Category: Video Gaming

C Engineer (opens in new tab) is an Old School Runescape streamer who started an ironman run two years ago, asking his viewers to donate money to a prize pool to be claimed by whoever managed to kill him. It was initially a “hardcore ironman” run but he dropped the hardcore element after dying in a boss fight, intending to end the series only if he managed to earn an infernal cape (opens in new tab), or died to another player. The latter finally happened this month. 

A team of five players tracked C Engineer down so that Westham (opens in new tab) could score the kill and earn 16 billion gold, the largest bounty in the history of Old School Runescape.

OlliOlli World is getting a final piece of DLC. Finding The Flowzone, which will be released this November, features a new bunch of levels to grind across – only these ones are set among the clouds. It’ll also include new “Windzones” for catching greater air, as well as harder routes designed for the best players.

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I find I have next to no interest in the coming Gotham Knights, but a blocky recreation of Gotham in Minecraft? Yeah, that’s cute. It’s part of what’s coming in the newly announced Batman DLC for Minecraft, as well as the ability to fight Batman’s rogue gallery including the Penguin, Poison Ivy and The Joker.

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Minecraft 1.20 is coming next year, and at Minecraft Live 2022 today, the team at Mojang showed off a little bit of the update.

During the show, the camel mob, hanging signs, chiseled bookshelves, and crafting with bamboo were shown off.

Players will be able to make all sorts of things with bamboo nodes, such as planks, rafts, and more. The chiseled bookshelf will allow you to store up to six books and they can even be used as doors.

There will be three different versions of hanging signs, and with camels, well the cuties will hang around in the desert and sport a saddle that holds up to two players. If you like camels well enough, feel free to breed them to your heart’s content.

The Minecraft gameplay team also revealed seven new default skins for the game. Makena, Efe, Noor, Kai, Ari, Sunny, and Zuri will join Alex and Steve in the Minecraft Launcher and Dressing Room. The new default skins will be available in Minecraft on November 29.

And the final bit of news for the original Minecraft has to do with this year’s Mob Vote. So, which creature was chosen? The Sniffer, Tuff Golem, or Rascal? The winner was Sniffer, as should have been the case. The little creature looks a bit like a turtle, and was once part of the Overworld’s ecosystem. If you find its egg, you can hatch the new mob and even breed it. The creature will also find certain seeds for you.

For Minecraft Dungeons players, information on the third season was shared, and you will be able to dive into everything on October 19.

A first-hand look at the new four-player mode for the Tower was shown, and it will feature three new floors and two new bosses. Season 3: Fauna Faire will also include a slew of new flairs, pets, skins, emotes, and free content, including the Phantom Familiar.

There’s also a new level called Treetop Tangle that comes with three new pieces of gear, and a new merchant called the Enchantsmith will arrive with the update, and will set up shop in your camp.

This month, you can also head to the Minecraft Marketplace and grab the Hungriest Horror Armor set and the free Cloaked Armor Set.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is coming real soon and I’ve been waiting for this game ever since the post credits cutscene of 2019’s Modern Warfare. So here’s what I’m looking forward to, and what I’m not looking forward to in both the campaign & multiplayer.

From movie style set pieces, to wicked plot twists, and sick villains, the cod campaigns are something I look forward to every release. Call me casual but I know I’m not the only one who was disappointed when Black Ops 4 didn’t have a campaign. Now so far we’ve only seen the reveal of the Dark Water mission and snippets from the brand new campaign trailer released earlier. Dark Water looked dope to me, but some people online felt that it looked like a rehash of the original Modern Warfare’s opening ship mission which, fair! The cutscenes from the new trailer though? Dude seriously, I had to pause and double take because I thought this was a live-action trailer, the cgi and cutscenes look really awesome and I can not wait to bust it out on my shiny Series X or PC.

Unfortunately, in multiplayer, Activision likes to mess with everything it touches, and a big part of me is warily waiting for something to happen with Modern Warfare 2’s live service model, especially from a “give me more money” point of view. If not at launch, then almost certainly in future season passes. Modern Warfare 2019 was really tame at launch when it came to cosmetics and microtransactions with a lot of skins being pretty neat mil-sim style stuff. Then along came Warzone and suddenly we got crazier and crazier skins compounded with Black Ops and Vanguard all transitioning their skins across games.

Modern Warfare 2 is right around the corner with a weird rolling launch. We’ve got the campaign coming up first in an early access period, then the official base launch with multiplayer, and Warzone 2.0 at its heels with a November launch. We’ve all enjoyed our time with the multiplayer beta so far so be sure to subscribe for more guides, gameplay, livestreams, and of course our official review score once the game launches.

Trigger warning: the following article contains mentions of depression and suicide

One of Bayonetta 3’s most head-scratching decisions was Platinum’s decision to switch Bayonetta’s voice actor from Hellena Taylor to Jennifer Hale. Taylor played the Umbra Witch in the first two games, but Platinum explained in our cover story that she wouldn’t reprise the role due to “various overlapping circumstances.” Taylor had been largely silent on the issue, presumably due to a non-disclosure agreement, but has broken her silence with a fiery message claiming “immoral” compensation from Platinum. 

In a Twitter thread, Taylor shared a three-part video message where she explains how things fell apart between herself and Platinum. She says that when Bayonetta 3 was in development, she was required to re-audition for the role, which is standard practice since a performer’s voice can change as they age. Taylor states she passed “with flying colors,” to which Platinum presented her with what she describes as “an insulting offer”. 

Taylor says she then wrote Platinum co-founder and Bayonetta 3 supervising director Hideki Kamiya directly to demand “what I’m worth.” She claims Kamiya replied by expressing his value for her talent and her popularity with the fanbase. Platinum then offered her a $4,000 flat rate for her the entire voiceover job. 

“The Bayonetta franchise made an approximated $450 million. That’s not including merchandise,” says Taylor. “…this is an insult to me, the amount of time that I took to work on my talent, and everything that I have given to this game and to the fans. I am asking the fans to boycott this game and instead spend the money that you would have spent on this game donating it to charity. I didn’t want the world. I didn’t ask for too much. I was just asking for a decent, dignified living wage. What they did was legal, but it was immoral.”

Taylor, a classically trained actor, writer, and director, says she’s calling for the boycott as a show of solidarity for underpaid workers. She comments on England’s cost of living and wage issues, saying, “there are nurses going to food banks to feed their children. This is not right, this is not acceptable. It impacts mental health.” Taylor says the financial strife caused her to suffer bouts of depression and anxiety to the extent that she was at one point suicidal. 

