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Blink Twice is a glitzy thrill ride that gets lost in the darkness of its own ideas
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut has Get Out aspirations, but it lands somewhere closer to Don’t Worry Darling.
Black Myth: Wukong is too mediocre for all this drama
A perfectly fine action game has become saddled with a lot of baggage.
Developer Joshua Barretto is doing the seemingly impossible by bringing Super Mario 64 — a 3D game designed for the 64-bit N64 — to the 32-bit GBA.
Simply porting the original game isn’t possible given the GBA’s hardware limitations, so Barretto’s version is being developed from scratch with a custom physics, collision, and 3D camera system that so far looks quite impressive.
Black Myth: Wukong, the Chinese-developed action game that’s smashing Steam records, has sold over 10 million copies across platforms. That’s quite an impressive feat considering the game is barely four days old. It’s only a matter of time before Wukong outsells the year’s current best-selling game, College Football ‘25.
The best entertainment of 2024
Our guide to the most interesting games, movies, and TV shows of the year.
But that won’t stop the legendary film composer from getting his own documentary film about his life and career, produced by (and featuring interviews with) Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, Ron Howard, and many more.
“Music by John Williams” will premiere at AFI Fest on October 23rd and hit Disney Plus on November 1st.
In a letter seen by The Wall Street Journal, Skydance’s lawyers accuse Paramount of breaking their merger agreement by dragging out the amount of time it can review other bids, and said:
While Skydance is not currently exercising its right to terminate the Transaction Agreement, we reserve the right to do so in the future.
Paramount extended its “go shop” period after receiving a $6 billion bid from media investor Edgar Bronfman Jr.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Following the release of Marathon in May and Marathon 2 in July, the third game in the trilogy, Marathon Infinity, is out now on Steam.
It’s been a good year for classic FPS games.
[Steam]
Kamala Harris is the latest participant on Track Star, a TikTok game show where players identify a song for money.
Internet shows like Track Star are a new kind of media circuit for public figures. Democrats want these viral moments — and they’re trying hard to make them happen.
Rather than celebrating the ten year anniversary of BoJack Horseman’s premiere by bringing the show back, Netflix has greenlit a new animated series from Raphael Bob-Waksberg that will feature art from Lisa Hanawalt.
The music producer recently confirmed that he composed two ringtones for Apple: “Daybreak” and “Chalet”. The tones were released back in 2019 putting them on iOS version 13 and later. Both tones have a relaxing vibe to them that would have fit right in with Flylo’s Adult Swim bumps that rewired an entire generation’s musical tastes...or at least just mine.
[Pitchfork]
Media investor Edgar Bronfman Jr. increased his offer to acquire Paramount from $4.3 billion to $6 billion, according to CNBC. Paramount has since extended its “go shop” period to 15 days, which allows it to review offers from other potential buyers. The offer could potentially upend the sweetened deal it reached with Skydance last month.
Disney just created a committee to find Iger’s replacement as he’s repeatedly said he doesn’t plan to stay CEO long. But he also said that before his last replacement, Bob Chapek, was terminated and Iger returned. So maybe it will be someone new! Or maybe it will just be Bob with a mustache.
After The New York Times reported that Walz was a Dreamcast fan, IGN did the legwork to find that he apparently really liked Crazy Taxi. Now I’m wondering if Walz knows all the lyrics to “Escape From the City,” too.
Rotten Tomatoes says its new “Verified Hot” badge is meant to help users find movies with high audience approval. But as Engadget points out, the whole system hinges on people using Fandango for verification that they’ve actually seen the films, which — given that both Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango are owned by Comcast — kinda makes the badges seem like a ticket-selling marketing ploy.
Megalopolis’ latest trailer makes it even harder to get a good read of what to expect from the film, but it’s worth it just for Lionsgate’s selection of quotes about Francis Ford Coppola’s previous work.
Update: Lionsgate has removed the trailer, saying it “screwed up,” after people called out the quotes for being made up or misattributed.
A day after announcing that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to the PS5 next year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke a bit more during a Gamescom livestream about the company’s ongoing multiplatform experiment.
Help. Help help help.
But for those of us doomed to remember what the Obama years were like the first time around — the turbo-pop, the undercuts, the novelty Twitter accounts, the Internet Boyfriends, the girlbosses, the hashtags, the precise shades of pink — there is one last bracing thought. For better or worse, these were our ’60s, and we’re all just going to have to come to terms with that.
Civilization 7 lets you mix and match history — and it’s a blast
For the first time in the game’s 30-year history, leaders and civilizations can be chosen independently of one another.
Avermedia has announced that its X’tra Go docking station is available. It can dock and charge your Steam Deck, has plenty of ports, and supports micro SD.
The X’tra Go records up to 4K resolution video at 30fps or 1080p at 120fps while passing up to 4K at 60fps through to your TV. Bonus: this oddly dramatic promotional video.
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ONL ended with a very brief tease for the Mafia: the Old Country, which is set in 1900s Sicily and will “uncover the origins of organized crime.” It launches some time in 2025.
After some, let’s say, detours, the veteran designer and his 22cans studio have revealed a more traditional strategy game called Masters of Albion, which at the very least has some cool interface ideas. Here’s the first trailer.
At Opening Night Live 2024, Netflix showed off a trailer of Squid Game: Unleashed, the upcoming Squid Game mobile title. The trailer makes the game look kind of silly, which feels at odds with the themes of the actual show.
The game is set to release later this year. The show’s second season is coming soon, too, on December 26th.
Batman: Arkham Shadow is the next entry in the Batman: Arkham series but with a twist...it’s in VR. Camouflaj, the studio known for another superhero VR experience, Iron Man VR, debuted the first gameplay trailer during Opening Night Live 2024. Arkham Shadow will be a full-length, VR game launching exclusively on the Meta Quest 3 sometime in October.