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Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home. This week, Moana 2, the sequel to Disney’s animated splash hit starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Auliʻi Cravalho, finally comes to streaming (pun intended) on Disney Plus. There’s plenty of other exciting releases to choose from this week as well, including Anthony and Joe Russo’s The Electric State and the superhero action movie Kraven the Hunter on Netflix, the offbeat musical biopic Better Man on Paramount Plus, and much more. We’ve even got some some new releases available to rent on VOD, like the Oscar-winning drama I’m Still Here and the new horror thriller Borderline starring Samara Weaving (Ready or Not). Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend! New on Netflix The Electric State Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix Genre: Sci-fi adventure Run time: 2h 8m Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie Loosely based on Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 illustrated novel, the Russo brothers’ sci-fi adventure film stars Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) as Michelle, an orphaned teenager living in a retrofuturistic world where robots have been banished in the wake of an attempted rebellion. After befriending a mysterious robot with apparent knowledge of her missing brother, Michelle embarks on a journey to the fortified robot enclosure known as the “Electric State” in search of him. Chris Pratt co-stars as an eccentric smuggler who comes to Michelle’s aid on her quest, along with his robot partner (Anthony Mackie). Kraven the Hunter Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix Genre: Superhero action Run time: 2h 7m Director: J.C. Chandor Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger Following in the footsteps of Morbius and Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter is yet another Sony Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man in it. (And who knows? This might actually be the last one!) Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as Kraven, who in this version gets some animal-like powers after being injected with a serum. He’s also a conservationist and animal lover, instead of a poacher who just wants to go after the most dangerous game. An antihero! From our review: It’s a largely joyless affair, and Chandor can’t seem to decide on a dramatic or comedic tone, let alone a blend of the two. Taylor-Johnson often stands around delivering lines that seem intended to be catchphrases, but he does so with all the determination of someone who loathes the material. A quipper-hero Kraven is not, and neither is Taylor-Johnson. But then, practically every actor in the cast is entirely checked out. Rarely has a superhero movie featured this many talented performers phoning it in. But with such bland material, can you blame them? New on Hulu Control Freak Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu Genre: Horror thriller Run time: 1h 44m Director: Shal Ngo Cast: Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, Kieu Chinh In this horror movie, a woman is tormented by an itch on the back of her head that she can’t scratch away. With a premise this relatable, this movie’s sure to cause even the most hardened horror viewer to squirm a little. New on Max The Parenting Where to watch: Available to stream on Max Genre: Comedy horror Run time: 1h 40m Director: Craig Johnson Cast: Nik Dodani, Brandon Flynn, Brian Cox Spending a weekend with your parents as an adult can be a little weird, but it’s particularly tough when the house you’ve rented for the event happens to be inhabited by a 400-year-old evil ghost. Then again, in this horror comedy, maybe even a ghost is better than spending too much time with family. New on Disney Plus Moana 2 Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus Genre: Musical adventure Run time: 1h 40m Directors: David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller Cast: Auliʻi Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Hualālai Chung The Moana sequel was originally supposed to be a Moana Disney Plus show. But now it’s a full-fledged theatrical adventure, with Moana once again setting off on a sailing journey. This time, she’s joined by a ragtag crew, including a Maui fanboy, a quirky inventor, and a farmer who doesn’t know how to swim. Dwayne Johnson returns as Maui, too, and Moana and her friends search for a distant, legendary island in an effort to make contact with other people who might live on the islands in the sea. From our review: Moana 2 may grow on me as well — frankly, my feelings for it could only go up from where they started. It’s been less than a day since I saw the long-awaited sequel (Disney screened the film for press just 17 hours ago), but unlike with the overwhelming let-me-hear-that-again rush of experiencing Moana for the first time, I don’t have the lingering gut feeling that I’ve missed something. In the end, Moana 2 is a vehicle for one banger, a feel-good throwback, and a few songs we’ll never talk about again, which doesn’t feel like enough for a brand-new Moana. New on Paramount Plus Better Man Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus Genre: Psychological drama Run time: 2h 15m Director: Michael Gracey Cast: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton Music biopics are getting a little same-y, which is exactly why Better Man tells the story of Robbie Williams by turning the British pop star into a CGI ape. That may sound bizarre, and it is, but the visual effect looks incredible and gives the movie plenty of room for creative and kinetic dance sequences set to Williams’ catalog of hits. New on Criterion Channel All We Imagine as Light Where to watch: Available to stream on Criterion Channel Genre: Romantic drama Run time: 1h 58m Director: Payal Kapadia Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam This beguiling drama from writer-director Payal Kapadia centers on Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), two roommates who work together at a city hospital. Both women find themselves at a crossroads in their lives, forced to choose between their own hearts and their obligations to their respective families as they navigate a city rife with dreams, hopes, and illusions. All We Imagine as Light was one of the best-reviewed new movies of 2024. New to rent I’m Still Here Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu Genre: Drama Run time: 2h 17m Director: Walter Salles Cast: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro Based on a memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning drama follows the story of a family living under the yoke of Brazil’s military dictatorship during the 1970s. When her husband (Selton Mello) is taken away for questioning, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) must gather her courage and steel herself to protect herself and her family from the worst that the world has to pit against them. Borderline Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu Genre: Comedy thriller Run time: 1h 34m Director: Jimmy Warden Cast: Samara Weaving, Ray Nicholson, Jimmie Fails Scream queen Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) is back in her second horror feature of 2024! Borderline centers on Sofia, a famous pop star who wakes up one night to discover that her home has been invaded by Duerson (Ray Nicholson), an obsessive fan who harbors delusions of them getting married. To survive, Sofia will have to use every ounce of her cunning and wits to escape her captor and find help.
The Sane Jewel is a decoration in Monster Hunter Wilds that is a bit challenging to locate, but the effects granted by it are worth the trouble. If you’re struggling on how to get the Sane Jewel, or what it does, read on. We cover what the Sane Jewel is and tell you how to get one in Monster Hunter Wilds. What is the Sane Jewel in Monster Hunter Wilds? The Sane Jewel is a decoration type that can randomly drop at the end of hunts in Monster Hunter Wilds. But because it’s a rarity-5 decoration, many hunters haven’t found the jewel until they’ve hit a very high hunter rank. The Sane Jewel provides the skill Antivirus, which could be useful in high-level fights found deeper in the game. Antivirus’ skill description is: “Once infected, makes it easier to overcome the Frenzy and increase Affinity when cured.” Frenzy is a two-stage status effect inflicted by some high-level monsters, like Gore Magala. GameRant has an excellent guide to Frenzy’s stages, but to keep this focused to Sane Jewel, its skill helps you harness the Frenzy ability to raise your affinity. The three levels of the Antivirus skill boost affinity between 3% and 15%; slotting the Sane Jewel in some armor with the skill, or while wearing the Sanity Charm, could be very effective if you’re aiming to deal more critical damage. How to Meld the Sane Jewel in Monster Hunter Wilds If you haven’t had luck on random drops, the Sane Jewel is available to craft at the Melding Pot. It costs 80 Melding Points to create one Sane Jewel. The Sane Jewel’s availability at the Melding Pot seems to be gated behind a specific Hunter Rank. According to discussions on Reddit, some players discovered it after HR 100. These screenshots came from one Polygon team member who is HR 124 and who confirmed they could craft a Sane Jewel.
Both the Armorcharm and the Powercharm are powerful key items in Monster Hunter Wilds. You’ll get both of them as rewards for High Rank quests. You only get them as rewards the first time you complete each quest. The Armorcharm raises your defense by 12. The Powercharm raises your attack by 6. Our Monster Hunter Wilds guide will tell you how to get the Armorcharm and Powercharm and how to use them. How to get the Armorcharm in Monster Hunter Wilds The Armorcharm is a reward you’ll get from the “Secure Wounded Hollow” quest. You get this quest from Cobb in Suja, Peaks of Accord. For “Secure Wounded Hollow,” you’ll head into the High Rank area of Wounded Hollow. In that region’s arena, you’ll have to take on a pair of Hirabami. Once it’s completed, you’ll need to talk to Cobb again to get the Armorcharm. You’ll only see a brief message about it on the right side of your screen and then it just kind of disappears in your item box. When you’re done, head over to Rex to get another quest, “As Gatekeeper,” that you’ll need for… How to get the Powercharm in Monster Hunter Wilds Like the Armorcharm, the Powercharm is a reward from an optional quest, “As Gatekeeper.” This one is from Rex (who is wearing the same armor as Cobb) in Wounded Hollow. “As Gatekeeper” has you head back into the Wounded Hollow arena to take on a pair of Ajarakan. When you’re done, talk to Rex again to get the Powercharm. How to use the Armorcharm and Powercharm in Monster Hunter Wilds When you get them as rewards, both the Armorcharm and the Powercharm will get dropped into your item box. For them to help you, though, you’ll need to move them to your item pouch. You don’t actually use the Armorcharm or Powercharm as items. You get the benefits just by having them in your item pouch. They’ll take up a slot, but they do not get added to your item bar. To also help you understand Monster Hunter Wilds, we explain how to capture monsters, how to change weapons, provide some Seikret tips, and teach you how layered armor works.
Director brothers Joe and Anthony Russo love to dream big, on screen and off. After delivering the grandest season finale of all time, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, the duo set off in a million different directions, including franchise-building at Netflix, partnering with Epic on Fortnite, and pontificating on the future of AI in movies. They do seem to love cinema (especially Heat), but in interviews, the filmmakers often sound more like engineers than storytellers — fascinated by parts and eager to experiment with tools that will let them go as big as possible. So maybe it’s no surprise that the Russos would jump at the chance to adapt Simon Stålenhag’s retrofuture robot-forward dystopian sci-fi tale The Electric State, or that, with a reported $300 million-plus budget to throw around, their new Netflix movie is all nuts and bolts and no soul. Despite the Russos’ clear appreciation for the Swedish artist behind Tales from the Loop (and its various incarnations as a TTRPG, board game, and TV show), and his haunting art in The Electric State, their Netflix adaptation opens by pouring out metric tons of exposition like concrete. Then it nudges its characters across the resulting smooth-brained surface like a couple of giraffes in roller skates. The finished product is a mess, and a sign that the Russos’ taste for “going big” might be unfit for the medium of film. Written by the Russos’ MCU cohorts Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, The Electric State stars Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown as Michelle, a rebellious teenager living in an alternate 1990s that’s mellowing out after a robot uprising. As we learn in a dizzying data dump, humans were nearly outnumbered by worker bots until Muskian douchenozzle Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) invented the “Neurocaster,” a helmet interface that allowed fleshbags to inhabit the bodies of cyborgs and go toe to toe against the robotic rebels. Michelle finds society’s postwar dependency on Neurocasters like, totally wack, but her technological worldviews are upended when she meets Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), a cartoonish bot possibly possessed by her believed-to-be-dead genius brother, but suffering from Bumblebee syndrome, in that it can only speak through canned catchphrases. The two, with the help of ex-soldier Keats (Chris Pratt) and his own quippy robo-pal Herman (Anthony Mackie), hit the road to hunt down Skate, who Michelle believes is holding her brother captive. Ostensibly a straightforward road movie through the decimated landscapes of post-robowar America, The Electric State ends up flooded by whos, whats, wheres, whens, and whys. Michelle and Keats are blank heroes who amass a battalion of metallic friends (a mailbot voiced by Jenny Slate; a Mr. Peanut automaton played by Woody Harrelson), all apparently programmed to be Saturday morning cartoon sidekicks. Muddy action fills the gaps between revelations about Skate’s ultimate plans, and so often, it’s rendered in drab colors and shadows. Ironically, the blend of live-action backdrops and polished visual effects puppetry lacks the depth of the 2D illustrations in Stålenhag’s book. The Electric State, the movie, is devoid of majesty. A Spielbergian throwback full of pre-visualized laser fire, quippy CG creations, and trailercore ’90s covers (that made me wonder if the Russos were a little jealous they didn’t get to make a Guardians of the Galaxy movie) probably made sense on paper for a creative team who needed to distill a Hollywood story from Stålenhag’s source material. But it overlooks a key part of the book: just basking in the art. At many points on Michelle’s journey, I was desperate for the plot to stop so I could stand still and soak up this strange alternate universe. I wanted to wander around the abandoned mall, now a sanctuary for refugee robots. I wanted to chitchat with the robo-cook. I wanted to play The Electric State. When I queued up the Russos’ movie, I was about 30 hours into Eternal Strands, the recent action/fantasy RPG produced by former BioWare devs. The game’s physics-based combat makes a truly chaotic but exhilarating experience out of fighting titan automatons and discovering traces of an ancient but fallen civilization. The mythology was not so unique that I sat through every NPC companion’s dialogue or read every scrawled bit of backstory — Fallout might be my standard-bearer for world-building gravy I want to lap up — but I luxuriated in Eternal Strands’ scale and elemental jank (complimentary). Watching The Electric State, as the characters zipped past abandoned bot husks and brushed against the larger political upheaval of the war, made me pine for the epistolary experience I was having over in Eternal Strands, where I got to set the pace. Instead, I got the speedrun. Branded mascots, pop culture references, and 1993 footage of Bill Clinton addressing a missile attack on Iraq’s intelligence headquarters edited to suggest he’s talking about the robowars aren’t enough to ground The Electric State in lived-in reality. The screenplay never brings viewers close to the conflict, past or present. It’s not a necessity for the story to do so — there’s a long history of post-apocalyptic fiction and other road movies that consider the weight of American culture through the eyes of one person’s drama — but Brown can’t do much with the stock character work on the page, and The Electric State is not Bones and All for robots. So the Russos rely solely on iconography to immerse us in the story. They probably needed 80 more hours and Unreal Engine 5 to pull it off. In two-hour cinematic form, The Electric State is the most generic version of what it could possibly be. Even the big finale fight scene feels like a mishmash of Endgame (nondescript overcast industrial lawn battleground) and Mad Max: Fury Road (Doof Warrior stand-in in the form of a robot taco). Saying that this movie feels like blockbuster entertainment written by AI seems a little rude — computers would probably have a deeper understanding of the robotic struggle — but it’s just that vacant. I don’t expect the official Electric State video game, a mobile-friendly puzzler produced by Netflix and the Russos, to fill in too many gaps. The Electric State is now streaming on Netflix.
I wonder if the developers of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — several years ago, when they were first outlining the game’s core pillars — felt like they knew what they were getting into when they decided to go the full-likeness route. That is, that the game’s protagonist wouldn’t just be “Indiana Jones,” but would look, sound, and move like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and specifically, the version of the character that fans knew and loved from the 1980s-era original trilogy. Y’know, Indy in his barrel-chested prime, not the senior citizen from the latter two films. It’s a miracle that any game gets made, but it’s particularly miraculous that MachineGames pulled off this incredibly ambitious goal — and it all comes down to Troy Baker. The renowned voice actor has delivered indelible performances as Joel in The Last of Us, Sam Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and many other video game roles, but there are few characters more iconic and beloved in the popular imagination than Indiana Jones. Anything but a pitch-perfect recreation of Ford’s voice wasn’t going to cut it. Courtesy of a new video published Friday by BAFTA, we have some insight from the developers at about how Baker managed this feat. He started the project with some method acting, in a sense: Baker showed up to the first table read — conducted virtually over Microsoft Teams because it was during the pandemic — with “Indiana Jones” as his screen name, and he also brought Indy’s fedora and bullwhip to the session, according to cinematic producer Mitra Ashkan Far. She and voice-over designer Emily Hesler give a lot of credit to performance director Tom Keegan, whose resume includes multiple Wolfenstein and Star Wars games. Keegan “would do so well at getting people into character,” Hesler says. Around the 7:20 mark of the 27-minute video, Hesler plays some voice-over recordings of Baker grunting as Indy — just a second or two of him crying out as he takes a beating — and calls out the special sauce that makes his performance so remarkable, and so Ford-like. “I think that’s so Indy right there,” says Hesler, laughing in amazement at the clip. “I don’t know, there’s so much personality in that, and so much more than him just getting kicked in the face.” To Hesler, the timbre of Baker’s grunts tells you that Indy is frustrated to find himself in this situation, but simultaneously, the performance somehow convey a sense of strength and resolve — that Indy isn’t helpless, and in fact, that he knows he’s going to get back at the goon who’s laying into him. “It has to have some, like, breathiness, I feel like,” Hesler continues. “Breathiness. I mean, there’s still tone there, but… oh, and something where he sounds kind of, like, annoyed at the same time, too. There’s got to be some sort of attitude or personality in it. And yeah, again, Troy pulls it off so well.” Even after the dozens of hours I’ve spent playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I still marvel at Baker’s performance as Indy, for which he shared in the 2025 DICE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character. The game is scheduled to debut on PlayStation 5 this spring.