“I am not afraid of the non-disclosure agreement,” says Taylor. “I can’t even afford to run a car. What are they going to do, take my clothes? Good luck to them.” 

As for Platinum’s statement implying that a scheduling conflict was the reason Taylor was recast, she responds by saying: 

“Platinum had the cheek to say that I was busy, that they ‘couldn’t make it work with Ms. Taylor’s schedule’ while I had nothing but time.”

Taylor then comments on Jennifer Hale replacing her, saying: 

“They now have a new girl voicing her over. And I love actors, I wish her all the joy in the world, I wish her all the jobs. But she has no right to say she is the voice of Bayonetta. I created that voice. She has no right to sign merchandise as Bayonetta anymore than I have the right to sign as Eva Green, even though I was her parrot on the video game The Golden Compass. That portrayal is hers and hers alone.” 

Taylor concludes by saying, “They’ll probably try to do a spin-off with Jeanne. Don’t buy that one either.” 

Hideki Kamiya has seemingly tweeted a response, writing “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That’s what all I can tell now.” 

So there it is. We’ll see how or if Platinum as a whole responds (especially legally since Taylor is evidently breaking an NDA), but this is bad PR blow to get hit with so close to Bayonetta 3’s release. A vocal sect of the hardcore Bayonetta fanbase had already suspected there was much more to the voiceover change than what Platinum stated; some hoped the multiversal storyline presented the possibility that Hellena still appeared as a Bayonetta variant. That’s apparently not the case, and it’ll be interesting to see if a boycott does gain any traction. 

Bayonetta 3 is slated to launch on October 28 for Switch. 

Last year, Reddit user tosamyng had a problem. After seeing a post on a game collecting subreddit with several convincing fakes of popular Pokemon games, they began to wonder if their Pokemon collection was riddled with bootlegs, too. Luckily, they knew just where to go: r/gameverifying, the Game Verification subreddit.

Tosamyng posted a detailed gallery of their Pokemon games to the community, complete with boxes and photos of each individual game, front and back. In total, the haul represents thousands of dollars worth of retro goodness, with each of the “complete-in-box” GBA games fetching between $200 and $500 on the open market alone. It’s no exaggeration to say that if even a fraction of these copies had turned out to be bootlegs, it would represent a loss of hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to the owner.

Fortunately, tosamyng’s story has a happy ending: All of their games passed the test. However, they’re one of the lucky ones. For almost three years now, the Game Verification subreddit has served as a bulwark against the waves of fake retro games that crest against the shores of eBay, Etsy, and other digital storefronts. But as the community’s co-creator, Frontzie puts it, the outpouring of fake and bootleg retro games has only gotten worse since COVID–and he expects it to stay that way.

“The number of bootlegs has increased over time, especially throughout the pandemic,” Frontzie says. “However, the production of bootlegs seems to be shifting over to better, more improved fakes, albeit in smaller numbers. We’ve noticed that fake Game Boy Color/Advance PCBs and shells have improved somewhat, getting closer to a 1:1 reproduction.”

On paper, r/gameverifying is a small community–at around 14,000 subscribers, it pales in comparison to similar boards like r/gamecollecting, which boasts over 210,000. Despite this, the subreddit gets dozens (sometimes hundreds) of posts a day from aspiring collectors who want to know if the amazing deal they found on eBay is indeed too good to be true. (It usually is.)

In fact, Frontzie and a friend originally founded the subreddit due to an onslaught of verification posts on r/gamecollecting, which caused some users to complain. Today, the community has 19 “trusted verifiers” who pronounce judgment on the flood of photos that users post of their collections. However, though most Redditors are wise enough to read the forum’s rules before jumping in–omit all seller information, don’t ask for valuations or grading, and definitely post front and back–some simply dump muddy, low-resolution auction images and expect the verifiers to do their best anyway. That’s a great way to ensure that you don’t get any advice at all.

“I think retro gaming has exploded in popularity because those gamers who grew up with Pokemon are now aged 25-45 and actually have ‘adult money’ to purchase things,” says Frostigator, a truster verifier and moderator. “My main tip is that if it sounds too good to be true, it’s a fake or a scam 99% of the time.”

As seasoned collectors know, fake and unauthorized games have existed for almost as long as the video game industry itself. For example, Atari’s original Pong was heavily “inspired” by the Magnavox Odyssey’s ping-pong game, arguably to the point of outright infringement. This ultimately resulted in a lawsuit. In terms of more obvious bootlegs there are a number of infamous Famicom carts from the ’80s and ’90s, including the misleadingly-titled porn game Super Maruo, and Somari, which essentially drops Mario in Sonic the Hedgehog 1.

Due to the fraudulent nature of fake games, it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly how they’ve changed in recent years. Based on the experience of the verifiers, however, the volume of fake games has only increased over time. And while any game can be faked–Frontzie cites copies of Cooking Mama and Hello Kitty as frequent examples–the most common games posted to r/gameverifying all belong to the same franchise: Pokemon. In fact, several verifiers said that they first joined the community when they realized that their own Pokemon cartridges were fake.

“For me, it was a copy of HeartGold,” says Mutty, a trusted verifier. “I decided to join the community to train myself to recognize fake games, and to make sure other people didn’t have to experience what I went through. It’s mostly DS and GBA cartridges, since they’re the most common.”

“I think the main reason that we see so many Pokemon bootleg cartridges is due to the value retention of legitimate Pokemon games,” says GameFrank, another trusted verifier. “Many gamers want to play the original versions for themselves, but maybe can’t afford to drop over $100 on a Nintendo DS or Game Boy cart. The bootlegs are, unfortunately, a cheaper alternative for those wanting to play these games in an affordable way.”

The further proliferation of bootlegs–as well as increased demand from buyers–has led the verifiers to create illustrated guides for console games from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Switch. These guides are currently hosted on the subreddit’s wiki, though the community’s staff are in the process of moving them to an external website. If you don’t have time to wait for a verifier to respond to your post, buyers hoping to plop their hard-earned cash on the real thing should check the subreddit’s wiki in order to divine an online listing’s legitimacy for themselves.

Some verification methods are more straightforward than others. If you’re in the market for 3DS or Switch games, you can rest easy for the most part. Modern copy-protection methods have made it very difficult (if not impossible) for would-be-bootleggers to make their own version of these late cartridge-based systems. However, if you’re ever in doubt about the legitimacy of your Switch games, you can lick them–it should taste quite bitter. This is a real method that Nintendo uses to prevent young children from biting down on your copy of Super Mario Odyssey.

