Electronic Arts is laying off 5% of its workforce, or around 670 of the company’s workers. EA employed around 13,400 people by the end of last March, according to a regulatory filing. Sixty-five percent of those employees are located outside the U.S., it said at the time. Notifying impacted employees “has already begun and will be largely completed by early next quarter,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson wrote in a note to staff published Wednesday.
Wilson also said EA is “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.” Instead, it’ll focus on “owned IP, sports, and massive online communities.”
“We are also leading through an accelerating industry transformation where player needs and motivations have changed significantly,” Wilson wrote. “Fans are increasingly engaging with the largest IP, and looking to us for broader experiences where they can play, watch, create content, and forge deeper connections. Our industry exists at the cutting edge of entertainment, and in today’s dynamic environment, we are advancing the way we work and continuing to evolve our business.”
No specific games were mentioned in Wilson’s note, although EA is currently developing several games based on licensed properties, like a reported third Star Wars Jedi game, along with Marvel’s Black Panther and Iron Man. EA announced in 2022 that Respawn was developing three separate Star Wars games, one of which was Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The two others were unannounced; one of those games, a first-person action game, has been canceled, according to Video Games Chronicle. “As we’ve looked at Respawn’s portfolio over the last few months, what’s clear is the games our players are most excited about are Jedi and Respawn’s rich library of owned brands,” EA entertainment and technology present Laura Miele said in a statement to the publication.
The cuts come almost one year after EA laid off around 700 people, or 6% of its staff, in March 2023. Earlier in February of this year, The company also laid off “a small number of staff” earlier this week as it ceased operations on EA Sports MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing. (These layoffs may be included in the 670 number announced Wednesday.) Those games are presumably part of the company’s plan to “sunset” several games, as Wilson noted in the letter to staff.
EA expects to spend $125 million to $165 million on these layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. Office space reductions will cost roughly $50 million to $60 million, while $35 million to $45 million is expected to go toward “costs associated with licensor commitments,” according to a securities document filed Wednesday. EA said it’ll spend $40 to $55 million on employee severance, which is on top of the $170 million to $200 million EA spent last year on its reorganization cost-cutting plan. (EA, at that time last year, expected to finish the actions related to those costs by Sept. 30, 2023. This time around, it expects to be finished by Dec. 31, 2024.)
Image: Respawn Entertainment/Electronic Arts via Polygon
In late January, EA released its recent financial results where it reported earning $7.6 billion in the past 12 months before Dec. 31, 2023. Of that, EA made $5.8 billion in gross profit. EA reported that its net bookings are up by 1% year-over-year — part of that is related to its live service success, where it earned a “record $1.712 billion,” 3% more than last year. “On a trailing twelve-month basis, live services were 73% of our business,” EA wrote. In particular, EA called out EA Sports FC for “outperforming expectations.”
“I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company,” Wilson said in the letter, adding that the company will do its best to help affected workers find “new roles or paths to transition to other projects.” “While not every team will be impacted, this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams.”
EA is, unfortunately, not alone in the worrying trend of increasing video game industry layoffs. On Tuesday, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it was laying off 900 people, or 8% of staff. Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Sony’s Technology, Creative, and Support divisions were all impacted. This week alone, people have been laid off from studios like Deck Nine Games, Supermassive Games, and esports company ESL; there was also a production halt at Die Gute Fabrik as funding ran dry.
Roughly 8,000 people have been laid off in the first two months of the year in a worrying trend that’s quickly outpacing 2023, where around 11,000 people were laid off, per industry trackers. Why are these layoffs happening? A comedown after the pandemic is part of it, but not the whole story that includes increasing interest rates on loans, how expensive it is to make games, and a shift in video game industry business models. One important failure to consider is that executive leadership expected the engagement built during the pandemic to continue and grow; executives expanded their companies recklessly without a realistic long-term plan.
Last Epoch’s offline mode is an awesome option if you’re sick of fighting with the game’s servers. However, the offline mode does create some additional issues for you depending on how you want to play the game.
In this Last Epoch guide, we’ll walk you through what offline mode is and tell you how to play offline.
What is offline mode in Last Epoch?
Image: Eleventh Hour Games
Offline mode in Last Epoch is exactly what it sounds like: It allows you to play the game without needing to connect to the servers. This is awesome when the game’s servers are experiencing instability (as has been common in the immediate wake of its late February 1.0 release). It’s also a useful tool if you find yourself without internet access for a long period of time.
However, offline mode does limit you in some very serious ways. Most notably, offline mode is a permanent decision you make at character creation. You can’t toggle a character online or offline — an offline character is offline forever. That means you can never use that character to play in groups with others.