This story was first published in Switchboard, a newsletter from Polygon that delivers all the latest Switch 2 news, reporting, and rumors directly to your inbox. Sign up here to get it weekly. Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal in January showed very little in the way of games, except an untitled new Mario Kart. We’ll have to wait a few more weeks to get a closer look at the company’s software lineup for Switch 2 — but we might have some helpful indicators about which of Nintendo’s internal development teams have been making software for the next-gen console for the past few years. While we wait for more official game announcements during April’s Nintendo Direct, let’s take a look at Nintendo’s 10 internal development teams, what they’ve been working on, and if they’ve had any runway to start making games for Switch 2’s launch window. (Keep in mind that Nintendo has a bunch of similar-sounding dev teams, so bear with us as we walk through who’s who and what they’re working on.) Nintendo EPD Co-Production Group Who they are: This team (a combination of EPD Group No. 2 and No. 3) works with outside studios like HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Monolith Software on franchises like Kirby, Fire Emblem, and Xenoblade. The group also works with teams behind a variety of Mario and Pokémon spinoffs. Most recent release: It’s been a long time since we had a new Kirby game — Kirby’s Dream Buffet came out in 2022 — meaning the pink puff is due for a new adventure. EPD Co-Production Group still has two Switch 1 titles on its plate for 2025: Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition and Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: Good, if HAL has a Kirby waiting in the wings. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 3 Who they are: The Zelda team. Most recent release: Production Group No. 3 released The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2023 and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom in 2024, so they’ve been quite busy lately. The team worked with longtime Zelda collaboration studio Grezzo on Echoes of Wisdom, but even with outside help, it’s going to be a while before we see the next big Legend of Zelda game. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: Nil. Nintendo typically announces new mainline Zelda games many months or years in advance. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 4 Who they are: One of Nintendo’s most experimental teams, Production Group No. 4 is behind swerves like Nintendo Labo, Ring Fit Adventure, and Game Builder Garage. Most recent release: The team most recently worked with partners on Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition and Alarmo. Production Group No. 4 is very likely working on new Switch 2 software, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see the team building something around the console’s new mouse-control functionality. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: High. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 5 Who they are: During the Switch’s lifespan, Group No. 5 has been working on Splatoon and Animal Crossing. Before that, members of the team worked on games that highlighted Nintendo consoles’ unique features with Wii Sports and Nintendo Land. Most recent release: Splatoon 3 was released back in 2022, and has received regular updates. It’s been more than three years since Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ last major update, the Happy Home Paradise DLC. With more than 47 million copies of New Horizons sold, Production Group No. 5 is almost assuredly developing a follow-up. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: Good, especially if Nintendo wants to start Switch 2 off with a bang with a new Animal Crossing. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 6 Who they are: Another external R&D team, Production Group No. 6 works with developers behind the Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong Country, WarioWare, and Paper Mario series. Most recent release: The group just delivered Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (with Forever Entertainment) and is still working on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (with Retro Studios). So it has a relatively full plate. Production Group No. 6 also works with Next Level Games, the team behind Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Mario Strikers: Battle League, and they haven’t released a new game since 2022. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: Does a cross-gen Metroid Prime 4 count? Then pretty good! Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 7 Who they are: This is the team responsible for the development of 2D Metroid games and the Rhythm Heaven series. Most recent release: Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. Beyond that, it’s unclear what Group No. 7 could be working on for Switch 2. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: This team has been pretty quiet lately, so the chance that it’s working on something new — possibly a new Rhythm Heaven or something fun/weird, à la Miitomo and Tomodachi Life — is excitingly high. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 8 Who they are: They make 3D Mario games, including 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey, so they’re kind of a big deal. Most recent release: It’s been nearly eight years since Odyssey, the most recent mainline 3D Mario game. Production Group No. 8 also worked on 2021’s open-world Bowser’s Fury expansion to Super Mario 3D World, a possible indicator that future 3D Mario games could further explore open-world designs. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: High. Maybe within the launch window. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 9 Who they are: This is the team responsible for recent Mario Kart games and Arms for Nintendo Switch. Most recent release: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Kart Tour. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: All but guaranteed with Mario Kart 9. Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 10 Who they are: Production Group No. 10 is behind many of Nintendo’s 2D Mario games and the Pikmin series. Most recent release: The team released Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Pikmin 4 in 2023, so it’s had a little time to start working on new games for Switch 2. The team is also responsible for the Super Mario Maker series, a franchise that would showcase Switch 2’s Joy-Con mouse controls. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: That all depends on just how many Mario games Nintendo wants to release in 2025. Nintendo EPD – Smart Device Production Group Who they are: Nintendo’s mobile games team. Most recent release: In addition to supporting Fire Emblem Heroes and Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo’s smart device team recently released Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete, and basically wrapped up support for it. Odds of a new game for the Switch 2 launch: Probably close to zero, since the team works on Nintendo’s smart device software. Beyond its internal teams, Nintendo has a variety of subsidiaries and partners who co-develop games. That includes 1-Up Studio (3D Mario), Monolith Soft (Xenoblade), Next Level Games (Luigi’s Mansion, Mario Strikers), Nintendo Cube (Mario Party), Nintendo European Research & Development (Nintendo Switch Online), Nintendo Software Technology (Mario), Retro Studios (Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong Country), and Shiver Entertainment (porting work). Pokémon developer Game Freak, Grezzo, HAL Laboratory, and Intelligent Systems may also be working on or supporting Switch 2 software. Suffice it to say, Nintendo has a lot of people power to create a big library of new games, which could mean a very robust lineup of Switch 2 launch software.
Your GM puts up with your party’s antics week after week, so why not show them a little love by checking out DriveThruRPG’s GM Day sale? This sale includes plenty of core rulebooks if you’re looking to get introduced to a new system like the Alien RPG, Cyberpunk RED, or Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. But you can also find a wide variety of discounted supplements and other texts if you’re looking for ways to expand your favorite TTRPG, like Battletech Universe, the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, or Interface Red just to name a few. Hundreds of products from a variety of publishers are currently discounted as part of this sale, but we’ve pulled together a short list of core rulebooks for our favorite systems below.
Herbivore carapaces are an equipment material in Monster Hunter Wilds. You’ll get them from hunting certain small monsters or as rewards for certain hunts once you reach High Rank. The Low Rank version is called an herbivore shell. You’ll need herbivore carapaces for armor like the Death Stench set and the High Rank Doshaguma Mail. Our Monster Hunter Wilds guide will tell you how to get herbivore carapaces and how to collect them. How to get herbivore carapaces in Monster Hunter Wilds Herbivore carapaces come from High Rank Ceratonoths. And that’s it. You’ve got a 70% chance of getting an herbivore carapace each time you carve a slain Ceratonoth. Ceratonoths are only found in the Windward Plains. They’re pretty abundant, though. Head to your map and open the icon filter to find some — male or female, it doesn’t matter — and set a waypoint for your Seikret. There aren’t any hunts that reward herbivore carapaces and no large monster drops them. To also help you understand Monster Hunter Wilds, we explain how to capture monsters, how to change weapons, provide some Seikret tips, and teach you how layered armor works.
The horror movie Control Freak, now streaming on Hulu, has a super relatable premise: the intense, nagging sensation of a persistent itch. It stars Kelly Marie Tran (Raya and the Last Dragon, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Val, a motivational speaker tormented by an itch on the back of her head that she can’t leave alone. She tries bandages, wears many beanies, and ties down her hands when she sleeps. But the demonic itch steadily breaks down her body and her will, summoning something monstrous into her ordered existence. The movie, written and directed by The Park’s Shal Ngo, manifests the source of this torment as a paranormal monster connected to the generational trauma of Val’s parents’ flight from the Vietnam War. But the itch also has a psychological dimension anyone can relate to: It represents Val’s persistent, suppressed anxiety breaking through her attempts to clamp down on it. “I’m playing in these really high-anxiety moments in someone’s mind, and it got really intense,” Tran told Polygon in a video call alongside Ngo. Tran had never been in a horror feature before, let alone in a starring role requiring her to be in virtually every shot of a movie that was filmed in a 22-day sprint. “I’ve never done anything like that before. There were days where I would have, I’m not exaggerating, seven outfit changes in a day,” she said. “It was wild. I had a great time, and it was also really hard, and I learned so much.” But the physical and mental demands of the shoot took their toll. “By the end, I was pretty unwell,” she laughed. Ngo got the idea for the movie from a disturbing true story, recounted in a New Yorker article, about a woman who had an itch so bad, she scratched through her skull and into her brain. “It started with realistic body horror, like the actual horrors of having a body and having something go wrong in your wiring to the degree where something like that can happen,” Ngo said. “I thought [that] was very, very terrifying.” Hard agree. Developing the concept from his earlier short, Ngo initially went down a medically angled route that was “much more pedantic and about the science of the brain.” In that version, Val was a video game programmer. But Ngo felt the story worked better when he brought in elements that made it more personal. That started with a light satire of self-help culture, inspired by Ngo’s experiences with the Landmark Forum and David Lynch’s beloved transcendental meditation. (“It started to get a little culty,” he said.) For Tran, Val’s status as a motivational guru unlocked the character. “It hyper-pressurizes this feeling she has that she has to present herself in a way that seems polished and professional. She wants people to view her this very specific way,” Tran said. “And yet on the inside, she’s basically the opposite,” she said. “And I think there are a lot of people walking around in the world who have the same perspective no matter what your job is. I think that there’s a pressure that we can feel to try and seem like we have it all together and we might not.” In this context, Val’s self-help aphorisms have an ironic undertone. “For so much of the film, you’re seeing this person not listen to any of the things she’s telling other people to do, which I think is just the funniest, smartest juxtaposition,” Tran said. Then there were the paranormal elements, rooted in East Asian folklore. Ngo says the monster plaguing Val in Control Freak is based on “an ancient Chinese parasite that has to do with bad karma and this endless hunger. Then I used some creative license and turned it into something that was a little bit more Vietnamese. There’s different versions of these hungry demons in Korea and Japan that can never be satiated, that induce this hunger in you, and that just seemed to be a good starting-off point for the incessant itch.” Initially, Ngo says, he toyed with using generative AI to create a visually surreal monster. “I thought it would be very cool to do a pure AI monster in a movie. I was like, What if this is the first movie with an AI monster?” He discussed it with a friend “who does a lot of really cool stuff with AI,” playing with the idea of “this presence that was just constantly changing and shifting into something else.” In the end, though, he went with “something much more grounded and physical and practical [that] could really touch you and move you.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Ngo introduced Control Freak’s focus on the Vietnamese American immigrant experience, which Tran really responded to. Val’s spiral begins with a quest for a missing birth certificate, which leads her to track down her estranged father and explore roots she had purposefully disconnected from. Just like Val’s father in the film, Ngo’s grandfather was a Buddhist monk who had served in the South Vietnamese army. That specificity spoke to Tran when she read the script. “My parents are refugees from the Vietnam War, so having that be part of Val’s father’s story and his experience, and that being the source of the demonic curse that’s taking over their lives — yeah, it felt really personal and relevant,” Tran said. “I’m just such a huge fan of horror, and I found the concept of addressing generational trauma within the genre really exciting, in addition to it being such a Vietnamese story.” Control Freak is streaming on Hulu now.
The Doom Slayer does a kickflip in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4. The game collection is coming to Game Pass Ultimate on July 11. There are a lot of things you can buy with an Xbox gift card. There are games, of course, plus add-on DLC. You can use it to purchase TV shows, and movies, too. Instead of having a recurring subscription to Game Pass that requires a credit card, gift cards make it easy to buy access to Game Pass on a month-to-month basis. Whatever it is you may want to buy, $100 digital Xbox gift cards are $85 at Newegg through Friday. Use the offer code SSEQAZ53 at checkout to knock $15 off your purchase. Your code will arrive promptly via email. This deal comes at a great time, as a number of great games have arrived on Xbox recently. There’s Avowed, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Balatro, Eternal Strands, and others, each worth buying at full price. Alternatively, you can get even more mileage out of your $100 gift card by subscribing to Game Pass Ultimate, which allows you to play each of the games I just mentioned on Xbox Series X, Series S, or on PC. Some anticipated games are coming soon to the service as well, including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Atomfall, South of Midnight, and Doom: The Dark Ages, to name a batch of big-hitters. Good luck figuring out how to spend your gift card — it won’t be easy.