The more obscure the console, the less likely you are to stumble on a bootleg. If you’re trying to collect WonderSwan games, you probably don’t need to worry about an army of fraudsters bilking you with fake carts. However, some of the more sought-after titles for lesser-known consoles are still in the danger zone. The Sega Saturn is usually only reserved for true enthusiasts, but there are so many reproductions of the classic Panzer Dragoon Saga out there that one user made a dedicated guide to identifying the real thing.

As for the more common collectable games, there are a few rules of thumb that can help you suss out a fake in a matter of seconds and with minimal tools. For example, fake Nintendo 64 games tend to be more rounded than their legitimate equivalents. Did you ever notice that the dot of the I in “Nintendo” on N64 carts is square? If it’s a circle, it’s a guaranteed bootleg. (Go ahead, check your collection. I know I did.) Even the shape of the screws in the back of the cartridge assembly can help determine a copy’s legitimacy. Real N64 carts are round all the way around the edge, while most bootlegs tend to have hexagonal screws.

However, some of these “rules of thumb” have become outdated over time, as bootleggers have become more savvy and quality-sensitive. Although fake DS games were once a rarity, many reproductions have “M8” etched near the top of the prongs, which collectors used as a telltale sign for years. Today, some bootlegs have taken to replacing this with “MB,” which could denote either a real or a fake cart.

Indeed, perhaps the most famous such “rule of thumb” is no longer reliable at all–a victim of its own success. For years, Pokemon fans looked for the “four gold rectangles” as an easy verification technique for highly desirable Game Boy Advance carts of Generation 3 games like Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. If you could make out four rectangles through the translucent plastic on the back of the cart, the story goes, you can be sure that your copy is legitimate.

Unfortunately, this factoid became so popular on video game forums and social media that fakers clued in to it, and verifiers no longer regard it as a reliable indicator of anything. One scammer even tried to pass off reproductions of Gen 3 Pokemon games by inserting a drawn piece of paper in the cart to “replicate” the look of the telltale rectangles. At least they tried.

Of course, short of these easy methods, there’s no substitute for opening up the cartridge and having a look at the board inside. However, that’s easier said than done. You can find authentic reference images of the innards of popular games with a little bit of Googling–the game verification wiki links to several repositories. Most carts for collectable consoles have small screws that require a specialty electronics set like the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit. Some consoles are more hack-friendly than others. While opening a Game Boy Color game is pretty straightforward, it’s pretty much impossible to put a DS cart back together once you’ve opened it, so stick to external methods there.

While these specific verification methods are useful in their specific situations, if you want to avoid bootlegs altogether, it’s best to harness some logic rather than snapping up a “great deal” in a nostalgia-drenched haze. Mutty suggests that buyers check the site PriceCharting in order to determine if an online listing’s price is within a normal range. Others say to avoid sketchy online auctions altogether, especially on Etsy. “Retro game collecting is expensive,” Mutty says. “You need to learn how to find good deals.”

“If you’re a first-time collector, you should make sure you’re purchasing from reputable sources,” GameFrank says. “While general market sites like eBay and Mercari have retro gaming options, I would advise trying to network with collectors. I myself have joined local Facebook groups to find gamers selling and trading their unwanted video games.”

Fraud in video game collecting goes beyond selling bootlegs as the genuine article. There’s an argument to be made that the popularity of aftermarket consoles made by boutique companies like Analogue have also helped push the market into overdrive. But not every collector actually plays the games they buy. In recent years, game collecting as a community has moved towards “grading” individual copies of games for their quality and value. While there’s nothing wrong with trying to standardize the hobby, some observers have described the current state of the retro gaming market as a bubble, with collectors selling “highly-graded” sealed copies of popular (but common) games like Super Mario 64 at seemingly-inflated prices.

These high-profile auctions might raise eyebrows, but it remains to be seen if they have any impact beyond the very top-end of the market. However, judging by social media posts, it does seem that more collectors have interest in gobbling up factory-sealed copies of their favorite games, which often sell for five to 10 times more than a “complete-in-box” version. Unscrupulous sellers will simply “reseal” a legitimate copy of a game in shrink wrap and make far more profit. It’s often difficult to tell a fake seal from the real thing based on low-quality photos, but the verifiers do their best.

Overall, while the world of game-collecting is bigger than ever, it’s also fraught with peril for collectors that don’t do their research. If you’re planning to drop a significant chunk of money on one of your favorite childhood classics, you might want to ask the game verifiers before you click that buy button. And it’s unlikely that the verifiers will run out of work anytime soon–as younger gamers continue to age into spending money and nostalgia, brave new worlds of video game scams will emerge. For example, disc games have always been easier to pirate than their cartridge-based equivalents–and that extends to the bootlegging scene, too.

“It’ll be interesting to see how Blu-Rays will be affected,” Frontzie says. “The barrier to entry to creating your own counterfeit PS1 discs is $100. It’s scary.”

For over 40 years, the Halloween franchise has been associated with one character and one mask: Michael Myers and his blank, white visage. (He even appears in the stand-alone Halloween III: Season of the Witch courtesy of a “Heh heh. Get it?” commercial playing on a TV.) Famously the result of taking a William Shatner Star Trek mask and retooling it to provide even more mindless evil, that mask is right there with Jason Voorhees’ notorious hockey mask when it comes to embodying the slasher genre as a whole.

However, not all of the masks are built equally. As the Halloween series progressed, various redesigns would cause a Rise and Fall and Rise of sorts, and if you’re the kind of person who deeply cares (the right kind of person) you’ll notice each one gives Michael a distinctly different vibe.

Halloween (1978): The Classic

The romantic ideal of the Michael Myers mask, the original works so well mainly because the director of the film, John Carpenter, is so adept at knowing where shadows are supposed to be. The cheekbones provide a little underline in dark close-ups so it doesn’t look like Myers is wearing a mayonnaise container on his head, and very rarely do you see Michael’s actual eyes, lending him that inhuman quality of “The Shape.” Combine that with the slight tussle in his hair and you have a grade-A maniac mask, one that totally alienates the audience from any sort of human connection or empathy.

Halloween II (1981): The Dye Job

Image: Universal Pictures

The mask in Halloween II isn’t too dissimilar from the first, but there’s one key difference: The hair has been given a brownish touch, and depending on the light, it can look redder or even blonder. It’s also much more slicked-back here, making Michael look like he’s already wearing a toupee to relive his glory days from three years earlier. It’s not a bad mask, but just as much of Halloween II is the franchise working overtime to keep up with the slasher wave that it helped inspire, it does feel like a rushed product.

Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988): The Bland One

Image: Trancas International Films

Story-wise, the fact that Myers would nab a mask that only barely looks like his original in a sequel set 10 years after makes sense. At this point, the company producing them has probably changed hands a couple of times in the Reagan ’80s. The mask has had all of the cool details removed and now has the “bought it at CVS Pharmacy at 6:04 p.m. on Oct. 31 in a panic just before trick-or-treating” look. It’s a shame it looks so cheap and corny in every single shot because otherwise, Return is a pretty great Halloween movie with loads of atmosphere.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989): The Bottom of the Barrel

Image: Magnum Pictures

It’s a debate that’s raged for centuries, or, ya know, at least since the ’90s. Which mask is worse: the one from 1988 or 1989? Return’s is bereft of any menacing features to an ironic extent and Revenge has features, but all the wrong ones. The neck is way too large, meaning the rubber is left just kind of flapping around the stuntman’s throat. Meanwhile, the nose is way too thin, which, when mixed with the grungy hair, gives it a real Timothée Chalamet vibe.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995): The Goofball

Image: Miramax

After a six-year hiatus, the Halloween franchise would return with a mask that’s a little better than the one in the previous two installments. This one has scruffy hair and a blank expression, but that expression doesn’t exude pure unreasonable malice; instead, it’s a puppy-dog innocence that looks like Michael Myers is having trouble with a trivia question at all times. The confusion makes sense, though — at this point in the franchise, the Halloween lore had spiraled out of control, losing the original intent of faceless, unexplainable evil and instead having Myers transform into an incestuous bull stud for a Celtic-themed doomsday cult.

Halloween H20 (1998): The Mixed Bag

Image: Dimension Films

Returning the franchise to its roots, ignoring the past four sequels, and reintroducing Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode character to the series definitely made for a sleeker experience. If only the mask could keep up. There are multiple masks used throughout H20, including CGI ones. But if we had to grade it on the main Myers mask, the one that appears during the iconic scene where a horrified Laurie gets face-to-face with Michael through a tiny window, the results are pretty uneven. The mask detail is there, but without Carpenter’s shadows (being able to see his wide eyes so clearly all the time does no favors for Michael’s mystique) and with an onion-tuft of hair, there’s little in the way of results.

Halloween Resurrection (2002): The EVIL One

Image: Dimension Films

Perhaps the most infamous film in the series, Halloween Resurrection would kill off Laurie Strode in its opening sequence and introduce Busta Rhymes as a roundhouse-kicking reality TV producer. In short, it’s a weird watch. That said, the mask used is not too bad, as long as you like your Michael to look very visibly evil. The extremely arched eyebrows, painted shadows, and unhappy cheeks make Michael look downright crabby, an old man now in his seventh installment having to put up with vapid, horny teens that want to gain stardom in his childhood home.

Halloween (2007): The Scarred Model

Image: Dimension Films

In reinventing Michael Myers during the horror remake arms race of the mid-aughts, director Rob Zombie layers his Myers mask with dirt and blemishes. It’s the result of having been left under some floorboards for 15 years, and it doesn’t look so bad — at the very least, it appears to be the product of an actual artist and not a frantic dash to a Spirit Halloween. We get to see a close replica of the original, too, in the film’s first act — a brief nod to fans of the series before Zombie goes and does whatever he wants with it.

Halloween II (2009): The Beard

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

With even more scarring and actor Tyler Mane’s big beard poking out of the neck of it, the mask from Rob Zombie’s second go-round with the series is either a travesty or a testament to an artist’s ability to divert from the source material. Zombie takes even more liberties when he has one of Myers’ victims claw off a rough third of the mask, leaving Myers with one visible eye and one under the mask. Visually, it looks pretty rad, especially when the masked eye is bathed in darkness, and is a nice balance to all the times Zombie decides to just have Michael walk around maskless, enjoying the autumn breeze.

Halloween (2018): The Old Man

Image: Universal Pictures

Like Zombie’s weathered approach, the mask in the direct sequel to the first Halloween is also aged. But this time, we’re offered a few more wrinkles and a ton of dust — meaning that this mask, like Michael, has been locked away to be forgotten about. Of course, that doesn’t happen, and Michael is back to strolling around Haddonfield like in the good old days. For the most part, the mask works, and unlike Michael’s last (now non-canonical) family reunion with Laurie Strode, it keeps the eyes hidden and the expression impenetrable.

Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022): The Two-Face

Image: Universal Pictures

Thanks to a fire at the end of the 2018 film, Michael’s mask in Halloween Kills (and the upcoming Halloween Ends) has a Harvey Dent-esque burn down one side. In darkness, it looks pretty cool — the little bits of charred rubber sticking out from the side add some neat intricacies to what is now the eleventh design in the series. Meanwhile, in plain sight, it’s still recognizably Michael. And as the series has proven over the years, that’s all you can really ask for.

Bayonetta voice actor Hellena Taylor has shared that she didn’t reprise the role for Bayonetta 3 as she was offered only $4,000 to do so. Furthermore, she has asked fans to boycott the game and donate to charity instead.

Taylor took to Twitter to share a few videos of her speaking to a camera and share her side of the story following the announcement that Mass Effect’s Jennifer Hale would be replacing her in Bayonetta 3. Taylor has voiced the character since the original game, and couldn’t stay silent anymore after how she was treated.

Friends, Worldlings, Bayonutters. Hear ye!#PlatinumGames #Nintendo #Bayonetta #Bayonetta3 #Bayonutters #Boycott #NintendoEurope #NintendoAmerica #NintendoJapan pic.twitter.com/h9lwiX2bBt

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 15, 2022

Is there anything better than Halloween season?

Sure, here at Polygon we cover horror year-round. We have our rolling lists of the best horror movies you can watch at home and the best horror movies on Netflix that are updated every month of the year.

But even for year-round horror fans, Halloween is a special time of year.

For the past two years, Polygon has put together a Halloween Countdown calendar, offering a Halloween-friendly movie or TV show available to watch at home every day of October. We’re delighted to bring that back once again, with 31 spooky selections to keep the mood going all month long.

Every day for the entire month of October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this Countdown and tell you where you can watch it. So curl up on the couch, dim the lights, and grab some popcorn for a terrifying and entertaining host of Halloween surprises.

