Category: Video Gaming

Happy weekend, you silly little sausages. I know squirrels gathering autumn hazelnuts is a seasonally incorrect header image, but I like it. The boiler is gone in my house, so I’m wearing one of those giant hoodie things that comes down to my knees, and scuttle about the place secreting foodstuffs in the pouch. Wait, that’s more like a kangaroo, isn’t it. Curses! Regardless, I will only be able to warm my hands this weekend by cupping them over the light of my PC screen. What will I, and others, be playing on them this weekend?

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If you’re looking for a new Wordle (opens in new tab) angle, hoping to refine your game or want to win today’s Wordle at all costs, then you’ve clicked through to the right place. You’ll find everything from our extensive Wordle archive to hints, tips, and clues just below. If you need the answer to the January 21 (581) puzzle, then that’s just a quick click away too.

I almost came unstuck at the end of today’s puzzle, as I found myself staring at four greens, and all of the most obvious consonants had already been used or eliminated. Luckily there’s no time limit on Wordle, so a quick break gave me the fresh perspective needed to finally see what I’d missed the first time around—and kick myself for not spotting it earlier.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Saturday, January 21

Marvel Strike Force launched in March 2018 with a hefty roster of characters from various corners of the Marvel universes. From Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to your friendly neighborhood Defenders, Marvel Strike Force has updated its roster with characters from across its myriad comic, movies, and streaming properties.

Developer Boundless Entertainment has added new characters to recruit and battle at a steady clip, so it can be tricky to keep up with. We’ve gathered the up-to-date list of heroes and villains you can play as and against in the hit Marvel-themed mobile game. You can check out the full roster of playable characters below.

For more on Marvel Strike Force, check out our hub.

The team at Crystal Dynamics has announced the end of development for its live-service Marvel’s Avengers game. The news comes two and a half years after the game’s fall 2020 launch. In that time, the Marvel’s Avengers development team released 12 playable heroes (including the PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man), a full expansion set in Wakanda, multiple character-focused Operations, and several smaller pieces of content. 

The 2.7 update, which arrived November 30, 2022, adding Winter Soldier and the Cloning Lab Omega-Level Threat, was the final new content for Marvel’s Avengers. Crystal Dynamics has planned one final title update, version 2.8, to arrive on March 31, 2023. This update will not add any new content (including no additional cosmetics). Instead, it will deliver final balance updates and turn off the cosmetics marketplace.

Once this update arrives, credits will not be purchasable, and all remaining credits in players’ accounts will be converted to in-game resources like units, fragments, upgrade modules, polychoron, and DNA keys. As a result of the marketplace’s closure, all the game’s marketplace, challenge card, and shipment cosmetic content will be made free to all players. This means all outfits, takedowns, emotes, and nameplates from those sources will be free for all players starting on March 31.

Official support for Marvel’s Avengers will end completely on September 30. After that time, single-player and multiplayer will still be playable, but Crystal Dynamics is unlikely to address any additional issues with the game. The game will also be delisted from digital storefronts at that time. Marvel’s Avengers received middling reviews at launch, with many praising the single-player content. However, it was the repetitive multiplayer modes, abundant microtransactions, and the development team’s slow implementation of new content that soured many fans on the title. 

Seasons greetings, Polygon readers! This week sees Violent Night, the “Santa Claus meets Die Hard” action comedy starring David Harbour (Stranger Things) as a not-so-jolly Saint Nick, finally arrive to streaming on Peacock. Talk about seasonal drift! If watching the anthropomorphic embodiment of Christmas cheer murdering a group of mercenaries doesn’t quite sound like your idea of leisure viewing, not to worry— there’s tons more new movies to stream and rent on VOD this weekend.

JUNG_E, the new sci-fi action thriller from Train to Busan and Hellbound director Yeon Sang-ho, arriving this weekend on Netflix, Alex Garland’s freaky folk horror film Men on Showtime, the horror-thriller Old Man starring Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) on AMC Plus, as well as recent releases on VOD like Aftersun, The Menu, and Till for a reduced price.

Here are the new movies available for you to watch at home this weekend.

New on Netflix

JUNG_E

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Sci-fi/action
Run time: 1h 38m
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Kang Soo-yeon, Ryu Kyung-soo

Set in the distant future, this new sci-fi action thriller from the director of Train to Busan and Hellbound follows a legendary soldier whose mind is preserved after death by her daughter and brought back to life as an army of cyborg drones. When the original mind yearns for freedom, she’ll have to battle herself and an unscrupulous military scientist in order to win her freedom and possibly humanity’s future.

From our review:

JUNG_E opens with [an] exciting battle scene, and closes with a bigger, better action sequence, with slightly cartoony but effective (and when needed, appropriately weighty) visual effects. Yet it’s not exactly an action movie. In the long stretch between instances of mayhem, it goes through a lot of world-building, contemplative drama, and some plot twists that intentionally undermine both the characters’ and the audience’s expectations about where the story might logically be headed.