“Daffy Duck and Porky Pig get jobs at a bubblegum factory to pay their mortgage” reads like the plot of a classic Looney Tunes short. “Alien overlord taints that bubblegum with mind-control technology that turns consumers into zombies,” on the other hand, could be the logline of a 1950s sci-fi cheesefest. When the gum gains sentience, though, that’s a John Carpenter movie. That happens to be the situation Daffy and Porky (both voiced by Eric Bauza) wind up in halfway through the new theatrical feature The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. In the odd-couple step-siblings’ mad scrabble to hold down jobs and save their childhood home, they stumble across a scheme devised by a devious extraterrestrial overlord called The Invader (Peter MacNicol). In the first phase of his plan, The Invader reduces Daffy and Porky’s fellow townspeople to slavering automatons. They secure a sample of the gooey mystery treat for Petunia (Candi Milo) to study, to discern what’s gotten into the locals. At first, she comes up with bupkis. But when The Invader remotely triggers the gum, it bonds to a pair of novelty chompers, sprouts tentacles and eyestalks, and attacks the trio like they’re Kurt Russell and Keith David in The Thing, Carpenter’s masterpiece of chilly Antarctic paranoia: trapped in a small, confined space with nowhere to run and no one to save them, as the creature stalks them, relentlessly lashing at them with its feelers. It’s a mercy it doesn’t like fire, and also that Petunia keeps a flamethrower in her lab. The Day the Earth Blew Up director Peter Browngardt may have added too generous a splash of 1980s body horror to his lovingly rendered take on Looney Tunes, that beloved institution of American animation. Genre enthusiasts will relish the movie’s parallels with The Thing: the monster’s weakness against flame; the unnerving realization that familiar friends have become mindless, drooling thralls; the threat of a shapeless alien creature that can take nearly any shape it wants. Parents taking their kiddos to see it might find those similarities upsetting in the framework of a family comedy, which no one rightly expects to contain raw nightmare fuel. Goofy as the idea of a bubblegum monster may read on paper, The Day the Earth Blew Up makes it genuinely frightening on screen. The creature is a relentless purple abomination made of sticky appendages and teeth, roaring with the force of an ancient eldritch terror. What Browngardt and his bench of co-writers were thinking when they came up with this sequence will likely be a mystery to most, but not for Looney Tunes aficionados who love horror cinema as well. The franchise’s incongruous relationship to horror dates back to the 1950s; The Day the Earth Blew Up, which surprisingly holds distinction as the first-ever fully animated feature-length Looney Tunes film, contributes a new chapter to that history, keeping tradition alive with a combination of richly drawn elasticized animation and homage to a horror canon all-timer. Adding body horror to Looney Tunes isn’t a big leap for Browngardt, given the context. Looney Tunes has a deep catalog of horror-centric material. Once upon a time — 1991, to be exact — Warner Bros. tacked Darrell Van Citters’ short film Box-Office Bunny onto The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter to celebrate Bugs Bunny’s 50th anniversary. In the short, Bugs (voiced by Jeff Bergman, taking over as Bugs after the death of originating voice actor Mel Blanc in 1989) has his peace and quiet disrupted by the construction of a gaudy 100-screen multiplex atop his warren. Being the anti-authority rebel he is, Bugs pops out of the ground and into one of the theaters, and sets about outwitting Elmer Fudd, an usher, and Daffy Duck (who likewise avoided paying for a ticket, and throws Bugs under the bus to divert attention from his own crime). Bugs is as Bugs does; he bests Elmer and Daffy (each also voiced by Bergman) and traps them in a projection screen. They’re ecstatic to be in the movies, at first, but the growl of a chainsaw revving in the hands of a Jason Voorhees stand-in kills their buzz. It’s a funny gag, but constitutionally unsettling. We know what happens to characters in Friday the 13th films: They go to Crystal Lake, they stumble across Jason, they get dead. Granted, the “getting dead” part is omitted in Box-Office Bunny, but still, it’s best not to dwell on the implications of the climax, where Bugs sits back to enjoy Elmer and Daffy’s desperate off-screen screaming. Apart from a trio of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde riffs — 1954’s Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide, 1955’s Hyde and Hare, and 1960’s Hide and Go Tweet — Box-Office Bunny is arguably the most specifically horror referentialist Looney Tunes film, but countless others are shaped by horror’s hallmarks. In 1954’s Satan’s Waitin’, Sylvester the Cat dies, literally goes to hell, and then dies again and again, burning through his eight remaining lives. Bugs fends off badly drawn doppelgangers of himself, Elmer, Daffy, and Yosemite Sam in 1992’s Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers. Foghorn Leghorn knocks off another rooster in over-the-top slasher fashion in 2004’s Cock-A-Doodle-Duel. And 1964’s Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare ends with Bugs taking a brutal off-screen beating administered by the hulking robot he builds to do the same to Taz. (The execution may be meant to blunt the scene’s disturbing nature; Bugs begs his invention to spare him, to no avail, and the subsequent attack plays out in silence.) Coupling the scariest storytelling genre with the colorful, fourth-wall-breaking slapstick of adult-centric cartoons makes a bizarre contrast. Looney Tunes is abidingly silly. At times, so is horror, but its broader scope expresses a whole lot more; even screwball horror comedy invites viewers to stare into the mirror of their souls and take stock of what stares back at them. The genre is fundamentally an existential creative space where characters’ lives may be cut short at any moment, courtesy of whatever fiend is chosen to menace them. Typical Looney Tunes shorts are absent this quality, and instead embrace over-the-top farce, antics, and hijinks, occasionally mixed with social commentary about, for instance, American consumer culture or firearm fetishization. (To say nothing of the brand’s extensive racist past.) As an aesthetic as well as a format, Looney Tunes seems, on its face, an ill-suited partner to horror. It verges on paradox that the discrepancies separating horror from Looney Tunes cartoons are the same reasons they pair so well together. Looney Tunes sketches have higher priorities than horror cinema’s macabre existentialist fascinations, but think of how many times Wile E. Coyote fumbles his pursuit of the Road Runner so spectacularly that he ends up getting blown sky-high by his own box of TNT. Think of Bugs rigging Elmer’s shotgun to backfire in his face. Think of every instance across all of Looney Tunes’ shorts and features where characters are domed with a colossal wooden mallet. Nobody dies from the injuries they suffer in such incidents, of course. They come back well and whole for the next short, to be maimed all over again for our entertainment, to the envy of every victim in every horror movie ever. While death is far less final for Looney Tunes characters than their horror counterparts, though, it is nonetheless a chief reason people pay the price of admission for both. Just as people watch slashers, creature features, and countless other horror niches for the Kills™, they also watch Looney Tunes shorts to see Daffy eat a stick of dynamite and then snark about the results. If a duck taking a bomb to the gob is entertainment, and teenagers getting chopped to bits by a man in a hockey mask is also entertainment, then Looney Tunes and horror cinema are closer kin than meets the eye. Exaggeration is key, too. Picture Daffy’s bill hanging off the back of his head like a poker player’s visor. Then, unless you’re squeamish, picture Jason Voorhees folding up a sheriff like a picnic table in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), Freddy Krueger turning Phillip into a flesh marionette in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), or Art the Clown, our modern-day slasher darling, using Santa Claus as his test subject for a practical science experiment with liquid nitrogen in Terrifier 3 (2024). Is it all that difficult to imagine Bugs making Elmer or Daffy into flash-frozen Popsicles? The difference is in the graphic details, and Looney Tunes’ regard for death versus horror’s. But under that surface, the former has a great deal in common with the latter — so much, in fact, that the strange, shocking birth of The Day the Earth Blew Up’s writhing bubblegum abomination isn’t all that strange or shocking at all. In fact, it’s one of the film’s many merits. Browngardt’s love for Looney Tunes is apparent in The Day the Earth Blew Up in the diligence he takes in contemporizing the series’ look. The linework is clean, the motion is fluid. He has an abiding respect to this cornerstone of American animation, which extends to its long connection with horror. That genre crossover feels like an obscure connection compared to Looney Tunes’ more popular iconography, from TNT blasting machines to the familiar ringed logo and opening music. But it’s no less essential to Looney Tunes’ spirit, which The Day the Earth Blew Up cheerily embraces. In our age of peak horror, that gusto is revitalizing.
When Final Fantasy 14’s 7.2 update — subtitled “Seekers of Eternity” — drops on March 25, it’ll bring with it all the flashy content players of the massively multiplayer role-playing game have come to expect from developer Square Enix. But nestled among all the info on dungeons, gear, and side activities in the patch notes were also details on a handful of quality-of-life changes that should greatly improve the simple act of exploring the game’s world. According to community translations of the latest Letter from the Producer stream, broadcast in the early morning hours of March 14, Final Fantasy 14 producers Naoki Yoshida and Toshio Murouchi shared two major adjustments the 7.2 update will make to sprinting and mounting. Instead of defaulting back to the normal walking speed when the sprint buff wears off, players will instead enter a jogging state with a speed somewhere between walking and sprinting as long as they remain out of combat in safe zones like cities and sanctuaries. Also, climbing aboard Final Fantasy 14 mounts will no longer require players to stand still as the action resolves. It only takes a few seconds to summon mounts in the current version of the game, but this short wait can feel awkward when you’re moving between locations in large zones. Think of it like the difference between hitting all green lights on a long stretch of road and having to wait at a red every block. Sure, the latter isn’t going to kill you, but you’d much rather avoid the stop-and-go loop. “[It] only took us 10 years,” Yoshida is translated as saying. “But we [also] have 10 years of muscle memory. It will take some getting used to.” And finally, when the new Cosmic Exploration mode is added to Final Fantasy 14 on April 22, it will feature a toggleable sprint that will never run out. The game’s Island Sanctuary mode from update 6.2 provided something similar in a unique, low-cooldown “isle sprint” ability, but Cosmic Exploration’s sprint is for all intents and purposes infinite, allowing players to zoom from objective to objective without worrying about reupping the speed boost. “We call it Cosmo Sprint,” Yoshida said, apparently. Square Enix has yet to provide official details about this update 7.2 content in English, but if you’d like to know more about what was shared during this morning’s Japanese-exclusive broadcast, be sure to check out the community translations here.
Spring may not start until next Thursday, but that’s not stopping Steam from leaping headfirst this week into its annual sale event to celebrate the season! From now through March 20, PC gamers can enjoy a wealth of sales featuring some of the platform’s most popular titles, including the usual daily flash sales for even more tempting purchases. We’ve scoured the storefront to bring you our picks for the must-buy titles to pick up during the sale. With experimental beat-’em-up brawlers, ambitious indie RPGs, frenetic first-person shooters, and more, these are the games you should keep an eye on during this year’s Steam Spring Sale. Just to note: if you’re looking for discounts on Monster Hunter Wilds, Civilization 7, and other new games, you’ll find those on Fanatical, not Steam.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners: Combat Zone, the latest iteration of Monster Fight Club’s light and flexible miniatures skirmish franchise, is now widely available — including at local game stores and online at places like Amazon. We finally cracked the lid on this $79 starter box, only to find a rich and accessible wargame with all the fixin’s inside. The only thing we didn’t find were traditional 3D plastic miniatures, but the overall package is so good that I’m not sure I mind their absence. If you have ever wanted to try your hand at a skirmish wargame, this might be the new best place to start. Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone, launched in 2023, is a miniatures skirmish game where players use small numbers of units, often just six or eight on each side, to fight out thematic battles using dice and rulers. It’s a contemporary of games like Necromunda or Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, Infinity, Halo: Flashpoint and others. Combat Zone launched with 12 plastic miniatures, some hefty die-cut terrain, and a dead simple ruleset that leveraged easy-to-read cards to speed up play — a combination of features we found irresistible. We especially called the game out for its price point, which at $120 was far less than competitors like Games Workshop charged for a similar experience. Cyberpunk Edgerunners brings the price down even further, coming in at just a bit more than your average hobby board game. But inside is the same kind of full-fat, sandbox experience found in the original, with all the open-ended gameplay and hobby inspiration (painting, modeling, and more) that you could ask for. Everything inside this box feels like an improvement over the original, from the quality of the cardstock to the layout of the manual itself, which is more attractive and easier to read with additional clarifications on things like hired mercenaries. Even the die-cut terrain is improved, printed here on more robust materials and with more clear instructions on how it all goes together. But again, there are no miniatures inside the box. Instead, players get a set of full-color, two-dimensional acrylic standees. These bright, detailed figures perfectly match the art on the cards and inside the manual, making getting up to speed with the ruleset a breeze. From the hobby perspective, using standees makes sense when you’re just learning to play. That way you can mix and match the units you fight with early on in your experience with the game, and then purchase and paint the 3D figures you really want to use later on and at your own pace. Add-on figures, including all-new factions not included in the box, start around $20. It’s an excellent way to grow your collection as you increase your skills as a player and as a painter. Of course, if the idea of playing a miniatures game with flat, pre-printed plastic standees — even just to learn how it works! — makes your flesh crawl, then there’s not much I can do to keep you from turning your nose up at the prospect. But for those who have yet to try their hand at the hottest, fastest-growing sector of the tabletop gaming space you’re in for a treat. Cyberpunk Edgerunners: Combat Zone is available widely, including on Amazon. The game was reviewed using a retail copy provided by Monster Fight Club. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
Fisch is a relaxing fishing adventure made in Roblox with a vast world and an ocean full of a fish. On your Fisch-ing adventure, you’ll trek the seas with your customizable gear from rod to bait to bobber, and catch a variety of unique fish. To help you get started, you can take advantage of codes, which will provide you with extra in-game currency, bobbers, and bait. Finding codes can be tedious, so we’ve compiled a list to make things a little easier for you. Check out the list below to see all active Fisch codes for March 2025, and how to redeem them. Fisch codes for March 2025 The active Fisch codes are as follows: THEKRAKEN — 2,500 C$ CARBON — Carbon Bobber SORRYGUYS — Two Kraken Tentacles and 1,000 C$ ATLANTEANSTORM — Two Hangman’s Hooks and 1,000 C$ GOLDENTIDE — Three Instant Catchers and 2,000 C$ NewYear — Two Holly Berries, two Peppermint Worms, and 1,000 C$ NorthernExpedition — Two Holly Berries, three Peppermint Worms, and 1,000 C$ RFG — Three Instant Catchers and 2,500 C$ MERRYFISCHMAS — One Holly Berry, one Peppermint Worm, and 500 C$ FISCHMASDAY — Two Holly Berries, two Peppermint Worms, and 1,000 C$ Although these codes don’t have an expiration date listed, they’ll likely expire at some point, so make sure to use them as fast as possible! How to redeem codes in Fisch To redeem codes in Fisch, select the “Menu” button at the top of screen, which will open a the settings menu. Scroll down until you find a text box with “Codes @WoozyNate” above it. Type one of the codes listed above into the text box and press enter on the keyboard to get your rewards.
The Nebula Awards, a long-running honor for excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing, has included video game writing since 2018. It previously bestowed its top prize in game writing to Elden Ring in 2023. FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki has now received the honor of a nomination once again this year, this time for Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree. Although Shadow of the Erdtree might be one of the more recognizable names on the list, it’s perhaps more impressive and just plain cool to see indie darling 1000xResist getting a nomination (especially given its snub at The Game Awards 2024), as well as Pacific Drive, which was nominated for Best Debut Indie Game at TGAs but did not take home that prize. All three games made Polygon’s own Top 50 Games of the Year list last year. Here’s the full list of the Nebula Awards’ video game writing nominees: A Death in Hyperspace by Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor by Infomancy.net Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree by Hidetaka Miyazaki The Ghost and the Golem by Benjamin Rosenbaum Pacific Drive by Karrie Shao and Alexander Dracott 1000xRESIST by Remy Siu, Pinki Li, and Conor Wylie Restore, Reflect, Retry by Natalia Theodoridou For the full list of nominations, including for novels, novelettes, short stories, and so on, check out Nebula Awards’ website.
Trading allows you to exchange your cards with friends in Pokémon TCG Pocket — with a few limitations. Trades will come at the cost of Trade Tokens and Trade Stamina, and will allow you to get your hands on cards you’ve been missing or cards that you want to hoard. There are a few rules to trading, so you can’t trick other players into trading one of their full art cards for one of your twenty copies of Sizzlipede or send an entire binder over to another account. If you’re new to trading, there is a lot of information to take in all at once with how trading works, generating trade tokens, all of the rules, and more. But, we’ve made it a little easier for you to understand by summarizing it all! Here’s how trades work in Pokémon TCG Pocket and the rules behind trading. Update (March 14): The Pokémon Company announced upcoming changes to the trading system. We’ve edited the article to reflect this. How to trade in Pokémon TCG Pocket Prior to trading, make sure your Pokémon TCG Pocket app is updated to the latest version. Go to the Pokémon TCG Pocket store page on either the App Store on iOS devices or Google Play store on Android devices and update it. To trade, head over to the “Social Hub” tab and click on the unlocked “Trade” button. Here is where you’ll find the trade menu — along with your Trade Tokens and Trade Stamina at the top of the screen. From the trade menu, you can either initiate a trade or respond to a trade offer, but first, you’ll need to follow the trading rules. Upcoming Trade changes In a trade update coming at “the end of Autumn 2025,” Trade Tokens will be discontinued and replaced with shinedust. Currently, shinedust is a currency earned after you open booster packs and can be used to obtain flairs, but developers Creatures Inc. and DeNA are looking to expand the currency to cover trading as well. Once the update is live, Trade Tokens can be converted to shinedust, and you should be able to trade more cards than before. Additionally, you’ll be able to share which cards they’re looking to trade for with the addition of a new in-game feature. Pokémon TCG Pocket trading rules and restrictions There are five official rules that you must follow in order to trade in Pokémon TCG Pocket: You need one Trade Stamina to trade. One trade stamina will regenerate every 24 hours, but you can reduce the time with Poké gold and Trade Hourglasses. Cards must be of the same rarity. Trading a card with flair must be matched with another card with flair. Promo cards and cards with a rarity of two golden stars or higher cannot be traded. Additionally, certain high-rarity cards and cards from certain expansions cannot be traded. To see the full list of tradable cards, check the “Detailed trade list” in your app, which can be found by clicking the “?” icon beside your Trade Stamina. To trade rare cards (two diamonds) or higher, you need Trade Tokens. To get more, see our guide on how to get Trade Tokens. RarityTrade Tokens required Common (one diamond)0 Uncommon (two diamonds)0 Rare (three diamonds)120 Normal ex (four diamonds)500 Full art (one star)400 Although these weren’t stated in the in-game trade rules, here’s some more information you should know: You can only have one trade at a time. Whether you’ve started or received a trade offer, you are not able to start another trade until the current trade has been completed. If you don’t want your trades to be slowed down by trade offers, you can turn off all incoming trade offers by selecting the “Settings” button in the bottom right corner of the trade menu. You can trade cards no matter how many copies you have — meaning you can trade cards that you only have one copy of. With these rules in mind, you’re now free to initiate a trade or respond to a trade in Pokémon TCG Pocket! How to initiate a trade in Pokémon TCG Pocket To initiate a trade, follow the steps below: Select the “Trade” button and choose a friend to trade with. Choose a card to send in the trade. Wait for your friend’s response. Refresh your trade menu to find a “Trade response received” notification. Select the “Trade” button to view your friend’s trade offer, and either accept or reject the trade. If you accepted the trade, receive your new card from the completed trade. If you rejected the trade, start the process over! How to respond to a trade offer in Pokémon TCG Pocket To respond to a trade, follow the steps below: Go to your trade menu to find a trade offer from a friend. View the offered card and decide to either proceed with the trade or reject the offered card. If the card is to your liking, select a card of yours with the same rarity to trade and continue onto the next step. If not, reject the trade offer and wait for another offer. Wait for your friend’s response. Refresh your trade menu to find a “Trade agreement reached” notification. Select the “Trade” button to complete the trade and receive your new card.