Oct. 1: Audition (1999)

In Audition, Takashi Miike’s 1999 psychological horror-thriller, love is a consensual fiction. Years after losing his wife to a terminal illness, widower Shigeharu Aoyama is urged by his son to get back out in the world and find someone. Aoyama agrees to a proposal by his friend, a film producer, to take part in an audition for a nonexistent film in order to find a potential bride from the candidates. His search ultimately leads him to Asami Yamazaki, a beautiful former ballerina with a murky past.

As Aoyama grows closer to his new love interest, he finds himself caught deeper and deeper in a web of intrigue that threatens to tear him apart emotionally, psychologically, and yes — even physically. There is something dark inside Asami, yes, but there is a latent darkness inside of Aoyama too, arguably even darker. The only difference is that Asami has embraced that darkness and made it her own.

Miike’s film holds its cards relatively close to its chest for most of its run time, unspooling its tightly wound mystery like garrote wire before peeling back its skin of meet-cute artifice to reveal a pulsing mass of horrors roiling beneath. The film descends into a macabre fugue state of assumptions, misdirections, and cinematic sleights of hand, with dreams that feel almost real set against a reality too terrifying to be anything but. In the end, though, these are just words. Only pain can be trusted. —Toussaint Egan

Audition is available to stream on Arrow Video and Hi-Yah!, for free with ads on Tubi, and for free on Kanopy with a library card. It is also available for digital rental or purchase on Vudu and Apple.

Oct. 2: The Vanishing (1988)

Image: The Criterion Collection

It’s not a horror movie, per se, and yet Stanley Kubrick said that The Vanishing was the most frightening film he had ever seen. This Dutch thriller from 1988 — often referred to by its original title Spoorloos, so as not to confuse it with an inferior 1993 American remake by the same director, George Sluizer — plays it cool, like a simple missing person case. Rex and Saskia are a young couple road-tripping through France. They are taking a break at a service station when Saskia abruptly, and completely, disappears.

Initially, the horror of the situation is in the banality of it: the feeling that it could happen at any time, to anyone. Sluizer underlines this with the matter-of-fact realism of his location shooting. Then, barely more than 20 minutes in, he wrong-foots the audience with an abrupt shift: We are following Raymond, a contented French family man who appears to be rehearsing a kidnapping. The mystery of what happened to Saskia seems already to be solved. What next?

The way the film — based very closely on Tim Krabbé’s novella The Golden Egg — skips so quickly past the expected structure of a mystery thriller ought to sap tension, but in fact it builds an almost philosophical unease. As Raymond, played with a chilling brightness by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, walks us through the “how” of his crime, the “why” becomes a gnawing, much more troubling question. We skip forward three years and find Rex obsessed with finding out what happened to his lost love. When an answer is offered, we share his hunger for it completely, and follow him to what might be the most plainly horrifying ending of any film, ever. This is a minimal masterpiece of existential dread. —Oli Welsh

The Vanishing is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, or for digital rental or purchase on Apple and Amazon.

Oct. 3: Rampant (2018)

Image: Well Go USA Entertainment

One of the great joys of horror is the array of subgenres it offers, and the subgenres within subgenres that spool out of that. Take the monster movie, for instance. It’s a subgenre of horror on its own, and within it you have the vampire movie, the werewolf movie, and the zombie movie, just to name a few. And then you can dive even deeper and find something like Rampant, which combines the zombie subgenre with an unlikely pairing: the historical court drama period piece.

The movie takes place during the 17th century, under the Joseon dynasty in Korea. The movie is filled with political intrigue: The protagonist is an arrogant young prince called back home after his brother’s death only to find political machinations already in progress when he arrives. The court is struggling to figure out how to deal with the nearby Qing dynasty in China (where our protagonist grew up), with different factions forming.

And then there are the zombies. Yes, a zombie outbreak arrives, recalibrating the importance of this royal conflict for some (but not all) of its players. Our protagonist discovers this on his way home, and attempts to convince his father (and his father’s advisors) to do something about it. That leads to some breathtakingly brutal swordplay action in a pitch-perfect genre mashup for the ages. –Pete Volk

Rampant is available to stream on Hi-Yah!, FuboTV, and Viki, or for free with ads on Tubi, Crackle, Plex, Pluto TV, and Freevee. It is also available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple, Vudu, and Google Play.

Oct. 4: Seconds (1966)

Image: Paramount Pictures

Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and aliens have nothing on the unstoppable process of aging. All of us will get older, life will get exponentially difficult, and the only person waiting for us at the finish line is Death. John Frankenheimer built Seconds around such midlife terrors, granting New York banking exec Arthur Hamilton the opportunity to fake his own death, reconstruct his body in the form of Rock Hudson, and move to sunny Southern California as a hot, younger dude named Tony Wilson. Like a small animal tramped under the sunlamp of the Santa Barbara sun, we see Hudson spiral through paranoia and regret, replete with naked grape mashing and alcohol-fueled breakdowns. Needless to say, the grass is rarely greener, and the only thing scarier than getting old is staying young.

The film met boos at Cannes and puzzled critics who were accustomed to leading man Rock Hudson being just that — a traditional leading man. But the film has aged well, pun fully intended. James Wong Howe’s cinematography, nominated for an Academy Award, holds the viewer inches from Hudson’s face, bends reality through a fish-eye lens, and somehow makes beautiful young bodies into nauseating bundles of limbs and flesh. And Hudson, now detached from his Personal Brand for most viewers under the age of 70, undercuts his Hollywood good looks with a humble performance of a man in full collapse. —Chris Plante

Seconds is available to stream for free with ads on Pluto TV, or for free with a library card on Kanopy. It is also available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Oct. 5: Bride of Chucky (1998)

Image: Universal Pictures

The fourth movie of the wickedly funny Child’s Play franchise takes the killer doll series in an exciting new direction. Bride of Chucky ditches Andy, the young boy followed by the murderous Chucky doll in the first three movies, and instead follows two clueless teenagers (Katherine Heigl and Nick Stabile) who unwittingly take two murderous dolls on a road trip and start to suspect each other when the bodies start dropping.

The sinister inversion of the teen road trip movie would be fun enough, but it’s the addition of Jennifer Tilly that really makes Bride of Chucky sing. For the uninitiated in the Child’s Play universe: The Chucky doll is possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). Tilly plays Ray’s former lover and accomplice, Tiffany, who brings the doll back to life and becomes a murderous doll herself.