How to play Last Epoch offline
Image: Eleventh Hour Games
In terms of activating offline mode, you have two options.
First you can launch the game in offline mode. This is an option you can select when you press “play” on Steam. Playing offline this way means you can bypass the login at the beginning, but you won’t be able to toggle between the two modes without relaunching the game.
The other option is a little more convenient, but requires an internet connection when you first boot up the game. In the character select screen, you’ll see an offline toggle at the top left part of the screen. Simply toggle that switch to “offline” and you’ll see your list of offline characters. If you turn on offline mode this way, you can still use the chat feature in-game to talk to friends — assuming you maintain an internet connection.
The world of Dune is a wild one. On any given day you’ve got clairvoyant sisterhoods poking your neck, giant spicy worms, and Javier Bardem spitting on your floor — and I haven’t even started on the really weird stuff. Capturing the tone and flavor of this eccentric setting isn’t easy, and while I’m not opposed to getting a lengthy monologue from Virginia Madsen, the right audio direction can do a better job of laying the groundwork for a sci-fi epic. And music has always played an important role in the various adaptations of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe across movies, TV, and games.
The soundtrack to David Lynch’s 1984 Dune adaptation features a sweeping orchestral soundtrack by Toto. A special appearance was also made by Brian Eno, who recorded the more moody and haunting stuff. Dune is the only soundtrack Toto has ever worked on, and how they came to be involved with the movie is a much longer story that you can read more about in A Masterpiece in Disarray (David Lynch’s Dune — An Oral History).
The soundtrack for the ’84 film is just as epic as Hans Zimmer’s score for the 2021 movie, but takes a different approach. At the time, the work of James Horner and John Williams was dominating sci-fi at the box office, and the theme for the original Dune movie follows a similarly bombastic approach but avoids some of the more uplifting melodies (an explicit request from Lynch).
Much like the movie’s vibe itself, the score for the original is far groovier than the later adaptations, with a heavy reliance on synths punctuated with guitar riffs. The main title suite sounds like a rock opera version of “Ride of the Valkyries,” while the theme for Baron Harkonnen immediately evokes Mike Oldfield’s haunting “Tubular Bells.” However, if you just need the CliffsNotes, the score is best summarized with the sci-fi rock ballad “Take My Hand,” which plays over the movie’s closing credits and runs through the key movements in the score in under three minutes.
While Zimmer’s score for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies is certainly a drastic departure from Lynch’s film, you can still hear echoes of the ’84 soundtrack in it. In particular, the track “Stillsuits” pays direct homage to the opening measures of the main title of the original movie. The score isn’t a massive departure from Zimmer’s work on a myriad of other blockbusters, but makes a greater effort to feel unique.
I’m a pretty big Hans Zimmer fan, and while much of his work is guilty of sounding a bit same-y, I’d argue his score for the 2021 movie Dune: Part One is some of his best work. Zimmer’s identity is still very present in Dune, with aggressive instruments and percussion, but the score places a greater emphasis on vocals and unconventional instruments that sound otherworldly when layered together.
The score for Dune: Part One is best described as very dry and very old, thanks to its intentional use of woodwinds and hollow percussion to convey not only the arid environment of Dune, but its enigmatic atmosphere as well. Those words often sound like a bad thing, but here, it really works. The deep, heavy rhythms from tracks like “Armada” and “Leaving Caladan” are the most reminiscent of Zimmer’s previous work. However, it’s with tracks like “Sanctuary” and “Ripples in the Sand” where those feelings of mystery and wonder really manifest.
The soundtracks for the Dune video games are a whole other can of sandworms, but it’s important to discuss them because they not only occupy a critical place in video game history, but have been handled by some of the most prolific composers in the gaming industry.
1992’s Dune 2: The Building of a Dynasty, by the now-defunct Westwood Studios, is perhaps the most famous game based on the Dune franchise, and is frequently cited as the game that popularized the real-time strategy genre. The soundtracks for Dune 2 and its 1998 remake Dune 2000 were handled by Frank Klepacki, who was also responsible for scoring every entry in the legendary Command & Conquer franchise.
Klepacki’s work on Dune 2 was intended to emulate the soundtrack for the original Dune adventure game by Cryo Interactive. And while solid, the soundtrack definitely bumps up against the technical limitations of producing music for a game with a file size of under 5 MB. However, when Klepacki revisited the classic score, he had the freedom to not only remake higher fidelity versions of his original Dune 2 soundtrack, but inject them with homages to Toto’s work on the ‘84 Dune movie. This is most apparent when listening to the Dune 2000 track “Rise of Harkonnen,” which is a remastered version of Dune 2’s “Rulers of Arrakis,” with an opening that’s an effective tribute to Toto’s Baron Harkonnen theme.