Hoyoverse just wrapped up the Genshin Impact version 5.5 preview livestream, showing off all sorts of details about the upcoming patch. Most importantly, there were several codes that award Primogems and other rewards shown during the stream. Our Genshin Impact 5.5 livestream code list provides you with the three stream codes for rewards and explains how to redeem them. The stream showcased upcoming characters. We got a look at the Electro five-star Veresa, who is a competitive eater and a wrestler, and the Electro four-star Iansan, who we’ve seen designs for since before the game even launched. The Natlan story will continue on (after our short break last patch in Inazuma), with the characters finally getting to head to the home of the Collective of the Plenty. Genshin Impact version 5.5 livestream codes The codes are as follows: GI55Teteocan GoGoVaresa0326 CoachIansan0326 You’ll want to redeem these codes quickly, as they expire on March 17 at 12 a.m. EDT. They not only reward Primogems, but they also give Mora and Adventurer’s EXP to level up your characters. How to redeem Genshin Impact gift codes To redeem codes, you can log in and input them on the code redemption website. You can also input them in-game through the settings menu, but copy and pasting them in a browser is much easier. You can also click the links above, if you’re logged in on whatever device you’re seeing this post on. Once you redeem the codes, you’ll get the rewards via in-game mail shortly after that.
If the latest limited edition DualSense controller inspired by The Last of Us Part 2 speaks to your aesthetic, you can currently pre-order the new $85 controller from PlayStation Direct, Amazon, Walmart, and through GameStop if you’re a Pro member. The controller launches on April 10, sandwiched neatly between the PC launch of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and the second season of The Last of Us series on Max. The black and white controller features white thumb sticks, bumpers, and triggers, in addition to a white PlayStation logo. The black hand grips and touchpad are covered with a variety of glossy black iconography drawn from The Last of Us franchise, including bricks, knives, and Molotov cocktails. You’ll also find white logos for the Fireflies and WLF, along with Ellie’s moth tattoo. A white The Last of Us logo is printed on the rear of the controller. This controller includes all of the features you’ve come to expect from the standard DualSense, with motion controls, haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and Bluetooth connectivity. While intended to be used primarily with the PlayStation 5, the controller can be used in Bluetooth mode on your PC, although you’ll need to use it in wired mode to access the fancier features.
Silent Hill is back in a big way. Silent Hill f builds on the momentum of the phenomenal Silent Hill 2 remake by charting new territory for the horror franchise. The upcoming game, which doesn’t have a release date, puts you in the shoes of a girl living in a Japanese town in the ‘60s. She’s dealing with some serious trauma — not helped by the fact that the town is being taken over by spores and monsters. The game seems keen to pass along some of that trauma to the player, with a haunting world filled with terrifying beasts and plenty of body horror to go around. While we don’t know how much longer we’ll be waiting for Silent Hill f to arrive, it’s already available to pre-order for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. It’s available to wishlist on Steam. There may be other editions available to pre-order in the future, at which point they’ll be added to this point. But until then, these are your current options for pre-ordering Silent Hill f. Silent Hill f standard edition The game’s standard edition will arrive in disc format for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and it’s available to pre-order at a number of retailers. Best Buy, GameStop, and Amazon have pages up for the game with a placeholder release date for Dec. 31. What’s unclear at the time of publishing is what, if any, pre-order bonuses come with the game.
The latest expansion for Star Wars: Unlimited, Jump to Lightspeed is finally available via online retailers. Jump to Lightspeed has launched with Booster and Prerelease Boxes just like the previous expansion, Twilight of the Republic, but introduces a couple of new ways to collect the Star Wars TCG in the form of Spotlight Decks and Carbonite Edition Boosters. We’ve found some select online retailers where you can purchase the new set, but you might want to consider checking with your local games store as well. As the name suggests, Jump to Lightspeed focuses on the ships, pilots, and fleet commanders of the Star Wars franchise; it introduces new Leader cards for characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn and Wedge Antilles along with iconic starships like the Millennium Falcon, Home One, and The Invisible Hand. We’ve provided the various options available to buy the new expansion below. Spotlight Decks Unlike the two previous expansions, Jump to Lightspeed won’t launch with a two-player starter box option, instead opting for a pair of premade decks built around Han Solo and Boba Fett. Jump to Lightspeed Spotlight Decks can only currently bought as a pair from Miniature Market for $34.99. Both of the 50-card decks include tokens, a rulebook, and a single Jump to Lightspeed Booster Pack to jumpstart your collection. Both Spotlight Decks also include four exclusive cards unavailable in Booster Packs. The full roster of cards for either deck can be found below. Prerelease Box The best way to start collecting cards from the Jump to Lightspeed expansion if you’ve already been introduced to Star Wars Unlimited is with the Prerelease Box. Each Prerelease Box includes a deck box, two premium leader cards from the new expansion, tokens, a quick-start rulebook, and six Jump to Lightspeed Booster Packs. You can currently buy Prerelease Boxes from Miniature Market for $29.99. Booster Box Booster Boxes for Jump to Lightspeed contain 24 sealed Booster Packs containing 16 cards from the new expansion. Booster boxes are currently available from Miniature Market for $84.99. The spread of cards for Jump to Lightspeed Booster Packs remains the same as previous expansions, with each 16-card pack containing nine commons, three uncommons, one rare or legendary, one base or token card, a Leader card, and a single foil card of a random rarity. Carbonite Edition Booster Packs Jump to Lightspeed is also introducing a new type of Booster Pack containing more rare variants of cards for dedicated collectors. While currently unavailable to pre-order, single Carbonite Edition Booster Packs will be available at launch for $24.99 each, with 12-pack display boxes retailing for $299.99. Markedly more expensive than standard Booster Packs, each 16-card pack contains a more impressive spread of cards with alternate art treatments including foil, Showcase, Hyperspace, and Hyperspace Foil cards. Only a single run of Carbonite Edition boosters will be produced, making them extremely valuable to collectors. Carbonite Edition boosters also introduce Prestige variants, ultra-rare versions of cards that feature unique art that can also potentially be a foil card or one of 250 serialized copies of that card.
Pokémon TCG Pocket’s developers say they will scrap the unpopular Trade Token currency in a sweeping update to how cards can be traded in the popular mobile game. A full update on the state of trades in Pocket was posted to the game’s forums early Friday morning, though the changes won’t be coming to the game until “the end of autumn 2025.” This follows more than a month of silence after developers Creatures Inc. and DeNA promised to rework trading. The feature was introduced Jan. 29, and developers promised changes soon after, as they were met with massive player frustration. Trade Tokens, the focal point of player’s unhappy feedback, were a required currency to make an in-game trade. To earn Trade Tokens, a player would have to destroy a duplicate card in your collection, making it quite costly to trade more valuable cards. According to this developer update, shinedust will now be the main currency required for trading. “When you open a booster pack, shinedust will be automatically earned if you obtain a card that is already registered in your Card Dex. Currently, shinedust is also required to obtain flair, so we are looking into increasing the amount offered since it will also be needed for trading.” The update does not mention how much shinedust will be required to make each three-star, four-star, or one-diamond trade. But it’s a currency given away freely during the game’s many rotating events. As the forum post notes: “[T]his change should allow you to trade more cards than you could before this update.” The forum post also reveals two features in development. One is the ability for players to share a list of cards they are interested in trading for, which seemed like an oversight to launch without in the first place. The second is a promise to further explore trading availability for two-star rarity cards and promotional cards, which are currently unable to be traded. As the update isn’t due out until fall, it’s likely we’ll get more specifics on the cost of trades with the shinedust currency in the future, but players will have a long time to wait before the updates go into effect.
Week to week, season to season, Severance viewers rabidly comb over plot revelations, character dialogue, and even the smallest of set props as they try to piece together the show’s central mysteries. One of the show’s most consistent but subtle messages about characters and conflict comes in how Severance uses color. Like everything Severance, it seems to be calculated; across clothing and set decoration — and even elements of the show’s animated intro, like actors’ credits — the creators of Severance tell a story through reds, blues, and greens. Severance’s use of color is not only highly intentional, it’s helpful in understanding characters’ intentions, allegiances, and behavior. For a show layered in puzzles and hidden meaning, it’s worth understanding what the show’s colors symbolize. Here’s a brief guide to the most prominent colors of Severance, and what the show’s creators are trying to tell us through visual clues. Blue The color blue is representative of Lumon and the work half of work-life balance. Lumon housing is blue. The Macrodata Refinement team’s badges are blue. Blue is the dominant color of innies’ wardrobes and that of many Lumon employees like Ms. Cobel/Selvig and, at times, Mr. Milchick (though he often sticks to black and white shades; more on that below). Watching the blues of Severance becomes its own key to understanding the shifting allegiances and psyches of the show. Helly/Helena’s wardrobe is one of the most frequently used means of expressing behavior through color in Severance, particularly in how it incorporates blue. When she first appears in the show’s first episode, Helly R. is dressed all in blue — but her clothing color shifts throughout the season, eventually incorporating white, brown, and yellow. This puts her more closely aligned with her fellow MDR workers, palette-wise, and seems to tease the true conflict between her outie and innie. When Helly R. conforms to severed floor life, she wears a monochromatic yellow dress, and later regresses to blue as she works to disguise her true nature. Red The color red is representative of the outside world — the life half of work-life balance. Scenes set outside Lumon, particularly around Mark, Gemma, Devon, and Ricken’s lives, prominently feature red. Ricken’s book The You You Are is “contraband” at Mark’s work, and its cover is predominantly red and orange. In their happiest flashbacks Gemma wears red clothes of varying hues. Mark wears red pajamas in Severance’s intro sequences. His outie drinks red wine to excess. Helly’s red hair — not actor Britt Lower’s natural hair color, by the way! — symbolizes her real-life separation from the rest of the MDR team. Ricken actor Michael Chernus is the only person whose name appears in red in the show’s opening credits. Red, blue, and purple The contrast of red and blue can be seen throughout Severance, including the red and blue betta fish that live in a divided tank in Mark’s home. It seems unsurprising that Mark’s house would be best personified by such a direct clash: While Mark ostensibly enjoys work-life balance through the severance procedure, he lives in Lumon housing, his outie is closely monitored by Lumon employees, and his living quarters are where former Lumon employees seek refuge. Even beyond The Horrors of the show, it is impossible for Mark to actually enjoy the intended privilege of being severed. But it’s not the only place: Conflict between red and blue is featured strongly in Petey’s arc in season 1. Petey wears a red and blue striped robe while hiding out at Mark’s as he struggles with reintegration sickness. Petey’s death scene is lit in red and blue, thanks to the flashing lights of police cars. Sometimes, red and blue come together in splashes of purple — and here’s where the colorblocking gets even more intricate. In episode 1 of season 2 of Severance, as Mark sprints through a seemingly endless hallway, he passes a purple meeting room, which appears to represent the recent Overtime Contingency Protocol that sent innies to the outside world. Intriguingly, some of Mark’s substitute MDR coworkers — Gwendoline Y. (Alia Shawkat) and Mark W. (Bob Balaban) — have red-blue or purple clothing; Gwendoline wears a purple dress and Mark W. wears red and blue suspenders, a possible indicator of their experiences with reintegration. One subtle use of purple in season 2 is clothing worn by Dylan’s wife, Gretchen. While she generally wears blue tones, she’s dressed in a light purple shirt in the scene in which she lies to outie Dylan about her visit with innie Dylan, indicating conflict between the two worlds she now inhabits. Green Green is seen throughout the show, but its meaning is less clearly defined than the usage of red and blue. Much of it appears to be related to the mysterious and important underground work being done at Lumon: The badges used by the Optics and Design and Mammalians Nurturable teams are green, and the nature of their work is thus far largely unexplained. Obviously, the grazing fields of the Mammalians Nurturable room is a lush grass green. The green carpeting and green dividers in the MDR office appear to serve as barriers between team members themselves and workers in the floors below. Much of what’s occurring underneath the severed floor is presented with green tones, including the Watchers Room and Gemma’s living quarters and clothing. Green is also the color of Mark’s brain — or someone’s brain — in the show’s animated intro. Christopher Walken, Britt Lower, and Zach Cherry also have their names in green in the show’s opening credits. Green is also used in conjunction with red in a season 1 prop loaded with meaning: the red and green candle that Ms. Cobel steals from Mark, which also appears during the wellness session between Ms. Casey and Mark. Severance’s use of green could have multiple interpretations. As seen in the goat room, it could indicate flourishing growth, hope, fertility, and springtime. But in traditional color theory, green often also has negative connotations: greed, sickliness, envy, and bile. Green and blue Some of the intersection of these two colors is a bit open-ended, given how much green represents a sort of mystery. But they’re combined enough on the show to be of note — particularly on Helly. While Helly R. sometimes wears a mix of green and blue together on the severed floor, Helena Eagan’s dress in the season 1 finale shows an intertwining helix of green and blue, one of the show’s less subtle uses of color: That pairing of colors indicates Lumon’s work combining with new growth and the coming of spring — the show has thus far been set during what feels like neverending winter — with Helly herself representing a new generation of the Eagan family. Black and white Lumon administrators and security personnel, including Seth Milchick, Ms. Huang, and Mr. Drummond, all wear a lot of black and white. Medical personnel on the testing floor, where Gemma is trapped, wear almost exclusively white. These employees’ lack of color implies restriction and order — in some cases, the clinical, analytical, or coolly dispassionate demeanors required of their jobs. Also, Milchick just looks really cool in a black leather motorcycle jacket.
Blox Fruits is a Roblox game inspired by the hit anime and manga series One Piece. In this world, you can play as either a pirate or a marine and assemble your own crew of scallywags or do-gooders. Gain strength by gathering the strongest katanas, cutlass, and guns, or take on the world by storm with your fists! Alternatively, you can use Blox Fruits to get yourself unique power-ups and abilities. For an extra oomph, you can use Blox Fruits codes to gain rewards like experience boosts, stat resets, money, titles, and more. However, codes can be quite hard to find, so we’ve put them all in one place for your convenience. Check out the list below to see all active Blox Fruits codes for March 2025, and how to redeem them. Blox Fruits codes for March 2025 The active Blox Fruits codes are as follows: KITT_RESET — Stat reset point Sub2CaptainMaui — Double experience for 20 minutes KittGaming — Double experience for 20 minutes Sub2Fer999 — Double experience for 20 minutes Enyu_is_Pro — Double experience for 20 minutes Magicbus — Double experience for 20 minutes JCWK — Double experience for 20 minutes Starcodeheo — Double experience for 20 minutes Bluxxy — Double experience for 20 minutes Fudd10_V2 — $2 Sub2GamerRobot_EXP1 — Double experience for 30 minutes Sub2GamerRobot_Reset1 — Stat reset point Sub2UncleKizaru — Stat reset point Axiore — Double experience for 20 minutes Sub2Daigrock — Double experience for 20 minutes Bignews — “Big News” title (unlocked when you enter the Second Sea) Sub2NoobMaster123 — Double experience for 20 minutes StrawHatMaine — Double experience for 20 minutes TantaiGaming — Double experience for 20 minutes TheGreatAce — Double experience for 20 minutes Fudd10 — $1 Sub2OfficialNoobie — Double experience for 20 minutes It’s important to note that using multiple experience boost codes at once will stack the duration of time the bonus is active, but not the multiplier. Although the codes don’t have an expiration date, they will likely expire at some point, so make sure to use them as fast as possible! How to redeem codes in Blox Fruits To redeem codes in Blox Fruits, select the blue “Present” icon on the left side of your screen, which will open a Reward Codes popup. Inside of the text box, type in the codes listed above one by one and press “Redeem!” to get your rewards.