The result is two couples road-tripping together but unable to communicate with each other. Heigl and Stabile’s Jade and Jesse are your typical youths in love — still getting to know each other and not fully trusting yet — while Chucky and Tiffany’s bickering and subtle manipulations make this a joyous and twisted fun time. Add in some breathtaking imagery from director Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason) and cinematographer Peter Pau (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Killer) and you have a franchise sequel well worth your time. —PV

Bride of Chucky is available to stream on Peacock. It is also available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Oct. 6: Dead Ringers (1988)

Image: 20th Century Fox

Visually, 1988’s Dead Ringers must be one of David Cronenberg’s tamest movies — with the exception of one extremely disturbing dream sequence around halfway through, and one grisly but out-of-focus long shot at the end. Otherwise, this is a film composed of talking heads in pristine, orderly spaces, and varnished in 1980s designer opulence: tearooms, operating theaters, penthouses. His usual body horror is more implied in the gleaming, twisted contours of medical implements than actually shown. Yet it might be his most devastating film.

Jeremy Irons plays identical twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle, who run a successful fertility clinic in Toronto. Beverly, quiet and sensitive, tends to the practice and the patients while the urbane Elliot climbs the medical establishment ladder. They live together and sometimes pretend to be each other, so shy Beverly can enjoy the fruits of Elliot’s womanizing. But their symbiotic relationship starts to fray and peel when Beverly falls in love with Claire (Geneviève Bujold), an actress and patient who can’t bear children because she has three chambers in her womb.

Beneath Dead Ringers’ glassy surface, feeling runs deep and cold. The intense psychodrama that develops between the three characters — but mostly between the twin brothers — builds to a conclusion that’s both appalling and moving. At the film’s heart are the incredible performances given by Irons and captured by Cronenberg with careful, unshowy craftsmanship. Without leaning too heavily on identifying makeup or tics, Irons not only innately distinguishes Bev and Ellie, but builds an intimacy between them that’s as tender as it is eerie. It’s like watching one person tear themselves in two and then clumsily try to seal the wound. Dead Ringers is the stuff of tragedy as well as horror. —OW

Dead Ringers is available to stream on HBO Max. It is also available for free with a library card on Hoopla and Kanopy, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 7: The Keep (1983)

Image: Paramount Pictures

Michael Mann has a reputation as a slick, streetbound auteur. Films like Thief, Heat, and Collateral embrace the metropolis as a labyrinth, and crime as a psychological test. The Keep, his 1983 jump to more blockbuster fare, is really nothing like those films — except for an excessive amount of mood.

Set in 1941 Romania, around the time the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, the film finds a German battalion stumbling upon a mysterious structure dubbed “The Keep.” Two savvy soldiers hope to loot what they think is treasure inside. Instead, their heist unleashes Radu Molasar, a golem-like destroyer of worlds. Whoops!

When members of the infantry start winding up dead, a vile SS commander (played with ruthlessness by Gabriel Byrne) shows up to figure out what the heck is going on. Naturally, he starts killing people, too. Mann slides between more stark drama that one might expect from a film plunging headfirst into World War II geopolitics, while throwing supernatural curveballs that ensure every corner of the story feels haunted. Eventually, Scott Glenn shows up as a protector of the local village, which is being tortured by both Nazis and Radu Molasar, and the race is on to put an end to it.

Backed by Tangerine Dream’s ecclesiastic synth score and staged in some of the most beautiful, light-streaked stone sets ever made (can a Romanian temple be a liminal space?), The Keep is, no doubt, B-movie schlock. But in the hands of a master like Mann, it’s given the artful haze of a nightmare. —Matt Patches

The Keep is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and for free with ads on Pluto TV. It is also available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 8: Samurai Jack — Episode XXXV: Jack and the Haunted House

Image: Warner Bros. Animation

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack is a series that contains multitudes. The premise of the show, concerning a samurai prince who is transported into a dystopian future by his nemesis, a tyrannical shape-shifting demon, and forced to trek across a strange and alien new world in search for a way back home, is one that afforded a wealth of storytelling opportunities that ranged from epic and comical to somber and horrifying. Episode 35, “Jack and the Haunted House,” fits squarely in the latter category.

While traveling alone one night, Jack happens upon a little girl crying in a forest. Chasing after her in an effort to console her, he finds himself drawn to a mysterious house whose malevolent energy plagues him with starting visions of an evil force preying upon helpless family. Jack’s drive to rescue the girl and her family from mortal peril however threatens to ensnare himself in the clutches of a spirit who thrives on transforming the house into an impossible labyrinth from which there is no escape.

“Jack and the Haunted House” is an especially impressive episode, not just for its explicit horror-centric premise, but for its depiction of the demon itself — a writhing mass of dark tendrils that coalesce into a ukiyo-e-style dragon with a leering jaw and piercing eyes. It’s a fantastic episode that strikes a keen balance between unnerving terror and the more action-focused emphasis of the series as a whole. —TE

Samurai Jack is available to stream on HBO Max. It is also available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 9: Steven Universe — Chille Tid

Image: Cartoon Network

Steven Universe is no stranger to horror, and particularly body horror. A Crystal Gem’s body is the manifestation of their Gem — which itself is immutable — allowing them to shape-shift at will. It’s part of what makes the show beautiful; the Gem characters are all canonically nonbinary and can choose the body and gender expression that suits them. It also gives the show fertile ground to do terrifying things, like depict the consequence of Gem “experiments” that produce disgusting, roiling masses of animated disembodied limbs.

In this vein, “Chille Tid” gives kid-accessible visual language to serious concepts like power, consent, codependency, and martyrdom. The episode focuses on fusion, which up until this point has been depicted as incredibly beautiful. Fusion allows two Gems to morph together to create a larger Gem with the personality of their relationship. And the show treats this act with joy and reverence, building so much storytelling around the power of loving others. It also teaches the lesson that coercing another Gem into fusion is a deep breach of trust. (And by the way, in Gem World culture, fusing with a different type of Gem is a huge taboo — another bit of incisive real-world commentary from Steven Universe.)

In “Chille Tid,” Lapis, a depressed and incredibly powerful Crystal Gem, fuses with Jasper, a mercenary sent to destroy the Crystal Gems on Earth. The fusion is repugnant. Lapis martyrs herself — shackling herself to an abuser and sinking them into the ocean. You can see the large character they create fighting against water-created handcuffs that spring from the sea. This is only made worse when you know Lapis’ backstory: She only recently escaped imprisonment from an enchanted mirror. It’s a deeply frightening episode, especially for children’s television, but also as an adult — if you have ever escaped an abuser, you know the feeling too well. The imagery is unforgettable because it is real.

