Monthly Archives: December 2019
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Ties into Fortnite in an Unexpected Way
Fortnite’s collaboration with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker may have contained more connections relevant to the actual plot of the movie than previously realized.
Lucasfilm went on a series of media blitzes ahead of the release for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. One of those media campaigns included a special mini-event in Fortnite where players could dress up like popular Star Wars characters and watch an exclusive clip from the film. But there were also other in-game, Star Wars-related events, including one directly referenced in the movie.
Apple TV’s For All Mankind: Season 1 Ending Explained
This interview contains spoilers for Season 1 of Apple TV Plus' space race drama For All Mankind.
Season 1 of Apple TV+’s For All Mankind has been a consistently engrossing, frequently harrowing, but ultimately hopeful exploration of an alt-history space race, charting the many ripple effects - throughout NASA and the wider world - spawned by the Soviets landing on the moon before the US did.
In the Season 1 finale, we see many of our central characters reach a new status quo - Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is finally back from his long, solitary sojourn on the moon, and he and wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) must reckon with the devastating, life-altering loss of their son after a tragic accident. Gordo (Michael Dorman) and Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones) seem to have solidified their relationship after Tracy’s first trip to space (and Gordo’s poignant psychological breakdown from being trapped on the Jamestown base far longer than anticipated), while Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour) appears to have taken Deke Slayton’s (Chris Bauer) dying advice to heart and chosen to go all-in on her fabricated relationship with Larry (Nate Corddry) in an effort to hide the fact that she’s a lesbian from NASA.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Earns $40 Million in Thursday Previews
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's Thursday night preview brought in around $40 million in North American box offices. The final chapter in the Skywalker saga sought to bring a close to the Star Wars film franchise for the foreseeable future.
First reported by The Hollywood Reporter, The Rise of Skywalker had the fifth-best Thursday night performance ever, and while it didn't beat The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi's takes, it did beat out Rogue One's $29 million preview night haul. The Rise of Skywalker is set to release in around 3,200 theaters over the holiday break.
Is Rise of Skywalker a Last Jedi Course Correction?
Full spoilers follow for The Rise of Skywalker.
Imagine a teddy bear you owned as a kid. You loved the thing; you basically poured all of your hopes and dreams into it. And looking at this battered, distinct, magical object makes you feel something deep down inside. Nostalgia, sure, but also hope. Now, imagine that it’s gotten worn out beyond recognition, and you give it to someone to repair.
That’s sort of what Star Wars was before this new trilogy: an old thing, housing all those potent feelings of adventure and excitement from our childhood, and suddenly we’re entrusting it to the hands of some random Gepetto, who assures us with a wink that he’ll bring it back, good as new.
5 Unannounced Xbox Sequels We Want to Play on Series X
Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s next-generation console, and if the reveal trailer for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is any indication, it’s going to be one hell of a machine. So with that sequel looking so stellar running on the new hardware, we thought: “What other unannounced sequels do we want to play on Series X?” Here are five we’ve got our fingers crossed for:
1) Grand Theft Auto VI
It’s just a matter of when, not if, we get the next Grand Theft Auto sequel, considering that GTA V is one of the best AND most commercially successful video games of all time. GTA V pushed the Xbox 360 – yes, the 360, remember? – to its limits before adding a first-person mode and more features to its Xbox One version, so we can’t wait to see what sort of insane citywide detail the Xbox Series X will allow Rockstar to pull off.
CD Projekt Red Strikes New Witcher Deal
CD Projekt Red and The Witcher author Andrezej Sapkowski have announced a new deal following a yearlong dispute over compensation for CD Projekt Red’s video game adaptation of the Polish fantasy novels.
The two parties announced that on December 20, 2019, they’ve “entered into an agreement which solidifies and reinforces
relationship with Mr. Andrzej Sapkowski - author of The Witcher saga.”
Star Wars: Lightsaber Color Meanings Explained
An elegant weapon for a more civilized age, the lightsaber is neither clumsy nor random, and each one is unique like a snowflake… a very, very dangerous snowflake. But what do all the Star Wars lightsaber colors mean, and why do some people have purple lightsabers and some people have yellow lightsabers? Let us explain.
Warning: Full spoilers follow for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. For more on Star Wars, read all the Rise of Skywalker plot holes answered in the Visual Dictionary, and check out our Star Wars ending explained.
Stardew Valley Coming To Teslas This Holiday
This holiday season will bring Stardew Valley to Tesla vehicles, as announced in a tweet from CEO Elon Musk.
The farming RPG, in which players can tend crops, raise livestock, pursue romantic partners, and more, will arrive in an upcoming software update for the electric vehicles.
"Tesla holiday software update has FSD sneak preview, Stardew Valley, Lost Backgammon & a few other things," Musk shared in a tweet.
The teased FSD sneak preview, which stands for full self-driving, might sound like the perfect companion for video games in a Tesla — but Stardew Valley and other games are only available to play when a Tesla is parked. Still, Stardew Valley might make for a good time-killing game for Tesla owners since it is the type of game that can be picked up and played for just a few minutes (or hours) of time.