What is a thriller, anyway? It’s a genre that lacks the typical signifiers that something like horror, comedy, or romance might, but you know it when you feel it. Thrillers are exciting — it’s right there in the name — whether they come from the world of crime, sci-fi, or something else entirely. We’ve already put together a list of the best thrillers you can watch at home, but here’s the best of the best on Netflix. For more of the best movies on Netflix, check out our picks for the best horror movies, comedy movies, and action movies the platform has to offer. Apostle This one leans more into the horror side of things than most of the thrillers on this list, but before The Raid director Gareth Evans goes full Grand Guignol in the film’s latter half, he builds up a mesmerizing period thriller about a man who’s in way over his head in a place where he doesn’t belong. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, a traumatized and formerly institutionalized man who initially appears to be playing out a variation on Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man. The year is 1905, and Thomas is trying to infiltrate a remote Welsh island run by an obscure cult, which appears to have kidnapped his sister. He doesn’t know much about their beliefs, but he has to pose as one of them and investigate the island while keeping his own considerable demons at bay just long enough to save his sister’s life. And the more he learns about the place where he’s landed, the darker and eerier the film gets. This one’s perfect Halloween-month viewing: bloody as hell and startling right up to the final shot. But it’s also a crackerjack investigative thriller, an unraveling grim mystery that probably would have been better left unsolved. —Tasha Robinson Athena It’s hard to think of a scene more singularly electrifying and incredible than the one that opens Athena. This movie, about a police raid on a fictional French neighborhood, opens with a group of teens raiding a police station, starting a small riot, and stealing the cops’ guns, and it only grows bigger and more intense from there. Technically the scene is a oner, but rather than showy, the scene’s lack of visible cuts feels like a necessity, as if a single break from this one camera angle that’s deftly following the group’s leader might cause us to miss something critical. Almost as impressive as this singe scene is the fact that Athena is able to sustain this same momentum and nervy, furious energy throughout the entire movie as the police and the rebels clash with the same operatic intensity as a Greek epic. —Austen Goslin Carry-On It’s the holiday season, and for many people that means time with the family and an endless hunt for a movie everyone can agree on. Thankfully, this year, Netflix has made the choice easy with its new Christmas-tinged release: Carry-On. It’s an old-school action thriller that’s exactly good enough to get the whole family on board, no matter what their tastes are like. The plot follows Taron Egerton as a TSA agent who gets threatened by a terrorist into letting a dangerous bag through security. Fortunately, he doesn’t take that threat lying down, kicking off a cat-and-mouse game of airport intrigue that’s tense, silly, and extremely entertaining. —AG Lost Bullet This French crime thriller executes a simple premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an expert mechanic forced to work for dirty cops. When he’s framed for a murder he did not commit, he has to find the one thing that can prove his innocence: a lost bullet in a missing car. With high-octane action sequences and great car stunts, this is a 92-minute thrill ride through and through — and the sequel rules, as well. —Pete Volk Mersal This one’s a revenge story about the cruelties of for-profit health care. It features an unforgettable performance from one of the world’s most charismatic leading men in Vijay (playing multiple characters, and I’ll leave it at that), colorful dance sequences, and a searing (and all-too-relevant) political message. —PV The Night Comes for Us Timo Tjahjanto is tasked with the upcoming remake of the smash zombie hit Train to Busan, and his gnarly martial arts crime thriller The Night Comes for Us is an excellent showcase for why he is precisely the right man for the job. Brutal and visceral, the movie features unforgettable characters (I’m still waiting on a spinoff focused on Julie Estelle’s The Operator), incredible martial arts (it doesn’t get better than Iko Uwais vs. Joe Taslim), and a wicked sense of humor. —PV Unhinged Unhinged is a tremendously fun and tremendously mean movie. This car-based thriller follows a young woman (Caren Pistorius) who is having a terrible day. She woke up late and now her whole schedule is behind, including dropping her son (Gabriel Bateman) off at school and trying to get to her job on time. In her harried rush to work, she honks at the driver of a massive pickup truck. Unfortunately for her, the driver of his truck happens to be a very dangerous man (Russell Crowe) who just finished murdering his wife, and he decides he needs to teach her a lesson next. It’s an absolutely terrifying ride that might make you think twice before you honk at a red light. —AG Whiplash Whiplash follows a gifted jazz drummer, Andrew (Miles Teller), who gets into the college jazz band of his dreams, only to find out that the man running the program demands absolute commitment and perfection from his musicians and is willing to do almost anything to get it. This is one of the best movies ever made about the obsessive drive for greatness. The fine line that J.K. Simmons’ Terence walks between molding Andrew into a truly great musician and destroying him completely is hypnotizing to watch, and gives the film one of the best finales of any movie of the last 10 years. —AG
Speaking to Bloomberg, game industry analysts have predicted that the Nintendo Switch 2 will enjoy the biggest console launch ever, despite costing at least $399 — and maybe as much as $499. Citing a group of analysts “who regularly communicate with [Nintendo] and its software and hardware partners,” Bloomberg said expectations within the industry and investment communities were sky-high for the launch of Nintendo’s new console. One analyst, Robin Zhu of Sanford C. Bernstein, said he expected the console to launch in June, which is consistent with other reports and with Polygon’s own reckoning, based on the rollout for the first Switch. Zhu said he expected Nintendo to have an astonishing 6 to 8 million Switch 2 units ready for the launch of the device. This tallies with earlier reports that Nintendo delayed the console’s launch into 2025 to build up stock, and Nintendo’s own comments that it planned to do everything it could to head off scalping and reselling at launch. Nevertheless, it’s an unprecedented figure — and if true, it would almost certainly lead to a record-breaking launch for the machine. Nintendo Switch sold 2.7 million units in its first month, while PlayStation 5 sold 4.5 million units in its first quarter. Analyst Serkan Toto predicted sales will also be driven by a strong software lineup with solid day-one third-party support. “They will sell boatloads of Switch 2 in the first months in particular, almost regardless of the price,” Toto said. On price, the analysts Bloomberg spoke to are unanimous in expecting the Switch 2 to cost at least $399 — which, again, agrees with Polygon’s own analysis. Some think it could go higher, to $449 or even $499, driven by the cost of components and fears over the impact of U.S. tariffs. At $499 it would be the same price as a PlayStation 5 (and $50 more than a digital-only model). All eyes will be on Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct livestream on April 2, when it’s expected to announce the console’s launch date, price, and lineup of games.
Hit manga Gachiakuta reaches screens this summer, Crunchyroll announced Thursday. The adaptation of Kei Urana and Hideyoshi Andou’s series about supernaturally powered folks battling trash beasts in a tightly stratified and wasteful society will air exclusively on the streaming service starting in July. Fans can get a greater look at how the manga’s graffiti-inspired design is being translated to animation by renowned studio Bones Film in a new trailer for the series above. Urana enlisted Andou, a graffiti artist, to help inspire the design of the original manga, as well as to provide all the graffiti that appears within its pages. Serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine since 2022, Gachiakuta follows Rudo, a member of the underclass in a society that exiles its waste and its criminals to the same place: a massive dump known as the Pit. When Rudo is falsely accused of murder, he winds up down there as well, where, in the manner of a classic shonen protagonist, he takes up with a group of people who battle the trash beasts of the Pit — each using their own “vital instrument” made from mundane objects imbued with meaning — in order to further his goals of revenge on the society that wronged him.
Silent Hill f, the first main-series entry in over a decade, is still on its way. Konami hasn’t mentioned it for quite some time, but a new trailer shown during a Silent Hill Transmission stream on Thursday confirms it’s still very real. The trailer, which borrows imagery from what we saw of it in the first trailer, follows a young girl living in a small Japanese town during the 1960s — a first for the series. Fog engulfs the town and the girl starts to see flowers before running into a shambling woman. More monsters show up and we see the girl picking up a pipe to defend herself against something off-screen with a spore-covered house behind her. Silent Hill f is being developed by a Taiwan-based studio with help from Japanese developers. The stream had more details on the game’s production, with appearances from writer Ryukishi07 and character and creature designer Kera. Konami dug into its setting and how it used reference photos and sounds to help create the game’s rural town, and discussed the psychological themes it wants to explore with its young protagonist. The trailer doesn’t have a release date, but confirms that Silent Hill f will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. You can also wishlist it now on Steam.
The new Hunger Games book, Sunrise on the Reaping, continues to find ways to break our hearts before it’s even released. Suzanne Collins’ prequel novel, out March 18, is set 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games, and tells the origin story of Katniss’ gruff mentor, Haymitch Abernathy. The story picks up on the day of Haymitch’s own reaping — which also happens to be his 16th birthday — and, well, fans of the Hunger Games know how that goes for him. As the original trilogy revealed, Haymitch is selected as one of the District 12’s tributes for the 50th Hunger Games. But after he wins with a clever stunt, President Snow orders the death of Haymitch’s mother, brother, and girlfriend as retribution for his perceived defiance. These deaths shaped Haymitch into the jaded man we first met in The Hunger Games, but a new excerpt of Sunrise on the Reaping’s first chapter reveals that the seeds of his cynicism — and, more importantly, the hope that things could one day change — were planted long ago. In the audio excerpt, read by Collins in the video above, readers are introduced to Haymitch’s doomed girlfriend, Lenore Dove, on the morning of the reaping. When the pair talk about the impending selection, in which double the number of tributes will be picked, it’s easy to recognize Haymitch’s resigned tone when he tells Lenore that he tells himself things will be all right “because the reaping’s going to happen no matter what I believe.” Lenore refuses to accept this line of thinking, explaining that this type of passive compliance is “part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.” She urges Haymitch to imagine the world without a reaping, though he’s reluctant to give this idea any credence. This brief exchange feels like a small, but formative moment in Haymitch’s life, and it’s easy to understand how with Lenore’s death, the dreams of the better future she hoped to inspire in him died, too. But it’s also likely the memory of this moment that helped rekindle that flame of hope 24 years later, when he worked with Katniss to overthrow the Capitol and end the Games once and for all. The more we learn about Sunrise on the Reaping, the more clear it becomes that the book is going to hurt in the best way. The love between Haymitch and Lenore is so clear in this excerpt, which makes the knowledge of her eventual death even more painful than it already was. Though perhaps the most heart-wrenching detail of this whole thing is the reveal that Haymitch’s decision to raise geese is done in remembrance of Lenore. We can’t wait to find out what other devastating details Sunrise on the Reaping has in store when it hits shelves on March 18.
The weekly GTA Online update for March 13, 2025, is live with reward events, discounts, prizes, and some St. Patrick’s Day gear. Our GTA Online weekly update guide will tell you everything happening in Los Santos this week. GTA Online special events With last week’s launch of Oscar Guzman Flies Again, arms trafficking is still a priority in GTA Online this week. Once you purchase the McKenzie Field Hangar from Maze Bank, you’ll be able to take on Arms Trafficking Missions that are paying out 2x GTA$ and RP. Complete five Arms Trafficking Missions to fulfill the Weekly Challenge, and you’ll get the Buckingham Tee and GTA$ 100,000. This week is also St. Patrick’s Day. Logging on any time before March 19 will get you the Blarneys Stout Tee. PlayStation, Xbox, and enhanced PC players will also receive the Blarneys Festive Beer Hat. What are the 3x GTA$ events in GTA Online this week? This week, a new set of Community Series events are paying out 3x GTA$ and RP. On PS5, Xbox Series X, and enhanced PC, look for: Â KOTH: Triple Irish by ajm_agrajag Face to Face Colors by Chris-Himself Air Hotrings by Greenestamp NOSE: Adrenaline by Humorousnose249 Stuntbowl series V1 by Valitain (TOK) Blue Coil by TOKER714OC Minijuego Solo Francisco by xX_PANTHOR_Xx For PS4, Xbox One, and legacy PC, players can check out: Rezy’s Paintball by WhyRezzyy Black And Yellow by EggsAndJam THE RED ROOM by SevensSecret @ssj__ MOTOCROSS by dvgo_ssj *[KIRI] Kiritial D by RareKiritoFDPA Stunt – Blazer Aqua by pizzaaman9780 RPG VS INSURGENT VS TRAIN by xLusor_Nico What are the 2x GTA$ events in GTA Online this week? Parachute through midair checkpoints in any Junk Energy Skydive this week for 2x GTA$ and RP. What vehicles are for sale in GTA Online this week? You can get new vehicles weekly from Premium Deluxe Motorsports and the Luxury Autos Showroom. What’s in Premium Deluxe Motorsports Showroom this week? Head to Simeon’s Premium Deluxe Motorsports showroom for: Vapid Contender Ocelot Swinger Dewbauchee JB 700 Invetero Coquette BlackFin Progen Tyrus What’s in the Luxury Autos Showroom in GTA Online this week? At Luxury Autos over in Rockford Hills, you can pick up the following: Vapid Firebolt ASP Canis Castigator What’s the Lucky Wheel prize car in GTA Online this week? At the Diamond Casino, spin the wheel for a chance to win the Western Powersurge. What are the Salvage Yard Robbery targets in GTA Online this week? If you’ve set up a Salvage Yard to make money, you’ll be looking for: Karin Everon Toundra Panthere Vysser Neo (claimable) Which vehicles are discounted in GTA Online this week? Keeping with this week’s aerial theme, the Mammoth F-160 Raiju is 20% off this week from Warstock Cache & Carry. What is the Gun Van selling in GTA Online this week? Track down the Gun Van this week to pick up: Minigun (free) Heavy rifle (50% off) El Strickler military rifle (PS5, Xbox, and PC [Enhanced] only, free with GTA+) Compact EMP launcher (40% off with GTA+) Battle rifle Carbine rifle Battle axe Tear gas Pipe bombs And if you’re playing the main game, don’t miss our list of GTA 5 cheats.
For those with storage space problems, you can transfer your Pokémon Go Pokémon from the game to the Pokémon Home app, though it’s a one-way trip. In this Pokémon Go guide, we will explain how to transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home, how much it costs to transfer Legendary Pokémon, and how to transfer Pokémon to Nintendo Switch Pokémon games, with some exceptions. How do Pokémon Home transfers work? Doing this lets you transfer eligible Pokémon to Pokémon Sword and Shield, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and even Pokémon Legends Arceus (and presumably, future games), though you’ll need Pokémon Home installed on your Nintendo Switch to do so. From the Nintendo Switch app, you can simply move the transferred Pokémon into the PC boxes for your Switch games and the Home storage system. Keep in mind that transfers are permanent. Once you move your Pokémon from Go to Home, you can’t move them back. Using the Pokémon Home transfer system also rewards you with a Mystery Box to obtain Meltan. How to set up Pokémon Home on your Phone Download Pokémon Home on your phone, launch it, and log in with your Nintendo account. Pokémon Home is available on iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. Pokémon Home has a subscription system. It costs $2.99 a month, $4.99 for three months, and $15.99 for 12 months. The subscription allows you to store more Pokémon. Without it, you’ll only be able to hold 30 at a time. With a subscription, you can hold up to 6,000 Pokémon. You don’t need the subscription to transfer Pokémon, but you will if you plan on holding more than 30 Pokémon in Pokémon Home. How to link your Pokémon Go account to Pokémon Home To link your accounts, open your settings in Pokémon Go by tapping the settings gear (visible at the top right when you tap the Poké Ball menu icon). Select “Connected Devices and Services” and then “Pokémon Home.” When prompted, sign in with your Nintendo account. Make sure the Nintendo account you use here is the same one you use on your Pokémon Home account. How to transfer to Pokémon Home from Pokémon Go Once your accounts are linked, you can transfer Pokémon using the Go Transporter. To do this, go to your settings, select “Connected Devices and Services” again, “Pokémon Home,” and then hit “Send Pokémon.” From here, you can select any of the Pokémon you want to move. Keep in mind that you cannot transfer any of the following: Costumed Pokémon from events (such as Pikachu or Eevee in special hats) Shadow Pokémon Gigantamax Pokémon Currently Mega Evolved Pokémon (you can move them once the Mega Evolution ends) Any Pokémon caught in Go Safari balls Spinda, Origin Forme Dialga, Origin Forme Palkia, Zygarde, or Kubfu Your last remaining Dynamax Pokémon You can only transfer a limited number of Pokemon, as the Go Transporter only has a certain amount of energy. The energy recharges over time, but you can also opt to spend 1,000 Pokécoins to fill it back up instantly. It takes a little bit less than one week to refill the Go Transporter when it’s completely empty. Transferring a Shiny Pokémon or Mythical Pokémon costs about 1/4 of the bar, and transferring a Shiny Legendary Pokémon depletes the entire bar. Transferring a regular Legendary Pokémon costs less than 1/6 of the bar. Pokémon with higher CP also cost a bit more to transfer. You can only transfer Legendary Pokémon to Nintendo Switch games if you’ve already registered in the Pokédex for that game, so don’t get your hopes up if you’re just trying to quickly flesh out your dex. Some perks like Dynamax will be entirely removed from Pokémon upon transfer and stats are transferred, based on the Pokémon’s stats in Pokémon Go. There’s a bigger breakdown of all the stat transfers and numbers on Bulbapedia.