For those of you who worry, Lapis does break free. And she does eventually live in a renovated barn with Peridot, resulting in one of the best fanons of the show. —Nicole Clark

Steven Universe is available to stream on HBO Max and Hulu. It is also available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon.

Oct. 10: The Last Winter

Image: Antidote Films

Larry Fessenden’s underseen 2006 horror masterpiece The Last Winter was way ahead of the climate-horror wave that the rest of the world is only just catching up on. The movie follows a hodgepodge mix of government officials, scientists, and researchers sent to the freezing wilderness of Alaska in hopes of finding oil. The team is most concerned with digging into a wildlife reserve, and while the government’s liaison, Ed Pollack (played with menacing cruelty and almost-cartoon levels of evil by Ron Perlman) is gung-ho about drilling, a few of the scientists aren’t so sure. After several warnings not to, the group digs into the ice and disrupts long-dormant spirits, causing, of course, all hell to break loose.

Fessenden’s movie is notable not just for how great and watchable (and scary) it is on its own terms, but also for how effectively it synthesizes so many of the greatest horror subgenres into one story. It’s one of the best climate change horror movies, one of the best native-spirits-and-disturbed-land movies, a fantastic addition to the classic horror canon of the arctic expedition gone horribly wrong, and even fits nicely next to other government-creep-in-way-over-their-head movies like Aliens.

But for all its time spent tapping into horror history, The Last Winter’s best feature is how unsettlingly it presents its own theme. As far as the movie is concerned, humanity is essentially a parasite to the natural world, and everything that goes wrong is the world simply fighting back to defend itself. Plenty of movies provide visions of the end of civilization, but few other than The Last Winter make it seem like the only reasonable option. —Austen Goslin

The Last Winter is available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 11: Near Dark

Image: F/M

“Can I have a bite?”

A sexy vampire western positively oozing with “cool,” there is no other movie like Near Dark. Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable solo directorial debut started an excellent streak, leading right into Blue Steel, Point Break, and Strange Days.

Bigelow wanted to make a Western, but studios weren’t exactly champing at the bit to fund those in the 1980s. So she and co-writer Eric Red set out to combine the Western with another genre nearly as old as cinema itself: the vampire movie. The recent successes of Fright Night and The Lost Boys didn’t hurt, either.

Near Dark has fantastic action set-pieces — a barroom brawl and a shootout in a bungalow stand out in particular for their tension building and use of light, respectively. It’s also darkly funny, and filled with biting dramatic irony (a vampire giving a hickey to an unsuspecting neck, some acute early wordplay where your knowledge that this is a vampire movie changes everything).

The costumes are pitch-perfect, and the makeup is out of control (the effects to create the illusion of burning skin are simply astounding). But I can only go so far without talking about Bill Paxton. Paxton, who plays the out-of-control vampire Severen, is a force of nature in Near Dark. He is an electric presence at every turn, equal parts menacing and sexy, and is the most memorable part of an extremely memorable movie. —PV

Near Dark is available to stream on The Criterion Channel.

Oct. 12: Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Image: Kaijyu Theater

There are a lot of creative ways to describe Shinya Tsukamoto’s 1989 body-horror masterpiece: “cult classic,” “visionary,” “incredibly fucked up,” to name a few. The description I’ve more or less settled on is “transhumanist body-horror supervillain love story.”

The first 15 minutes of Tetsuo hit like an adrenaline boost shot straight to the occipital lobe, chronicling the story of a salaryman and his girlfriend who accidentally run over a mysterious eccentric with a body-morphing “metal fetish.” Later, upon realizing they have both been infected with same affliction, the couple probes at the newfound physical, psychological, and sexual dimensions of their bizarre condition, all while their victim turned adversary plots his revenge from the shadows.

Tsukamoto’s magnum opus is horrifying, horny, and endlessly original, constantly reinventing itself with frenzied stop-motion montage and cackling quick-cut audio cues that keep the viewer at the edge of their seat. Chu Ishikawa’s score feels like the spiritual antecedent to electronic music acts like Nine Inch Nails and Portishead, with its droning industrial clamor and burst-fire drum loops searing into your eardrums like acid eating away at sheet metal.

While a natural precursor to contemporary films like Julia Ducournau’s Titane and David Cronenberg’s Crash, you’ll soon enough discover — even after more than three decades and two sequels — there still hasn’t been anything else quite like it since. If you don’t have the stomach for sadomasochistic body-modding or gore, it’s totally fine to give this one a pass. If you do happen to give it a chance, though, you’ll be treated to a visceral and unforgettable experience. –TE

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Shudder, or for free with a library card on Kanopy. It is also available for digital rental or purchase via Apple TV.

Oct. 13: Rigor Mortis

Image: Fortissimo Films

Describing this Hong Kong vampire movie is an extremely complicated process. On its surface, Rigor Mortis is a vampire/demon/ghost action movie. But when you dig a little deeper, it’s also a mini time capsule and a tribute to the supernatural horror cinema of Hong Kong’s past.

The movie follows a man who arrives at a massive concrete apartment building that seems to be haunted by every spirit you could imagine. He’s a past-his-prime actor and intends to take his own life. When he tries, twin spirits attempt to possess his body, but then they’re stopped by a retired vampire hunter who now runs the apartment’s restaurant. What else would a vampire hunter do when there are no vampires left?

This entire sequence only covers the movie’s first 10 or so minutes, and is a perfect setup for the specific brand of knowing, in-on-the-joke supernatural action ever present in Rigor Mortis — which of course does eventually involve a vampire. It’s the kind of early-2010s movie where the entire environment is gray, just so the production has an excuse to paint it red when the fights come. All of this may sound ridiculous (and it definitely is), but somehow Rigor Mortis manages to strike the perfect balance of a so-serious-it’s-silly tone and modulates between the two moods with ease. It pivots from scenes of people trapping spirits in wardrobes to someone desperately trying to perform a spiritual ritual to resurrect their loved one, giving enough gravity to each that they can all come off as sincere.

