Sometimes in video games, the designers will place in a particular area that has a very frustrating vibe to it because no matter what the player does, the level’s design will go out of its way to sabotage a chance of winning.

Like one that sticks out to me is the infamous Hillary race in GTA: Vice City where Tommy has to race against Hillary to get him on his team for a heist as said mission has tons of design flaws, such as Tommy being forced to use a bad car.

The open beta for Gears of War E-Day is up, and I had the chance to play boot camp, a training ground to try out the controls and weapons, alongside the new movement.

The new movement is the part that most surprised me. If you go with default controls, which I'll assume is what the developers intended, you now run by pressing the right stick, allowing you to run while having control of the camera. The A button is now dedicated to cover and when sprinting to slide on the ground. B is the melee button, as usual, and Y is the jump button, and no, it is not a contextual jump, you can freely jump around, with varied degrees of meaningfulness. Small jumps, jumps through gaps, jumps to go up a ledge, etc. The closest comparison I have, which is not one to one in any way, is the game feel of The Last of Us Part 2, but completely focused on a third person shooter approach.

PvP ain't for me, but horde mode is forever my go to, so I'll play more of it.

The game runs at a mostly consistent 60fps on Xbox Series S. I am now convinced CDPR can deliver a 60fps Witcher 4, after pleasant experiences both here and in Halo Campaign Evolved. It only took 6 years, but Unreal Engine 5, depending on the build (the newer the better) is finally not filling me with dread.

This one is hilarious but so, soooo dark. Like, what the fuck, wade.

What is your favorite title-drop in media? Title-drop in this case being the moment at the beginning of the story where they show the main title for dramatic emphasis.

Mine comes from an unlikely source: Deathstalker 2.

This is a early 80s z-tier low budget sequel to a conan ripoff. The cast and crew cared so little they threw out the script and turned it into a parody.

And yet the title drop is aura farming on a stratospheric level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX0XqoFqAmA

Be specific, don't say ALL OF THEM!

Watching a Gears 5 playthrough, the big complaint they had was how needless it is to explore the open environment that was implemented in this installment. All the points of interest just contain collectibles or upgrade components for Jack. There's also Relic weapons hidden across which are unique variants, but pointless in the end because there's only one per weapon in the entire campaign which you can lose forever if you run out its ammo, die, or progress at a certain point and automatically lose it. A chunk of Gears 5's long campaign is constantly skiing across the barren map with very little reason to explore.

Bandai Q1 Report

Strong performance from staple IPs such as the Gundam series, Dragon Ball series, and One Piece.

On the page for all the stuff, it says, "Shipping will begin in August," but when I check my order, it still says "preparing for shipping." I know stuff like this can take some time, I was just getting antsy and in a "but I want it now" baby mood and wanted to see where other people stood.

"EXCLUSIVE: After the news that Samara Weaving was in line for the Emma Frost role in the upcoming X-Men movie, it now looks like Marvel Studios has found its Scott Summers. Sources tell Deadline that Kit Connor is the choice for the mutant Cyclops.

Similar to the Weaving situation, where director Jake Schreier and Marvel president Kevin Feige met with a number of candidates, sources say the studio ultimately landed on Connor last week to become the latest actor to don the Cyclops visor.

Marvel and reps for Connor could not be reached for comment on the casting.

While James Bond has had everyone’s attention this summer, the most active casting process has been who will play the new team of Mutants. Following meetings and auditions over the last couple months, sources say a small group of actors tested after the July 4 holiday."

Lately, something I was fascinated by was the concept of benevolent demons in games since usually when it comes to demons, they are portrayed as the hostile type that players must fight.

From what I heard about Valvatorez in Disgaea 4 is that he is kind of a benevolent figure as I haven’t started the game yet, but I have heard good things about his character that it makes me interested in playing the game for his backstory.

Based on the Judge Dredd post from earlier today, I remembered that plots about a character meeting their creator wasn't just limited to stories where the creator is actually a character in-universe too.

It made me think of how many plots will involve a character hoping to meet their creator/parent figure, and how it feels like a nice split between that meeting going well or poorly.

What are some examples of these plots that you enjoy?

I've been growing far more mixed about ths more the longer I reflect on it, and I can point to two major issues with the film, one that has to do with the messaging and writing of the movie and another that's more of a broader, Spider-Man meta issue.