Space Marine 2 was a welcome return of a classic action game, and the sequel landed with a far bigger splash than the original game. After selling over four million copies, it’s not a surprise that Saber Interactive has announced that they have started development on Space Marine 3. According to a press release, the “new edition promises an even more immersive experience, staying true to the Warhammer 40,000 universe with intense, brutal, and spectacular gameplay.“ While we don’t know much yet about Space Marine 3, Saber did confirm that it would contain a campaign and a multiplayer mode. The end of Space Marine 2 was set up nicely for a sequel; protagonist Titus eventually stands triumphant over Chaos and Tyranids alike, and goes off on an unspecified mission with the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar. Titus also found the time to engage in a suicide mission against Chaos cultists in an installment of the Secret Level anthology produced by Amazon. The first two Space Marine games begin with an alien threat (Orks and Tyranids) before the surprise reveal of a Chaos Space Marine antagonist (The Chosen of Nemeroth, the Thousand Sons) and an ultimate confrontation. It’s far too early to predict who might show up to cause trouble in Space Marine 3, but the end of Space Marine 2 had some very interesting Necron technology that could potentially signal their arrival in the series. Saber Interactive will continue to work on Space Marine 2, promising “years of support.” The most recent addition to Space Marine 2 was the Datavault, which added the Tyranid Biovore, a PvP map, and new cosmetics. Saber is also working with Hasbro on a “tentpole IP”, according to a Hasbro earnings call in Feb. 2025. It’s unclear how this will affect the development of Space Marine 3; we’ve reached out to Hasbro and Saber and will update this story should we receive a response.
On Wednesday, Pokémon Go maker Niantic announced it was selling its games — which include Nintendo’s Pikmin Bloom and Capcom’s Monster Hunter Now — and the teams that make them to publisher Scopely in a deal worth $3.5 billion. While the news didn’t catch hardcore Pokémon Go players by surprise, Scopely’s acquisition of Pokémon Go was a source of concern, based on responses to the news from multiple communities around the game. What will happen when the game changes hands? players wondered, with some assuming the worst. Whether the handover from Niantic to Scopely will have a positive or negative impact on Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now remains to be seen, but there are valid reasons for players to be concerned. Who is Scopely? Scopely was founded in 2011 and launched its first free-to-play mobile games the following year: Dice with Buddies, Jewels with Buddies, and Bubble Galaxy with Buddies, three titles that draw heavy inspiration from Yahtzee, Bejeweled, and Puzzle Bobble, respectively. (Scopely also publishes an official Yahtzee game, Yahtzee with Buddies.) Since then, Scopely has grown massively in size, and now boasts eight internal studios with more than 2,300 employees worldwide as of 2024, according to co-founder and co-CEO Walter Driver. Some of that growth has been accomplished through acquisitions. In 2019, the publisher acquired Digit Game Studios, the maker of Scopley’s Star Trek Fleet Command, and in 2020, it acquired FoxNext Games Los Angeles, the original developer of Marvel Strike Force, from Disney. Scopely’s library of free-to-play games also includes hits like Stumble Guys, Bingo Bash, and Scrabble Go. But its biggest hit is Monopoly Go!, which grossed $3 billion in revenue faster than any other mobile game, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Monopoly Go!, which launched in 2023, is routinely one of the top 10 games in terms of revenue, according to Sensor Tower. Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group acquired Scopely in 2023 for $4.9 billion. Who is Savvy Games Group? Savvy Games Group was established in 2021 by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. Savvy Games Group was founded with Saudi Arabia’s “economic diversification and social transformation” in mind, according to the group’s CEO, Brian Ward. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and supposedly a “massive gamer,” serves as the PIF’s chairman. Savvy Games Group has spent billions of dollars on game investments over the past four years, with minority ownership stakes in Capcom, Electronic Arts, Nexon, Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive, and the Embracer Group. Savvy also owns esports organization ESL FACEIT Group and a handful of game studios in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The group’s investments in game publishers, developers, and esports organizations have been controversial, similar to accusations of the PIF “sportswashing” — meaning investments in sporting events like the World Cup and the establishment of LIV Golf, a league alternative to the PGA, to improve Saudi Arabia’s global reputation. PIF’s chairman, Mohammed bin Salman — also known as MBS — is the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Mohammed has been accused of ordering the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to reports of findings by the CIA. Axios reported in 2023 that Savvy Games Group backed out of a $2 billion deal with Embracer Group that left the games publisher reeling. As a result of that failed deal, Embracer sold off studios, laid off employees, and canceled games. What does Scopely’s acquisition mean for Pokémon Go? That’s still uncertain. Ed Wu, head of Pokémon Go and a senior VP at Niantic, said the move to Scopely “will be a positive step” for players and for the game’s future. “I have every belief Pokémon GO will further flourish as part of Scopely, not only into its second decade, but for many more years to come, under the mission of discovering Pokémon in the real world and inspiring people to explore together,” Wu said in a statement. “Our new partnership, along with our decade long partnership with The Pokémon Company, means we can maintain this long-term focus. Scopely fully believes in our mission and ongoing goal to create the best Pokémon GO experience possible. Their focus will be to support our team, providing resources to continue delivering the gameplay you all know and love.” Wu added that the “entire Pokémon GO team is staying together through this partnership,” promising that the “same people who have been guiding and building the game for years will continue doing what we love.” Scopely co-CEOs Javier Ferreira and Walter Driver made a similar promise about the future of Pokémon Go, Niantic’s other games and services, including Campfire and Wayfarer, and events like Pokémon Go Fest. “Players can expect that these games, apps, and events will stay true to the experiences they know and love and remain driven by the same dedicated development teams behind these beloved products,” Ferreira and Driver said in a statement. “Scopely’s role post-closing will be to empower the Niantic game team to pursue their ambitious roadmap by providing resources and support, all in service of giving players more of what they want from their favorite games.” Some Pokémon Go players have voiced skepticism of the deal since it was first reported in February, fretting that free-to-play monetization through in-game ads and microtransactions would be implemented in a similar way to Scopely’s other mobile games. Pokémon Go already has multiple in-game purchases; players can purchase coins to spend on raid passes, increased storage, and cosmetic items. Niantic has also sold passes to events and special in-game research, and recently introduced a battle pass-like research track for Pokémon Go. While players have occasionally grumbled over the increasing number of ways to spend money in Pokémon Go, some have expressed concern that a new owner will further exploit them through in-game purchases and pay-to-play mechanics. Others have expressed hope that The Pokémon Company International will rein in new owner Scopely to protect the Pokémon brand, which has made Pokémon Go a rare, enduring success under Niantic. Time will tell what the transition from Niantic to Scopely will mean for Pokémon Go players, but one thing’s for certain: Those players who have stuck with the mobile game will scrutinize its new owners closely, hoping that Niantic’s promises will be kept by its new steward.
Blobun is an indie puzzle game currently making waves on social media thanks to a joke setting that eliminates its lesbian content. The problem? Blobun protagonist Stephanie is gay, so flipping the so-called “lesbian toggle” in the options menu removes her from the game and renders it totally unplayable. “It all started a while back with our friend’s game Buck Up and Drive, which features billboards with various fake advertisements,” Blobun developer Jess told Polygon via email. [Ed. note: Pronoun usage may vary throughout this story as Jess is a plural collective consisting of multiple system members.] 🐭Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals…we gottem — Jess🌺(Blobun out now!) (@cyansorcery.com) 2025-02-27T21:58:54.369Z Jess encouraged Buck Up and Drive creator Fábio Fontes to add trans pride flags to the game’s possible advertisements. Fontes not only took Jess up on their suggestion, but also included a “pride toggle” in his game’s options. Rather than remove the LGBTQ+ content, however, the setting turned every billboard into a pride flag. “Some people were angry about it, but on the whole everyone loved it and thought it was really funny,” Jess said. When it came time to make Blobun, Jess took the toggle a step further by adding a “lesbian toggle” that removed the game’s gay main character, Stephanie, from the playing field, making even the simple early levels impossible to complete. The toggle was so popular in Blobun’s Steam Next Fest demo that its effects were expanded to skip cutscenes, make it so that players can’t view the credits, and remove Stephanie’s silhouette from the logo in the full game. “It’s been really funny so far seeing people’s reactions, whether it be confusion because they didn’t realize what the toggle was doing, laughing because they figured out exactly what the toggle was doing, or (in rare instances so far) being upset about it,” Jess said. “It was really important to us though, especially in the current political climate, to put this in the game — both to represent ourselves, our friends, and many people out there as well as to filter out the kind of people we don’t want playing our games anyways.” Some players have even asked Jess to have the toggle make Stephanie invisible rather than removing her altogether to make Blobun more difficult. “It sounds like a fun challenge, and we may implement it some time in the future,” Jess said.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has enjoyed a successful launch, and Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver are keeping the momentum going with updates, mod support, and DLC. Thursday’s Patch 1.2 update includes a crucial RPG feature by adding a barber to Zhelejob and Kuttenberg, so Henry can change his look to suit his mood. Warhorse has also added mod support, which should make the game much more customizable, and over 1,000 improvements and quality of life fixes. Patch 1.2 is a free, major update, and it includes changes to gameplay balance, NPC behaviour, equipment balance, and environmental improvements. The patch notes on the official Kingdom Come site are a sight to behold, including notes as small as rebalancing “the formula for triggering a black-out from being drunk” or “the comfort for studying books in inns.” I think my favorite tweak is that it’s now harder to feed your dog Mutt accidentally during combat, which was a surefire way to get stabbed a dozen times. The barber shop is the first of several free DLC additions, but it has a small but unexpected buff. Getting a haircut boosts Henry’s charisma, even if he picks an unstylish cut. There are also three upcoming quests that can be unlocked with the expansion pass: Brushes With Death, Legacy of the Forge, and Mysteria Ecclesiae. I’m excited to see what modders do with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which is a massive game built on many interlocking systems and mechanics. I’m still working my way through this massive game, but I’ll take any advantage I can get, since Bohemia is a rough place for a lone adventurer.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4 is bringing back the classic levels and gameplay of the early games — if not the free-skate structure career mode of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. The soundtrack for Activision and Iron Galaxy’s remaster will also be a mix of familiar and new, with a range of punk, hip hop, grunge, and classic rock, including classics like Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and newer fare like Run the Jewels’ “Yankee and the Brave (Ep. 4).” On Thursday, Activision confirmed 20 songs that will appear on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4, with the promise of more to come. You can listen to them all on this Spotify playlist, which Activision says will be updated as more music is confirmed. But here’s what we know so far: Returning Tracks Adolescents – “Amoeba” Alice In Chains – “Them Bones” Bodyjar – “Not the Same” CKY – “96 Quite Bitter Beings” Denzel Curry – “Ultimate” Gang of Four – “Damaged Goods” Gang Starr – “Mass Appeal” H2O – “Faster Than The World” Kitty – “Charlotte” KRS-One – “Outta Here” Motörhead – “Ace of Spades” New Tracks End It – “New Wage Slavery” Jeff Rosenstock – “Head” Run the Jewels – “Yankee and the Brave (Ep. 4)” Schoolboy Q ft. Kendrick Lamar – “Collard Greens” Starcrawler – “She Said” TMCF – “Result” Turnstile – “Real Thing” Urethane – “Dog Years” Wavves – “King of the Beach” Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4 will be released on July 11, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game is available for pre-order in a variety of editions and formats.
Netflix announced on Thursday that Charlie Brooker’s conversation-starting bleak-future anthology series Black Mirror will return for a seventh season on April 10. The announcement came with a gallery of season images and a preview trailer for the six-episode season, which includes prominent appearances from Paul Giamatti, Peter Capaldi, Awkwafina, and others, plus a Black Mirror first: an entire sequel episode, taking up the story of the season 4 episode “USS Callister.” Brooker had previously stated at a Netflix press event that two of this season’s episodes are “basically feature length,” and that the tone of the season returns to Black Mirror’s original blend of horror and dark futurism: “It’s back to basics in many ways. They’re all sci-fi stories — there’s definitely some horrifying things that occur, but maybe not in an overt horror-movie way. There’s definitely some disturbing content in it.” Past seasons of Black Mirror (and the feature-length choose-your-own-story interactive special Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) have largely focused on hyperbolic extensions and expansions of a particular technology, idea, or element of modern society, to the point where they become a focus for an unpleasant future. In keeping with the title, Brooker’s series focuses a “dark mirror” on the present, for instance considering what the world would look like if Boston Dynamics’ virally famous dog robots became autonomous weapons systems (season 4’s “Metalhead”), or if the trend toward every company following every experience and interaction with a “rate us” poll became the governing idea behind society (season 4’s “Nosedive”). That approach has famously led to some snide commentary about Brooker’s cynicism (like Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s viral tweet and later article describing the whole show as “what if phones but too much”), as well as a sense of repetition and diminished returns. Going back to previous episodes and expanding on their stories is a new and interesting approach — “USS Callister,” one of the series’ best episodes, is also one of the few with a positive ending and a sense that it could support an ongoing story. In that episode, Cristin Milioti plays a new arrival on a Star Trek-esque spaceship with a big secret, run by a toxic captain played by Jesse Plemons, king of toxic, discomfiting characters. Milioti will return for the sequel episode. The trailer also features Will Poulter as a character who looks familiar from Bandersnatch, though Netflix did not mention whether his episode is directly related to that project. Netflix doesn’t have loglines for individual episodes of season 7 yet, but the announcement did reiterate previous casting announcements and add new names: New Cast Announced: Michele Austin, Ben Bailey Smith, Asim Chaudhry, Josh Finan, James Nelson-Joyce, Will Poulter, Jay Simpson, Michael Workéyè Previously Announced Lead Cast: Awkwafina, Milanka Brooks, Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin, Patsy Ferran, Paul Giamatti, Lewis Gribben, Osy Ikhile, Rashida Jones, Siena Kelly, Billy Magnussen, Rosy McEwen, Cristin Milioti, Chris O’Dowd, Issa Rae, Paul G. Raymond, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jimmi Simpson, Harriet Walter Season 7 of Black Mirror will debut on April 10.
The 47-second announcement trailer for Disco Elysium’s upcoming Android release has familiar scenes from the original game zoomed in to fit within a phone screen. Text that normally sits in a panel on the right side of the screen has been moved to the center, and skill checks look like they’ll involve actually rolling a pair of dice. All of this seems like the sort of thing anyone would do for a mobile port of a narrative-focused detective game, but developer ZA/UM says it’s actually for TikTok users. “We intend to captivate the TikTok user with quick hits of compelling story, art, and audio, ultimately creating an all new, deeply engaging form of entertainment,” ZA/UM head Denis Havel said in a news release (via IGN). This “re-imagination” of Disco Elysium will feature 360-degree scenes to pan around in, and voice acting that is new compared to what was already in The Final Cut. Narrative lead Chris Priestman called the mobile version “what audiobooks wish they were,” and said it’s designed to be played in short bursts. These are bold comments for what seems like a well-made smartphone port, but not a port designed exclusively for TikTok users. Everyone can appreciate zoomed-in scenes and swipe-able dialogue, even if they haven’t grown up scrolling through vertical videos. Balatro’s mobile port kept the original game pretty intact and doesn’t let you play it in portrait mode, but Disco Elysium’s port looks locked to portrait mode. That’s probably why so much of it had to be reworked. I’m just not sure that makes it uniquely appealing to you if you like using TikTok. But maybe there’s more to it that will only become clear when it releases this summer. ZA/UM announced on Tuesday that it’s working on a new game currently titled C4 that promises to have a lot of the rich dialogue and characters you’d expect from the studio. According to a PC Gamer report, it’s not set in the Disco Elysium universe. It also won’t involve many of the names behind Disco Elysium, including game director Robert Kurvitz, art director Aleksander Rostov, and writer Helen Hindpere, who all confirmed that they left the studio in 2022.
