Dark Berry flavor for this product.

It is interesting, though, that Mountain Dew and Warner Bros. are matching the dark blue brew with the Riddler. The character’s association with the color green is beaten only by the Green Arrow and Green Lantern in DC comics. Dark blue is more Batman’s color, generally speaking.

There’s no word on when this will hit shelves, but we’re betting it’s going to be close to the March 4, 2022 debut of The Batman.