New on Peacock

Violent Night

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Beverly D’Angelo

David Harbour stars as Santa Claus in this action movie from 87North Productions, the legendary Hollywood action studio that brought you many of your favorite parts of John Wick and other recent action classics.

From our review:

Violent Night works best when it captures the warped sensibilities of early-’90s Chris Columbus movies, particularly Home Alone. It’s been pointed out so often that it barely needs to be said that the events of that film are actually horrifically traumatizing and violent, and that Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister is a pint-size sociopath. Little Trudy Lightstone has a sadistic streak in her, too, and the film’s most demented scenes are played with an outsized sense of cheer that effectively creates a sense of giggly discomfort. The difference here is that those moments are being engineered on purpose. The film has fun lobbing snarky one-liners and outrageous bloodshed at the audience, but on the whole, Violent Night’s big red bag of self-aware tricks is overstuffed.

New on Showtime

Men

Where to watch: Available to stream on Showtime

Photo: Kevin Baker/A24

Genre: Folk horror
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu

Alex Garland’s 2022 folk horror thriller stars Jessie Buckley (I’m Thinking of Ending Things) as a recently widowed woman who travels to a rural village in the English countryside to recuperate. Little does she know, however, the strangely all-male denizens of this quaint little town (all portrayed by Rory Kinnear of Black Mirror fame) are about to bring her face-to-face with her greatest nightmare.

From our review:

Men carries some echoes of other recent horror films, particularly the ones built around small, telling aggressions that represent larger splits in society. It resembles Jordan Peele’s Get Out in some structural ways: Just as Get Out’s Black protagonist Chris clings to his phone contact with his Black friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery) as a lifeline when he’s out of his element in a white country enclave, Harper gets her only support via phone from her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin), the one other significant woman in the film. (Other notable similarities can’t be discussed without spoilers.) And the lush environs, gender tension, the focus on grief and ways to express it, the boiling anger below the surface, and the resultant primal screaming all recall Ari Aster’s Midsommar, another film soaked in dread and a sense of inevitability.

New on AMC Plus

Old Man

Where to watch: Available to stream on AMC Plus

Image: RLJE Films

Genre: Horror/thriller
Run time: 1h 37m
Director: Lucky McKee
Cast: Stephen Lang, Marc Senter, Liana Wright-Mark

Not to be confused with the 2022 drama thriller series starring Jeff Bridges, this 2022 horror thriller follows the story of Joe (Marc Senter), a lost traveler who happens upon the remote cabin of an elderly man living alone in the woods. Joe gets more than he bargained for, as the old man has something far more sinister in mind than being a simple good samaritan.

New on VOD

Aftersun (reduced price)

Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: A24

Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Charlotte Wells
Cast: Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal, Celia Rowlson-Hall

Polygon’s No. 8 best movie of the year, an impressive feature debut from filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is finally available to watch at home. I’ll let our blurb for Aftersun speak for itself.

The human memory is, famously, unreliable — faulty to the point of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood memories are perhaps the best example of this: Even a small, isolated memory can completely change tone later when seen with the full spectrum of adulthood, filtered through the prism of concern and care that comes with it. It’s a tough concept to wrap your brain around at times. And so Aftersun feels like a small miracle in the ways it not only captures that scope but manages to frame the whole concept with grace.

Young father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on a rare resort vacation, a fading moment captured by her on a clunky camcorder (at least partially; you know what it’s like to hand a kid a video camera). While that plot is simple in construction, the execution of it is far more profound, capturing the wistful vantage points of both Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on holiday with equal, vivid clarity. In Aftersun’s hands, memory is just as slippery as it’s always been. Sometimes conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; growing up is seeing the full picture of their trip, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its ability to capture that. It’s a testament to the performances at the center of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the film manages to suggest so much without overstating its point. After all, memory may be unreliable, but sometimes memory — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a warm embrace — is all we have.

Blaze

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Apple and Vudu

Image: Causeway Films/Bonsai Films

Genre: Crime/fantasy drama
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Del Kathryn Barton
Cast: Julia Savage, Simon Baker, Yael Stone

This drama follows the eponymous Blaze (Julia Savage), an imaginative 12-year-old girl, who is traumatized after inadvertently witnessing a woman being assaulted in an alley in her neighborhood. Cared for by her father (Simon Baker), she retreats into the security of her own fantasies as she attempts to grapple with the horrors of what she witnessed and the greater cruelties of the world at large.

Kids vs. Aliens

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: RLJE Films/Shudder

Genre: Sci-fi/horror
Run time: 1h 15m
Director: Jason Eisener
Cast: Dominic Mariche, Phoebe Rex, Calem MacDonald

Looking for some more ’80s throwback sci-fi horror with a requisite synthwave score à la Stranger Things? Well, take a gander at the new movie from Hobo With a Shotgun director Jason Eisener about a group of kids whose raucous slumber party takes a turn for the worse when bloodthirsty aliens descend on their quiet little suburb in a plot to take over Earth.