PowerWash Simulator is a surprisingly cozy game, giving the player a pressure washer and a truly grimy and grubby environment to clean up. The game has been so successful that there are crossovers with other pop culture titans, like Warhammer 40,000 or Tomb Raider. On Thursday, developer FuturLab announced a self-published sequel with improved visuals, a new campaign, and new hygienic gadgets to try. The game is expected to be released later this year on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox. FuturLab released a short teaser trailer for the game, which doesn’t show too much in the way of new features, but it looks like the game will have all the satisfying spray action we have come to expect from the predecessor. What’s really exciting is the addition of split-screen multiplayer, so contractors can play with pals in person or online. “The original game’s design was all about eliminating anything that detracted from the pure satisfaction of taking something dirty and making it clean. PowerWash Simulator 2 is all about adding in even more avenues for players to achieve that same sense of satisfaction, with new tools, features and quality of life improvements,” says Dan Chequer, Design Director at FuturLab, in a press release. Players will get to see more of Muckingham, the original game’s setting, as well as travel out to places like Sponge Valley, Power Falls, and Lubri City. The press release also promises more effective soap, shared campaign progress online, and a customizable home base. While no release date was announced, FuturLab is expected to share more information in April.
Two Point Museum, the latest business sim from Two Point Studios, is an engrossing museum management game that keeps you hooked with constant rewards. The very act of sending out an archeological team to acquire more exhibits nets you a (totally free) loot box of ancient antiquities. Exhibit-buffing gems and additional themed decorations can be unlocked by researching the duplicates you find. You’ll also be assigned quests on your path to ranking up your museums, and each of these can have multiple objectives. Early on, these assignments nudge you to learn new game mechanics or focus on small improvements to your guest experience. These requests and your museums can be quite fantastical: one museum was located in a haunted mansion with actual ghosts I needed to wrangle and my space museum required carefully arranging alien artifacts in order to activate their secrets. But on my path to a five-star museum, the trickiest challenge I faced was figuring out how to pay my employees enough. The specific objective was to reach “75% pay satisfaction” for all my employees, a stat I admittedly hadn’t been paying attention to. I certainly had employees occasionally complain about their pay and threaten to leave, and a quick raise took care of that problem. But achieving this for my entire staff? Where would I find the money!? As colorful and silly as Two Point Museum can appear, it’s still a business sim at heart, and this challenge forced me to think that way… in my employees’ best interests! My museum ran on a shoestring budget cobbled together from grants, donations, and gift shop sales, so I needed to think about increasing all of those cash streams and add some more. First, I took some inspiration from real museums and redesigned my gift shop so my guests had to pass through it to reach the dinosaur wing, increasing foot traffic and sales. Next, I grabbed a sponsored poster and stuck it next to the bathroom — which is to say, I put it in a high traffic area where it wouldn’t detract from my pristine exhibits. Investigating my museum rating, which ties directly into the grant you receive monthly, I found that leveling up my employee skills would actually increase my rating, and the grant. Training my employees did increase how much pay they desired, but the benefits outweighed the added cost. It’s almost as though investing in your employees makes your business run better! Slowly but surely, I was able to raise my wages, which was easy to do in the employee management window. One button lets me immediately deal with any specific wage complaints by agreeing to a new salary, raising employee pay above the threshold where they’ll grumble about leaving. To go further, I could continue to manage each employee’s pay individually, but the game also has a handy “1% raise” button you can jam a couple times when your cash flow looks good. (Something something they should make that button in real life something something.) While it was tough at first, meticulously managing my budget and slowly raising my average pay, eventually my employees’ higher happiness levels started improving my museum directly. This feedback loop quickly helped pay for all these raises. Finally, the mission was complete and my museum was more popular than ever. What a whimsical concept!
Prytania Media owners Annie and Jeff Strain are suing NetEase for defamation, unfair trade practices, and interference with business relations, which the lawsuit says led to the destruction of the company and its multiple subsidiaries: Crop Circle Games, Possibility Space, Fang & Claw, and Dawon Entertainment. Each of these studios shut down in 2024, and the Strains laid off all their employees; in the case of both Crop Circle and Possibility Space, the Strains blamed the closure on staff allegedly leaking information about their studios to the press (and in particular, an unpublished Kotaku story about Possibility Space) and an inability to get funding. NetEase, for its part, was an investor in Crop Circle Games. Per documents filed in court, Prytania Media owned approximately 75% of that particular subsidiary, and NetEase owned 25%. Both Annie and Jeff Strain resigned from their positions within the studio when filing the lawsuit. The lawsuit, which Polygon has reviewed, was filed in January in Louisiana state court, but moved to federal court in March. In a letter sent to NetEase CEO Ding Lei in January, Steven Griffith, Jr., representing Prytania Media and the Strains, claimed that NetEase “spread false and defamatory statements that caused the demise of Prytania Media.” In the lawsuit, he said, they’re seeking $900 million in damages, triple an earlier $300 million valuation of the company. Griffith also alleged that NetEase, and in particular a NetEase employee named Chenglin Han, spread “defamatory rumors” that suggested Prytania Media was engaging in financial fraud. The Strains blame NetEase for any issues, suggesting that NetEase wasn’t interested in complying with the United States Department of the Treasury regulations. “I can share details in our next call, but the high level message is we want to keep away from the radar of [the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] which can be quite tricky,” Griffith attributed to a NetEase representative in the letter. “Geopolitical stuff is already causing trouble to our business efforts in North America, truth to be told.” The Strains say they urged NetEase to be compliant with U.S. law regarding its Crop Circle investment, but that NetEase representatives “became increasingly hostile and aggressive.” They assert that NetEase is hesitant to comply with these laws because it’d have to “identify owners and board members that are Members of the [Chinese Communist Party] and their position within the CCP, as well as the existence of its CCP party organizations, it [sic] members, and the control it exerts over NetEase.” The lawsuit also claims NetEase “dodged confirming its compliance” in the U.S. because NetEase executives wanted to emigrate to the U.S., including Lei, who allegedly intended to move into a $29 million mansion purchased from Elon Musk. The lawsuit alleges that the rumors about financial mismanagement, which eventually spread to the press, were an attempt on the part of NetEase to “silence Prytania Media’s concerns.” The Strains say they learned about these rumors when an investor, Transcend Fund, reached out with concerns of “fraud and misuse of funds” within Crop Circle Games. Andrew Sheppard, the managing director of the fund, allegedly confirmed that the report was from NetEase. From the lawsuit: NetEase told this gaming company that Crop Circle Games “was investigating fraudulent activities” on several bases. First, it was stated, incorrectly, that “[f]unds had been moved from Crop Circle Games to other subsidiaries without prior consent of relevant stakeholders.” Second, “quarterly financials [were] potentially materially inaccurate.” Lastly, NetEase asserted that “many key appointments [had] been let go” since “the potential leak” of the foregoing inaccurate information. The Strains further deny that “key employees” were let go because of the leak, “but because of the financial state of the company.” Transcend eventually requested “full access to all financial and audit information.” As the information spread, the Strains said, investors pulled out of discussions with both Crop Circle and Fang & Claw. “One by one, each of Prytania Media’s studios had to be closed,” lawyers wrote in the suit. “Ultimately, Prytania Media itself had to be shut down.” Possibility Space was shut down in April 2024, preceded by Crop Circle. The other studios that were part of Prytania Media followed. “There was not a single organization of any kind willing to invest in continued game development,” Annie Strain wrote in a now-deleted post on the Crop Circle website. The dissolution of these studios came as a surprise to their employees, who were all laid off without notice, per reports. Prytania Media was founded by Annie and Jeff Strain in 2021, building off the success of Jeff Strain’s first studio, ArenaNet. ArenaNet was founded in 2000 and is best known for Guild Wars. Jeff Strain moved on to found Undead Labs in 2009 and release State of Decay. Undead Labs was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and came under fire in 2022 for alleged “sexism, bullying, and burnout,” per a Kotaku report. Before founding these studios, Jeff Strain worked at Blizzard Entertainment on the likes of StarCraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft. The Strains’ lawsuit against NetEase has been assigned to a judge in federal court. Polygon has reached out to both sides for comment.
Citizens of Super Earth, we have good news for these troubled times: For those of you unable to participate in the hyperviolent struggle for democracy in Helldivers 2, a new diversion will soon become available for at-home play. Helldivers 2: The Board Game is currently in development from Steamforged Games. The 1-4 player strategy game opens a crowdfunding campaign on April 8, with plenty of detailed plastic miniatures to go around. I honestly can’t think of a better studio to work on this franchise. Steamforged is best known for interpreting video games for the tabletop, including high-earning campaigns for board games based on Dark Souls, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter. However, the company also has a bit of a track record of putting its foot in it, most notably requiring a reprint for its ill-fated Dungeons & Dragons setting. But its most recent offering, a board game based on Elden Ring, received a ringing endorsement in our recent review, so I’m fairly eager to see what’s in store with this one. The designers here are Nicholas Yu (Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught) and Derek Funkhouser (The Walking Dead: Something to Fear). We don’t have a lot of information, unfortunately, outside this brief description from Thursday’s news release: HELLDIVERS 2: The Board Game will match the fast-paced, tactical, tongue-in-cheek energy of the video game, plunging 1-4 players into an intergalactic struggle to protect Super Earth and rid the galaxy of alien threats in the name of liberty and democracy. Armed with deadly weapons (pistols, machine guns, flamethrowers), powerful stratagems (turrets, airstrikes, etc.), and coordinated tactics, players will work in squads to chellomplete [sic] high-risk missions, navigate hostile battlefields, call in reinforcements, and overcome enemy swarms. Just as in the video games, players will need to contend with evolving threats and objectives, as well as watch out for explosions and friendly fire. Every decision can mean the difference between glorious victory or total annihilation in service of Super Earth. Gamefound, the Poland-based crowdfunding platform competing with Kickstarter for the lucrative tabletop sector, is a high-quality partner for this project. The campaign kicks off April 8, when we’ll also learn how much the base game is expected to cost.
The Mighty Nein, the other actual play series from Vox Machina creators Critical Role, doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. But, if you ever wanted to show off your love for The Mighty Nein, Heroes & Villains has just launched a new line of apparel inspired by the heroic adventurers of Wildemount. While I typically cringe at most nerd-branded apparel, I can’t deny the appeal of the punk aesthetic attached to this collection. My personal favorite, the Mighty Nein Denim Work Jacket features a manga-inspired print of the excitable Tiefling Cleric, Jester Lavorre, fasted to the back with pyramid spikes. But if you’re in the market for something a little more understated, you might want to check out the Mighty Nein Logo Cardigan. A soft, striped, slouchy, button-up sweater that features an embroidered Mighty Nein Logo on the back. You can also find a series of “Tour” tee-shirts featuring animated portraits of The Mighty Nein, along with a list of locales they’ve visited.
Forestalling any rumors that Netflix’s Devil May Cry might have used generative AI to recreate the voice of the late Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series, the Arkham games), series creator Adi Shankar (Castlevania, Captain Laserhawk) confirmed on X that Conroy recorded his lines before his untimely passing. Shankar may have been prompted to clarify Conroy’s involvement after Netflix’s release of a new trailer for the upcoming series — animated by Studio Mir — on Wednesday. The trailer, which can be seen above, features Conroy’s voice in voiceover in its opening shots. “Was recorded before he passed. No AI used,” Shankar wrote, adding “It was both a pleasure and an honor to work with him.” Was recorded before he passed. No AI used. Mr. Conroy gave it amazingly nuanced performance. It was both a pleasure and an honor to work with him. 💔 https://t.co/XobimO1YBw — Adi Shankar (@adishankarbrand) March 13, 2025 Actor Johnny Yong Bosch, who has taken over the lead role of Dante for the new series, also wrote on X “It was an honor to work alongside Kevin Conroy for the upcoming DMC series […] For those wondering, our recording sessions took place a few years ago—animation takes quite some time to complete.” Conroy passed away of intestinal cancer at the age of 66 in late 2022, leaving a decades-spanning legacy in voice acting across television and video games, though he was inarguably most famous for the stamp he put on the character of Batman, through his roles as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman: The Animated Series and spinoffs, other DC animated projects, and Rocksteady’s Arkham series of games. He played Batman in a live-action production just one time, in the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover in the Arrowverse television shows. Devil May Cry is not Conroy’s only posthumous role: The animated film Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three and video game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, both featuring his voice, were released in 2024.
The search for the next James Bond has been raging long before the franchise’s recent sale to Amazon — in fact, it was burning even before Bond’s most recent on-screen appearance in 2021’s No Time to Die. One of the names that has popped up most frequently on lists of potential 007s has been Aaron Taylor-Johnson. While the suggestion has been met with mixed reception, his career so far suggests he’d be an excellent choice. And if you need proof, look no further than how brightly he shines in last year’s otherwise terrible Kraven the Hunter, which is now on Netflix. Kraven the Hunter is the last entry in Sony’s failed Spider-Universe project, and it sends the series off with exactly the quiet petering-out it deserves. The film follows a strangely altered version of the classic Spider-Man villain Kraven. Like Morbius and Venom before him, he’s made out to be something of a hero here, as the protagonist of his own movie. In this case, Kraven is the son of a Russian gangster — played by Russell Crowe, doing his latest preposterous accent, but having substantially less fun this time — and uses his powers to hunt down criminals like his father. Eventually, he faces off against the Foreigner and Rhino, but none of it ever makes much sense, providing neither compelling drama nor enough action sequences to be interesting. The one thing about the movie that does work is Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance, and he doesn’t even make the work look hard. Instead, he effortlessly brings humanity to Kraven, a character that’s otherwise just an empty IP-shaped hole in the middle of the movie. In Taylor-Johnson’s hands, though, Kraven has a million tiny moments of humanity that shine through his outer shell of hunting skills and weapons prowess. In one of the movie’s most surprisingly effective moments, Kraven goes to visit a childhood acquaintance at her office out of the blue immediately after Kraven’s brother is kidnapped. In the script, Kraven is fairly blasé about the whole thing, hardly acknowledging how strange it is that he went to someone he barely knows for help. But Taylor-Johnson gives Kraven an unspoken panic that sells the strangeness of the scene completely. He plays the emotion as totally foreign to Kraven, but still just as brutal and wild as everything else he does, shaking and seething at the fact that he’s suddenly encountered a type of fear he can’t control. Taylor-Johnson’s performance fills the movie with these tiny moments of fascinating humanity, all communicated as tiny holes in Kraven’s otherwise impenetrable wall of cool brutality. He even manages to sell some of the script’s worst jokes and zingers with tossed-off little laughs to himself, giving the impression that Kraven is the type who doesn’t care if you think his jokes are bad, as long as he gets a laugh. In other words, it’s pure movie star shit, pulling a winning performance out of thin air despite everything around him being bad. Meaning no disrespect at all to James Bond movies (a franchise I love, warts and all), this is exactly the quality an actor needs to succeed as the world’s most famous spy. Not because the material around him is bad, but because elevating the material with star power is what makes the series special. Bond is largely not a character, at least on the page. This isn’t an insult to Bond — it’s part of the beauty of how the character and franchise are structured. He has characteristics in each movie, sure, but it’s mostly up to the actor to bring life to his version of 007, building him into the unique picture of suave Britishness the franchise is built on. Kraven is also not a character on the page, which I do mean as an insult to Kraven the Hunter. Despite that fact, Aaron Taylor-Johnson imbues Kraven’s bland emptiness with charm, charisma, fear, doubt, and genuine humanity without any help at all from the movie around him. And it’s not the only time he’s done this. Consider for a moment his excellent performance in 2014’s fantastically underrated Godzilla reboot. The character he’s stuck with in that movie has no real characteristics at all, outside of having a kind of tense relationship with Bryan Cranston and being married to Elizabeth Olsen. Despite that fact, Taylor-Johnson gives the character heart and presence with barely any meaningful dialogue. He communicates so much through the way he carries himself and his seemingly infinite supply of subtle glances and tiny smirks that communicate something deeper beneath his scripted silence. In fact, Taylor-Johnson’s filmography is full of unexciting parts he’s turned into something more memorable. There’s Bullet Train, Tenet, The King’s Man, Outlaw King, The Wall, Nocturnal Animals, Savages — all parts that he elevated beyond the simple material or minimal screen time. And that’s exactly what Bond needs. If you don’t believe me, just look at Daniel Craig’s pre-007 career. It’s an onslaught of mid action movies and forgettable blockbusters, each made infinitely better by his electric charisma — and remarkable hotness, something Taylor-Johnson also shows off in spades in Kraven. Just to double back to an important point here: None of this is to say that Kraven the Hunter is particularly good. It isn’t. It is, however, a tremendous testament to Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s fantastic screen presence. And if that part of the movie is a preview of James Bond’s future, maybe 007 can survive Amazon after all. Kraven the Hunter is now streaming on Netflix.