As entertaining as Rigor Mortis is, it also has a secret. While not necessary to getting the movie, it does add another level of enjoyment. See, the protagonist is named Chin Siu-ho, which is also the name of the actor who’s playing him, who also happened to be the star of the legendary Hong Kong horror series Mr. Vampire. In other words, it’s a movie about a real-world retired actor/martial artist who once played a vampire hunter, now meets a fictional retired vampire hunter, and then joins in on the vampire hunting one more time. –AG

Rigor Mortis is available to stream on Peacock and Hi-Yah!, for free with ads on Plex and Tubi, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 14: Witchfinder General

Image: Tigon British Film Productions

Vincent Price is an icon of horror whose camp yet commanding presence defined so many of the lurid, theatrical British and American horror movies of the 1960s and ’70s. His 1968 star vehicle Witchfinder General looks like it’s going to be one of those films, but beware. This is a bitter, realist, historical kind of horror, and both the film and Price’s performance are deadly serious.

Witchfinder General was adapted from a novel, and loosely based on the exploits of a historical character: Matthew Hopkins, an English witch hunter who claimed, falsely, to have been awarded the title of “witchfinder general” by Parliament. During the English Civil War of the 1640s, a time of paranoia and lawlessness, Hopkins rampaged freely around the East Anglian countryside, sending over 100 people to the gallows on suspicion of witchcraft.

Although it plays fast and loose with the historical record, this grim, low-budget thriller doesn’t truck with the supernatural. It’s all about the evil of man. Price, in one of his iciest performances, plays Hopkins as a manipulative fascist and sadist; in a way, a kind of serial killer. When he targets a kindly priest and the priest’s niece Sara (Hilary Dwyer), he’s pitted against the niece’s betrothed, a valiant Roundhead soldier (Ian Ogilvy).

But there’s nothing heroic about the struggle in this film, which, playing out in an eerily becalmed country landscape, feels desperate and suffocated. Dwyer unleashes some of cinema’s most unnerving and memorable screams over the bleak final scenes. Director Michael Reeves was just 24 when he made Witchfinder General, and died of an overdose shortly after its release: a tragic early end to a promising career that has only added to the mystique of this unsparing movie. –OW

Witchfinder General is available to stream for free with a library card on Hoopla. Enterprising readers can also find the whole thing on YouTube.

Oct. 15: The Hunger

Image: Peerford

How many other vampire movies open with a subterranean goth nightclub scene set to Bauhaus’ “Bela Legosi’s Dead” featuring David Bowie, the Thin White Duke himself?

The late Tony Scott’s 1983 vampire horror film stars Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as Miriam and John Blaylock, two vampires living in New York who spend their time in relative leisure, playing the cello in their darkened mansion by day and stalking their prey at night.

As John inexplicably finds his vitality and youth sapped away despite his immortal body, he seeks out answers and aid in the form of Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a gerontologist studying effects of different blood types on the process of aging. It’s not long, however, that Miriam, who first sired John 200 years ago, sets her sights on claiming Roberts as the latest in her long line of lovers.

Shot with icy blue color grading and lighting juxtaposed with cavernous shadows shot inside John and Miriam’s luxurious New York penthouse, The Hunger is an absolute feast for the senses. Bowie delivers a characteristically phenomenal performance as John, equal parts charming and aloof in his brief yet memorable on-screen presence, and Deneuve is a sultry and tragic antagonist in her performance as Miriam. Sarandon gives an equally captivating performance as a scientist who yearns for immortality in the form of fame and recognition only to find it in the physical and spiritual form of vampiric longevity. If you’re looking for a horror film as terrifying as it is sexy, look no further than Scott’s horror classic. –TE

The Hunger is available to stream on HBO Max and Watch TCM. It is also available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu, and Google Play.

WB Games Montreal shared a couple of interesting tidbits on Gotham Knights yesterday.

The first was a November 29 launch date for the game’s arena-based experience Heroic Assault which sees up to four-players participating in co-op.

It seems four-player co-op will be limited to that mode, as the main game is only playable either solo or in two-player online co-op, as it does not feature local co-op. Also, Heroic Assault is a gameplay mode separate from the main story campaign and provides a dedicated arena-like environment with specific objectives and enemies to defeat across 20 floors.

So, if you were expecting to play the main campaign with three of your friends, it’s a no go.

The other interesting tidbit has to do with the console version of the game. Apparently, despite being available on new-gen systems only, Gotham Knights does not feature a performance mode, which is odd considering so many new games for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S do.

Plus, it only runs at 30 FPS.

According to the game’s executive producer, Fleur Marty (thanks, Wario64), due to the types of features available in the game, such as a fully untethered co-op experience in a “highly detailed open world,” it’s not as “straightforward as lowering the resolution and getting a higher FPS.”

For this reason, the game will not feature a performance option and will run at 30FPS on consoles.

Gotham Knights will be available October 21 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/s.

Have you ever wanted to have the heroes of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series in your closet? Now you can, courtesy of Sega.

Have you ever wanted to have the heroes of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series in your closet? Now you can.

Sega made a set of hangers available for pre-orders on its Japanese website. You can find Kazuma Kiryu, Goro Majima, and Ichiban Kasuga, each priced at 3,300 yen, which translates into $22 at the current exchange rate.

All of them will be released in late January 2023.

The hangers are designed so that if you hang an outfit on them, it’ll look like the character is standing there, staring at you.

They’re 380mm x 400mm x 3mm in size.

You can see what they look like below.

If you’re interested in the franchise, which has recently been renamed “Like a Dragon” for the west matching the literal translation of the Japanese title “Ryu Ga Gotoku” instead of the former “Yakuza” there are several games incoming.

Like a Dragon: Ishin! will bring us back to the Bakumatsu Period in February 2023 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. You can also read our hands-on preview.

The next mainline chapter Like a Dragon 8 is also coming, but it’ll take a while. It’s scheduled for 2024. Notably, it’ll feature the return of Kazuma Kiryu and he will have two protagonists alongside Ichiban Kasuga. That being said, a game set between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon 8 will be released in 2023 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. The title is Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, and it’ll explain what happened to Kiryu after 6.

For the last nine years or so, Damien Crawford has been making games they don’t think people would want to play.

Crawford is the sole developer and head of Cannibal Interactive. They’ve made over 20 games through the label, most of which have been released primarily on itch.io. They came to game development after several years of struggling to fit into other jobs such as fast food and mundane government work. A relationship falling through and a need to cut loose from parental support eventually pushed them to try something new.

“I thought if I failed the safe path, then what do I want to do? And so I started making games.”

Their first project, Legend of Moros, took two and a half years, and did not do well – not even $100 in release day sales. So, on another contrarian whim, Crawford spent a month making a game they thought no one would want to play; an “atrocious” (their words) RPG where 99 characters band together in a single fight, all piled in on one side against the enemy. In addition to the absurd gameplay, Mighty 99 had a “horrible memory leak issue” that made it impossible to get through three full turns.