The Menu

Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu (also streaming on HBO Max)

Photo: Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures

Genre: Dark comedy/horror
Run time: 1h 47m
Director: Mark Mylod
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult

Anya Taylor-Joy (The Northman) stars opposite Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Margot, a young woman who is invited on a “date” with a wealthy food snob named Tyler (Hoult) to eat at Hawthorne, an exclusive restaurant owned by reclusive world-renowned chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). It’s not long, though, before they realize that Slowik has something else in mind for them besides overpriced oysters and beef bourguignon.

From our review:

The Menu often reads like an expansive version of a single-set play, where a group of people forced into close proximity gradually crack under pressure and reveal new things about themselves. A lot of what keeps it going isn’t that stagey energy, but the staging itself. production designer Ethan Tobman was inspired by everything from Luis Buñuel’s devastating 1962 film The Exterminating Angel (another film about smug elites who can’t escape each other) to German expressionist architecture. He and cinematographer Peter Deming give the film a harsh, punishing chilliness that emphasizes both the lack of comfort or warmth in haute cuisine and the state of Chef Slowik’s mind. It’s an appropriately sumptuous and sense-driven film, with something striking to look at in every frame.

Till

Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: United Artists Releasing

Genre: Biographical drama
Run time: 2h 10m
Director: Chinonye Chukwu
Cast: Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison

Danielle Deadwyler stars in Chinonye Chukwu’s biopic drama of Mamie Till, the woman who campaigned for justice after the violent lynching of her son, Emmett Till, while visiting family in Mississippi.

Mini-games return in Like a Dragon: Ishin!

Get ready to spend countless hours drinking the night away, dancing, karaoke and… racing chickens?

Like a Dragon: Ishin!, launches on February 21, 2023 for PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Steam.

By
Erick Tay
on January 20, 2023 at 3:23PM PST

A little more than two years after its original release, Crystal Dynamics is preparing to end active development on Marvel’s Avengers, a decision it says it “undertook in conjunction with our partners.”

According to a blog titled “Final Update on the Future of Marvel’s Avengers,” support will discontinue on September 30, after which digital purchases will no longer be available. All solo content will continue to be playable after support ends, and multiplayer will also remain available.

An important announcement about the future of Marvel’s Avengers: https://t.co/hTmenK6wmJ pic.twitter.com/JVZNNDNzZy

— Marvel’s Avengers (@PlayAvengers) January 20, 2023

Crystal Dynamics does not plan to release any new stories, features, or Heroes, making Update 2.7 — which added the Winter Soldier and the Cloning Lab Omega-Level Threat — the final content release for Avengers. Spider-Man will remain a PlayStation exclusive.

Nothing is scarier than relationships.

Some movie trailers do their best to push all the information you might need before the premiere to let you properly gauge your interest. Other trailers don’t care about all that and only want to show you a series of odd sequences you cannot piece together, but know you’ll watch it just to find out exactly what the film is about. In case you were unaware, Woman of the Photographs is entirely the latter.

According to the trailer’s description, the film revolves around Kai, a photographer who is afraid of women. A chance meeting with Kyoko, a model who suffers from body dysmorphia, pulls him into a “twisted romance.” Kai becomes focused on saving Kyoko, even at the cost of himself.

Based on the trailer, Kyoko seems to have some fixation on Photoshop, as the program makes several appearances throughout the trailer. Anything could happen in the movie depicted in that trailer, even some cannibalism, based on the unsettling amount of focus on a praying mantis and the fact that the female eats the male after mating.

Those familiar with Takashi Miike’s 1999 film Audition might notice the inspiration it obviously serves, as that movie also involved a mysterious and dangerous woman suddenly entering the life of a lonely man.

Woman of the Photographs will get a small theatrical release on Feb. 3, followed by a release on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime and VUDU on Feb. 7. Judging by the blu-ray listing of the film on the website of distributor Dread (which also distributed the Terrifier films), Woman of the Photographs will also include an English dub. That same web page will let you pre-order a physical copy of Woman of the Photographs for a later release on March 14.

Samsung’s Odyssey G4 gaming monitor is a great option for competitive gaming, with an IPS panel, 240Hz refresh rate and comfortable 25-inch screen size. The monitor normally costs around £243, but today it’s down to £199 at Amazon UK.

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Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart said he’d like to create another Fallout game before he retires.

In an interview with Gamepressure, Urquhart was asked whether a new Fallout game would be possible under Obsidian, who developed Fallout: New Vegas. “I would love to make another Fallout before I retire. I don’t know when that is, I don’t have a date of my retirement,” Urquhart explained.

He continued, “It’s funny – you can say I’m already 52, or only 52. It’s one of those two, depending on the day. My hope is that’ll happen, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

Back in October, Urquhart said he’d like to create another Fallout game. The main question wasn’t whether Obsidian Entertainment would make one, but when will the opportunity arise to do it? Currently, Obsidian is working on Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, which so far don’t have a release window.