Pokémon Go is celebrating the “Festival of Colors” from March 13-17, bringing the release of shiny Bruxish, as well as tons of other colorful perks with it. Notably, you’ll be able to get shiny Smeargle from the usual Smeargle photobombs, plus you can encounter Smeargle up to 10 times per day. After this event, shiny Smeargle will go back into the vault, only to come back out for another event, so definitely try to nab one while you can. Lures and Incense will also last three hours (instead of 30 minutes), though this doesn’t include your Daily Adventure Incense nor Golden Lure Modules. There are also some bonuses specifically for players in India, including a kurta-wearing Pikachu showing up in raids, one extra candy per caught raid Pokémon, and a special branching Timed Research set. If you’re looking for info on the India-exclusive perks, we’ll refer to you to Leek Duck’s event coverage. Below, we list all the perks for Pokémon Go’s “Festival of Colors” event, including the boosted spawns, free and paid Timed Research tasks, raid targets, and more. Pokémon Go ‘Festival of Colors’ 2025 event Timed Research and reward As usual with Pokémon Go events nowadays, there’s both a free and paid Timed Research. We list the steps for them both below. Remember that all of this research ends when the event does on March 17 at 8 p.m. in your local time. ‘Festival of Colors 2025’ free Timed Research If you complete this free research before the event ends, you’ll get a special reward. Step 1 of 1 Catch 15 Pokémon (Ledyba encounter) Make 15 curveball throws (Pawmi encounter) Use 15 berries to help catch Pokémon (Tadbulb encounter) Spin 15 PokéStops or gyms (Alolan Grimer encounter) Send 15 gifts to friends (Amaura encounter) Make 15 great throws (Crabrawler encounter) Catch 8 different species of Pokémon (Bruxish encounter) Trade a Pokémon (Bruxish encounter) Use an Incense (1 Incense) Rewards: 4 Rare Candy, 1,500 Stardust, 2,000 XP ‘Festival of Colors 2025’ paid Timed Research Is the “Festival of Colors” paid research worth it? Yes, the coin value is worth it, but you should really only buy this if you love Bruxish. You get 360 coins worth of items and tons of Bruxish encounters. $2 worth of coins is around 220 coins and the tasks are pretty straightforward when it comes to completing it, so you should be able to claim everything quickly before it expires. Step 1 of 2 Catch 7 Pokémon (Bruxish encounter) Make 5 curveball throws (Bruxish encounter) Spin 10 PokéStops or gyms (Bruxish encounter) Send 2 gifts to friends (Bruxish encounter) Use an Incense (Bruxish encounter) Catch 7 Pokémon (1 Incense) Rewards: 1 Lure Module, 1 Incense, 1,000 Stardust Step 2 of 2 Catch 7 Pokémon (Bruxish encounter) Make 5 curveball throws (Bruxish encounter) Spin 10 PokéStops or gyms (Bruxish encounter) Send 2 gifts to friends (Bruxish encounter) Use an Incense (Bruxish encounter) Catch 7 Pokémon (1 Incense) Rewards: 1 Lure Module, 1 Incense, 1,000 Stardust Pokémon Go ‘Festival of Colors’ 2025 event Field Research and rewards Spinning a PokéStop during the event period may yield one of these tasks: Catch 7 Pokémon (Flabébé) Explore 2 km (Bruxish encounter) Take a snapshot of your buddy (500 Stardust) Use an Incense (Bruxish encounter) The Flabébé task will reward you with the respective Flabébé from your region. Pokémon Go ‘Festival of Colors’ 2025 event boosted spawns These Pokémon will spawn more frequently during the event period: Drowzee Magikarp Natu Aipom Meditite Dwebble Flabébé Bruxish Pokémon Go ‘Festival of Colors’ 2025 event raid targets The following changes to the raid schedule and Max Battle schedule will take place as part of the event: Three-star raidsFive-star raidsMega raids VaporeonTapu KokoMega Swampert Jolteon Flareon
After spending 40 minutes on Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the panel of Wizards of the Coast designers at last month’s MagicCon in Chicago still had a few announcements up their sleeves. The preview event had already shown off a handful of new cards and a glimpse of a familiar dragon-centric story, but these panels are never limited to just one Magic: The Gathering expansion. The fans were hungry for more. That’s when Magic’s head designer and creative figurehead, Mark Rosewater, spoke up: “Magic is going someplace we have never gone to before… to space!” And the crowd went wild. Rosewater was referring to one of the game’s upcoming expansions, the fifth set of 2025, Edge of Eternities, officially scheduled to be released Aug. 1. Though Wizards had previously announced the concept for Edge of Eternities during a panel at its last MagicCon in Las Vegas, the initial reception to the news was a bit subdued, for a couple reasons. For one, the initial announcement lasted only a few minutes and had just a few pieces of art to convey the creative direction of the set. But perhaps more notably, the initial Edge of Eternities reveal arrived minutes after the controversial and game-changing announcement of Magic’s increase in Universes Beyond sets, including their entry into the game’s flagship competitive formats. Realistically, revealing cards or stories from Edge of Eternities probably would have felt premature at the Chicago panel. Not only because the set doesn’t arrive until August, but because there are two other expansions on the docket scheduled to come out first — Dragonstorm: Tarkir in April and the Final Fantasy crossover in June. So instead of cards, the Wizards team turned to its next-most-creative asset to essentially reintroduce their space odyssey to an audience primed for more of Magic’s own brand of world-building. According to Blake Rasmussen, Magic’s communications director and the panel’s emcee, the Chicago event showcased more art from an unreleased set than has ever been revealed before. “Magic has stretched what fantasy can be, where fantasy can go, what other genres can we join together with,” Rosewater told the crowd. “We’ve been talking about going to space for a long time […] and the idea was could we build what we’re calling a space fantasy set. “Not just going to space and ignoring what Magic is,” he added. “Could we do a space adventure that both feels like the genre of space odyssey, but also feels like Magic?” In an era of Magic where the game’s 30 years of storytelling and character development are now meant to coexist with other fandoms, including Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, and Fallout, properly conveying the Magic of Edge of Eternities emerged as the most important aspect to promoting the expansion. “I have a blog where people write to me every day, and one of the things people have been saying is that one of the things they love about Magic is our world-building, and that some of the last year we’ve been doing things that are a little trope-ier, a little less deep in the world-building,” Rosewater shared with the audience. “We invented an entire world. An entire galaxy. This isn’t just like a city. This is planets. It’s a giant scope. This is, I think, what people love about Magic. It’s a real deep, involved, lovingly built world.” And one of the central facets of designing the world and story behind Edge of Eternities turned out to be how some of Magic’s familiar, if not iconic, creature types would appear in such a novel setting. “It’s not just about hard science. It’s about knights in space, and it’s about pirates, and it’s about miners,” said Sarah Wassell, one of the other panelists sitting alongside Rosewater in Chicago. “The alien races are really fun because we all know science fiction. One of the cool things about it is how things are unexpected and there’s strange creatures.” “For example, what does a space angel look like?” Rosewater chimed in. “We had a lot of fun figuring that out.” Among the revisited creature types set to appear in the expansion is Kavu, a mutant lizard that had been previously considered native and exclusive to Magic’s homeworld of Dominaria. “We made a space race of Kavu,” Rosewater revealed. Following the preview panel, Rosewater and a couple of his colleagues took questions from press and content creators at a private Q&A. And it was here that he discussed how the success of 2022’s Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Magic’s first science fiction set, helped pave the way for Edge of Eternities. “One of the things that we did with Kamigawa was we were experimenting a little bit, and we pushed a little more technology than we ever had. And that set went over like gangbusters. People really loved it,” Rosewater explained. “We were very, very empowered by the success of Neon Dynasty to push a little bit more in that direction.” However, the use of more imaginative technology, whether or not it’s through the Magic filter, isn’t enough to build an entire expansion for the card game. And that’s where the real nature of player feedback informed Rosewater and his team what they had to create from the ground up for Edge of Eternities to capture people’s imaginations. “We are very careful to listen to the audience. We put stuff out and they give us feedback,” Rosewater said in the Q&A. “And there’s a very strong piece of feedback, which is world-building is really important to the audience. “We wanted to show [the audience] we did this with great care, and it’s not just random,” he added. “It’s not how anybody would do space. It’s how we would do space.” Players will have to wait another six months before the card game finally takes to the stars. And though a couple sets arrive before Edge of Eternities, if the mood in Chicago was any indication, fans can’t wait to blast off.
The list of things that make Severance’s Lumon Industries incomparably eerie is long: There’s the foreboding, monolithic building filled with dizzying, nondescript hallways. There are the oft-misplaced company-sanctioned attempts at camaraderie and joy. And, of course, there’s the off-kilter vocabulary that’s indelible to the company’s control over everyone it employs (and some it doesn’t). Lumon’s vernacular may at first seem par for the course for sci-fi — it’s an odd and specific repertoire that makes the viewer remember that this is not our world. In this case, though, it’s not just the writers communicating with the viewer. “Fetid moppet” is the insult Jame Eagan spits at his daughter in season 2, episode 2, after her innie escapes and makes a scene. Helena Eagan looks down in shame, or perhaps a bit of anger; the insult alone is enough punishment. The remark, literally, means “smelly child” — to our ears, a strange if not outright misplaced insult. Certainly, there is a more biting insult Jame could’ve leveled at Helena. Some might’ve even expected him to berate her at length. But at Lumon, it’s clear even just these two words make a devastating accusation and a profound offense. That’s because Lumon has established its own vocabulary and vernacular as a method of control, and as a way to construe who is “in” and who is “out” when it comes to being in Lumon’s good graces. And like any good controlling institution, anyone at Lumon can be cast aside if they step out of line. Even Helena Eagan — heir to the company, and evidently an important part of its public image — can be denigrated with the use of just a few words. At Lumon, words aren’t just words — they’re the extensions of Kier, and what Kier says is truth. Amanda Montell, author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, writes about the way cultish groups create their own vocabulary — a code that works to establish an “us versus them” dynamic and prevent thinking that criticizes or undermines the controlling group’s ideology. Montell often uses the analogy of learning Pig Latin to describe this phenomenon — when you learn how to use it, you feel “in.” Montell differentiates, though, between a vocabulary used to increase understanding, like medical terminology, and a vocabulary like Lumon’s. Cultish language, Montell says in this interview with Planet Word, is “there to make the exchange of information more confusing. It’s there to obscure truths.” The “fetid moppet” insult is a great example of this. It’s archaic and muddled by nuance, but the insult is understood as it was intended: She must simply submit all of herself to him, and hope she doesn’t misstep again. No one knows this better than Seth Milchick, the severed-floor manager whose performance review put him on blast for his vocabulary. He’s been promoted in season 2, and he’s desperate to maintain his role. He, too, employs Lumon’s eerie vocabulary and phrasing — but it’s too much, apparently. In his performance review in episode 5, Lumon rep Mr. Drummond tells him that he’s received “three contentions,” the first of which is “uses too many big words.” Milchick tries to maintain his own ideas about how to run things. Just an episode after his performance review, he calls Miss Huang into his office to reprimand her in his own way, and it’s filled with direct language and “big words.” He tells Miss Huang that graduation from her fellowship will require “eradicating from your essence childish folly.” We still don’t know Milchick’s true thoughts, backstory, or allegiances, but one thing is clear: He is not so entrapped by Lumon’s control that he can’t think for himself. Nonetheless, he works to please or impress his superiors; he practices his new, simpler speech in the mirror, attempting to excise the parts of him that displease Lumon and its mysterious board. Montell also talks about “thought-terminating cliches,” used to halt doubt when it arises and remind members of a group how they’re supposed to think if they want to stay inside of it. For Lumon, perhaps the most often used thought-terminating cliche is enough to get anyone to curiously capitulate: “The work is mysterious and important.” Drummond uses the phrase to convince Helena to return to the severed floor after the disastrous ORTBO in episode 5, for instance. Lumon’s management uses similar tactics on the innies, too, flooding them with meaningless platitudes at moments when they’re confused or, importantly, when they’re threatening to rebel once again. Like Montell says, it’s about creating less clarity, not more. When Irving’s innie disappears after misbehaving during the ORTBO, for example, his colleagues know his outie has likely been fired from Lumon. Milchick calls it an “elongated cruise voyage,” though — and while Dylan’s vocal about calling this out as a lie, Mark is too uncomfortable, too confused, and too tired to resist. He accepts the non-truth, because to deny it would be to acknowledge other realities of the ORTBO, like Helena deceiving him successfully. It’s not just the innies, or even the employees in general, that Lumon seeks to control with its idiosyncratic verbiage — it works to unsettle the viewer, too, and keeps us at arm’s length from whatever is going on inside Lumon’s doors. It’s no wonder that fans are left theorizing about Severance’s big secrets — the language of Lumon creates a fog so thick that even those raised in it can’t cut through to the reality underneath. In episode 8, when Harmony Cobel returns to her childhood home, her Lumon-allegiant aunt speaks to her in passive voice, half-truths, and obscurities. She’s Lumon through and through, and for her, it’s possible she’s outright forgotten how to speak in a typical, modern fashion. Or maybe Lumon’s is the only vernacular she speaks, instilled in her from the age she started working in that freezing factory.
Max Moves are unique abilities found on Dynamax Pokémon and Gigantamax Pokémon in Pokémon Go. There are three kinds available — a Max Strike, Max Guard, and Max Spirit — each with three levels total to power up. Beyond increasing the strength of Max Moves to make them more potent in Max Battles, the requirement to unlock a Max Move and level a Max Move are featured regularly in Timed Research in the run up to certain Max Monday and Max Battle Weekend events — so learning how to do these, and receiving some extra rewards upon completing these quest steps, is worthwhile. How to unlock a Max Move in Pokémon Go To unlock a Max Move in Pokémon Go, select a Dynamax Pokémon or Gigantamax Pokémon in your collection. You can spot these at a glance with the unique icon in the background on the collection screen, and with a specific Dynamax or Gigantamax symbol among stats like weight, typing, and how much Candy you have. To unlock a Max Move, tap the Dynamax or Gigantamax symbol on the Pokémon’s stats screen to expand it, revealing the Max Moves that Pokémon has. By default, the Pokémon will have just a single Max Move unlocked — Max Strike — at level 1. The other two Max Moves — Max Guard and Max Spirit — will be locked. To unlock a Max Move, tap one of these locked moves, then provided you have the required Max Particles and Candy, select “Train” to unlock the move. How to level a Max Move in Pokémon Go To level a Max Move, tap the Dynamax or Gigantamax menu on a Pokémon, revealing the Max Moves that Pokémon has, then tap the desired move you wish to level. You’ll be presented with the Max Particles, Candy — or in the case of levelling from level two to three, XL Candy — required to level the move. If you met the requirements, tap the “Train” button to level the move. Remember, each Max Move can only be progressed to level three, where they will be at their highest strength. If you have ran out of moves to unlock and level for the purposes of Timed Research, then catch another Dynamax or Gigantamax Pokémon, and start the process again.
The fate of the Edge of Tomorrow sequel might still be in flux, but on Thursday, Studio 4°C (Mind Game, Tekkonkinkreet) announced the next best thing: an animated adaptation of All You Need Is Kill, the 2004 light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Yoshitoshi Abe that Doug Liman’s film was based on. Directed by Kenichiro Akimoto, who previously served as the CG director for Ayumu Watanabe’s Children of the Sea and the Berserk: The Golden Age Arc film trilogy, All You Need Is Kill will retell the story of the novel from a different perspective than that of either its source material or 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow. The novel centers on a newly enlisted soldier in a future where humanity is pitted in an existential war against alien invaders known as Mimics. After dying in their first battle, the soldier awakens in the morning prior to the battle, having inadvertently been caught in a time loop. In order to succeed, they’ll have to find new allies and take what they’ve learned from their repeated battles to defeat the Mimics and save Earth. No word on when the film will be released, but we can expect to hear and see more details and footage of the film in the coming year.
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