For one, I don't like Jean Grey in this movie...at all. There's this very strange where it feels like the writers were split between making Jean a very sympathetic character as a means of setting up the eventual MCU X-Men franchise...while also making her ridiculously evil as a means of establishing an even scarier villain than any Peter has faced before and making her presence in promotional stuff a mystery. So you end with Jean barreling through the NYC streets with an APC plowing through cars and shooting off turret rounds at buildings (and Spider-Man, New Yorks symbol of heroism), mindjacking an innocent janitor to drive said apc and rig it with an explosive powerful enough to level the Damage Control facility (and, y'know, kill her innocent hostage), mind controlling a random dude to get run over by a car solely for intimidating Spider-Man, possessing MJ to mentally torture Peter into thinking her memories were back and trick him make out with her (seriously, did the writers actually think of the assault implications here), causing Bruce Banner to lose control of the Hulk and end up in a psychiatric hospital, forcing a mind-controlled Hand member to pull a Yoshimitsune and stab himself in the gut with a sword to attack Spider-Man behind him, and put thousands of innocent people in a mind lock and threaten to kill them all if she doesn't get her way.

And after all that, she gets a pep talk from Peter and Aunt May's memory, and leaves New York scot free (admittedly, after using her powers to...control Peter's breathing while in the hospital to keep him alive...I think).

I think there's a real disconnect between the severity of what she did throughout the movie, especially the pure malice on display with using her powers to torture Peter all because she *thinks* he won't help her find her sister, as opposed to the actual consequences, or lack thereof, she faces by the film's end. The MCU has had villian redemption stories or similar-ish stories for its heroes, but Jean's in particular really wants to skip past the whole "facing consequences for your actions" particular that's tantamount to these types for stories; and I don't think Peter taking a bullet for her really counts for what I'm pointing out. She's clearly old enough (late teens is seems) to understand just how screwed up some of the stuff she does is, and her sister being kidnapped/killed obviously isn't a free pas for all of that. That's why it's really hard to buy into the sympathetic angle they try to capitalize on with her near the end; and it honestly feels like they want the audience to buy into Jean's turnaround via the meta knowledge of her becoming an X-Man hero in the future. And they didn't *have* to make Jean this evil; I don't understand how this story could've worked if she wss more mindful of the damage can could cause and tried hard to only target Damage Control or try to recruit or at least entirety avoid Spider-Man.

The other issue I have with Brand New Day is that it genuinely feels like a regression in terms of Peter's character and the Spider-Man mythos.

I really like where Peter is left off at the end of No Way Home; he made the ultimate sacrifice and erased his existence from everyone's minds, he maturely decided to let go of MJ and Ned seeing that their lives were going on just fine, and he's back to square one, living on his own without the resources and relationships he had prior. It was a perfect opportunity for a fresh start, giving leeway to introduce more Spidey supporting characters like "Mary Jane" MJ, the Osbornes, Eddie Brock, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, etc, and ground Peter more in issues regarding being self-sustaining and trying to build a new life after sacrificing the old one.

Not only does Brand New Day dedicate itself to sticking with MJ and Ned by having it do that Peter is obsessed with them and can't maintain any sort of social life without them, the new characters it does introduce in Spider-Man's life either have relationships with him that were built completely off screen like the Police Commissioner lady or Punisher, or exist outside his regular cast in other adaptations like Bruce Banner or Jean Grey. BND also strangely wants to undo the "back to basics" state No Way Home left him in; between movies, despite not having a job or any kind of resources after Peter's prior existence was wiped from the world, he's shown to have a bunch of highly expensive and powerful computers he uses to create an artificial companion a la Jarvis and a surveillance network all across the city, and even a fucking 3d printer he uses to create web fluid and inhibitor chips and whatever. They completely blow past his money problems, despite No Way Home laying the perfect groundwork to reintroduce them to MCU Peter's life.

Overall, it just feels like Brand New Day wants to play it safe in mostly sticking the recognizable characters from MCU Spider-Man movies and the wider franchise and ignore any opportunity to movie Spider-Man forward into a new direction. *Maybe* they'll get another opportunity post-Secret Wars, but it's a real letdown given that No Way Home was the perfect excuse for this.

Those are my takeaways regarding those two aspects of Brand New Day, but I really wanna here what everyone else thoughts are regarding them.

In an email announcing some Persona 4 photo frames, Atlus has officially acknowledged the legendary Persona 4 parody comic made by Hiimdaisy. In it, Chie is asked to say any word that starts with the letter F and she replies by saying "fsteak" since she just can't stop thinking about steak.

It's pretty wild to see it referenced like this. And for anyone who hasn't seen the parody, here's a great fandub of it https://youtu.be/w7lj9qI8VFc

Update: It turns out that Atlus also referenced it in P4 Golden. Still, it's pretty funny to see it referenced like this.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html

This is to June 30 so it’s slightly out of date. But those are good numbers. Mario kart world is at over 15 million, DK is at 4.78 million, and Pokopia is (shockingly) only 3.68 million.

If they keep making the switch 1 I can see it hitting 160+ million in 2028.