All the Big Games Coming in 2020
With the launch of next-gen consoles, the return of Halo, CD Projekt Red’s next epic, the first chapter of the long-awaited FFVII Remake, The Last of Us Part II, and much more, 2020 is shaping up to be a standout year for games. As the new year fast approaches, we're highlighting the best of what's to come over the next 12 months.
Click through the gallery below or continue scrolling for our list of the 36 biggest games with confirmed 2020 release dates.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
Release Date: January 17 | Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
As it stands, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is the first big, AAA release of 2020. As a fully fledged action-RPG, Kakarot adds character levels, NPCs, sidequests, and more, while largely maintaining the combat system from previous 3D Dragon Ball fighting games.
The Touryst Review – Life’s A Beach
The first island you visit in The Touryst is a tiny, perpetually sunny place, and it's full of spots to have a sit or a lie down. Having a rest doesn't achieve anything, but I found that my immediate instinct was to give my character a moment to luxuriate on a bed in one of the island's small personal rooms--this is a game about vacationing, after all, and on any vacation it's important to relax. The Touryst is a soothing and relaxing experience thanks to the lovingly rendered voxel graphics and the (mostly) gentle gameplay, and despite some occasional moments of frustration, playing it really does feel like taking a mini-vacation.
You play as a moustachioed man in a loud shirt who is tasked with travelling between different island vacation spots and collecting cores that rest within the game's scant few monuments--essentially short dungeons. You move between beach parties under orange sunsets, lush tropical expanses, and Mediterranean tourist spots, before diving into murky underground caverns that contain jumping puzzles and non-violent boss encounters. It's a strange combination of elements, but The Touryst wears its strangeness on its sleeve.
This is, above all else, a game about the joy of a holiday. As you play, you unlock new islands to visit, and while each one is small, they also all have their own distinct flavor, as well as unique activities to discover and engage with. The superb voxel art style imbues each setting with personality and makes the simple act of sightseeing a pleasure. Simply existing in these beautiful locations is inherently enjoyable, and while each new setting won't take long to fully explore, I found walking around each one calming.
The monuments themselves contain puzzles and tests of your dexterity, and working your way through them is essential to unlock every island and complete the game's story. They're ultimately the least interesting part of the game, but they're certainly not without their charms. They can be quite challenging, but the key is usually to just remember that there's an optimal solution to the puzzles, even when it seems like they're just asking you to nail precise jumps. Often, how you're manipulating the camera to line up your angles and judge the space you're in is as important as your ability to control your trajectory; if you're messing a jump up often, it's because you haven't quite cracked what that room is asking of you.
Even so, every now and then, the game asks for a greater level of precision from your actions than the controls want to give you. The controls are a bit floaty for how small some of the platforms you're landing on are, and one jumping puzzle took me, at a conservative estimate, 25 attempts to get. The rooms inside monuments are viewed from an isometric perspective, which can make judging gaps difficult. Any situation that requires you to throw an object with great precision is frustrating too because of how the throwing arc works, but these moments of frustration only stick out because they are rare.
Outside of these moments, The Touryst is a game with a lot of chill. One island doesn't even have a monument at all--instead it has a movie theatre that shows a short highlight reel of moments from the rest of the game, an art gallery that you'll eventually populate with your own photography, and, best of all, a retro arcade with three cabinets. There's a racing game (based on the studio's own Switch game Fast RMX), a strange platformer, and a Breakout clone, all offering brief diversions that successfully sucked me in for an hour. Completing the high scores in these arcade games (and earning the arbitrary cash reward) is challenging, but there's something almost zen about a game that encourages you to waste your time like this--it perfectly captures my very specific childhood memory of discovering arcade machines in local pubs while on holiday and shovelling coins into them. The Touryst, appropriately, frames everything you do as an act of tourism.
Completing sidequests will earn you money, but cash is largely inconsequential to completing the game--by the time the credits rolled I had hundreds of coins left with very little to spend them on. The sidequests play into the shaggy nature of the game--you don't complete them because they're helpful, but because you want to see everything the game world has to offer. I spent a long time down a mine you encounter on one island, engaged with a spelunking challenge that lets you collect gems that can then be exchanged for money. I spent so much time down there not because I needed money--I never even traded the gems in. I did it because the mines are particularly enjoyable--they let you abseil down cliffs, swing between ledges, and even ride rickety minecarts as you delve deeper and deeper.
There are plenty of other activities scattered across The Touryst's small world. You can fix up a boring beach party, then liven it up further by buying new records for the DJ; you can show off your sporting prowess in surfing, soccer, and pull-up minigames; you can search the game world for photography subjects with the camera you're given early on, or hunt down several carefully hidden scrolls. The sidequests are often very simple and easy but watching as island life slowly shifts and changes based on your actions is a delight.
I found that as the credits rolled on The Touryst's strange ending, I was keen for them to finish so I could jump straight back in and mop up the remaining objectives. Admittedly, even if you want to do absolutely everything, The Touryst isn't very long—my completion total sat at 94% after five and a half hours. But perhaps it's better this way--after all, the best vacations often end before you've had a chance to really get homesick. It's the next best thing to an actual holiday.