The most recent Dune game title, Dune: Spice Wars, featured a soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd, whose credits include work on franchises like Hitman, Assassin’s Creed, and Borderlands, to name a few. While Kyd hasn’t cited any specific inspirations for his Spice Wars soundtrack, the score mirrors the style of the game, borrowing concepts and themes from across the existing franchise without sounding derivative. The two hours of music features ambient, dreamlike tracks that echo the work of Brian Eno on the ‘84 Dune film, while also including rhythmic synth beats that will feel familiar to fans of the classic Westwood titles.
Frank Herbert’s Dune was originally published in 1965, and it’s remarkable that almost 60 years later — and across its spectrum of adaptations — every composition manages to evoke similar feelings in its audience. Whether it’s the appropriately epic work from Toto, the more primal version produced by Hans Zimmer, or the stellar video game soundtracks, Dune has inspired a wealth of composers and musicians to provide a cohesive sense of identity to Frank Herbert’s strange and enigmatic universe.
In the end, we know about as much as when we started. Expats, whose first episode started with some open-ended reunions — first a more charged one between Margaret (Nicole Kidman) and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), and later a calmer, sadder meet-up between Hilary (Sarayu Blue) and Margaret — has left off with those same characters coming together, and the same indefinite feeling permeating their meetings.
[Ed. note: This post will now start discussing spoilers for the end of Expats.]
What we still don’t know is what happened to Gus, or what Mercy is going to do next with her own baby, or even, technically, how these women all feel about each other at the end of the day. But that’s exactly how showrunner Lulu Wang wanted the adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates to feel. As she tells Polygon, she sees the ending as its own sort of beginning, and the mystery that drives so much of the pain in Expats was never the point she wanted to leave us with.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Polygon: So, starting off, how did you think about and approach the tone of the ending for each of the characters?
Lulu Wang: I think I wanted it to feel both, like, macro and micro. Both large in scope of the world, and global, but also so deeply personal. It’s a mother looking for her child. But it’s also all of us looking for a way to move on, to grieve, to find closure, to be happy, to find forgiveness, to be gentler on ourselves.
So I think visually, it was always really important to me that I have that really long take of Margaret walking through the city with her backpack on. And in many ways, she becomes part of the city; she’s now no longer able to separate herself from the streets and from the people and from the elements, because her son is out there somewhere. And for Mercy it was about getting to realize that she just wants to be loved. We hate her so much, she does all of these things, and she makes all of these choices. But that moment of her where we really realize she’s just a kid, and her mother brings her soup — I think that’s one of the most heartbreaking [bits] of, like, Oh, wow, she’s really young. She’s just a kid and she’s dealing with these really adult situations. And for Hilary, just breaking free, you know, we always envision her ending having a lot of color, and I wanted her to almost, like, yeah, she’s lost everything, but in a way she’s coming back to life. And she’s this butterfly and she, you know, goes from very monochromatic to embracing a lot of color.
Photo: Jupiter Wong/Prime Video
I’m curious how you thought about establishing the tone of the series directorally. What was it you felt like early on you gravitated toward in terms of getting the mood just right for what you were looking for with this adaptation?
I didn’t want it to be a plot-driven series where we were watching to solve the crime. I wanted it to really be an exploration of grief — I wanted it to feel like the book, because that’s what the book felt like. It was this tapestry of characters, of all of these different backgrounds, and against this very complex setting. And there are all of these different ways that people are trying to cope in different ways.
And so I think that really looking to the book, and I would pull out sentences, and then I would talk to my DP, and we would watch films together — we watched this great French series called Les Revenants, “the return,” which is a zombie series about the return of the dead. But it’s not what you would think. It’s really about grief and about time passing. We would watch foreign films, like this Icelandic film called AWhite, White Day. We watched Nashville, which is one of my favorites. We also looked at a lot of photographs.
So just putting together those images, I think we wanted to have there be a sense of a haunting, and have an emptiness.
That haunting really comes through, and I’d love to know what formed in your mind’s eye as you were thinking about how to show an absence or illustrate, if not a total emptiness, that lack?
I think we talked a lot in the writers room about ambiguous loss, and about not having closure, and all of the different ways in which we carry trauma that is not visible. It’s not always as simple as, OK, this person died. And now I’m grieving. Sometimes you never get closure, you never get to say goodbye. Sometimes you’re grieving the loss of time. Sometimes you’re grieving the loss of memory […] where the person is still there, but they’re not there in the way that you know them. So how do you relate to them? And how do you grieve?
I think that’s why — and I did this with The Farewell also — [I focused on] really looking at space, and having the ability to do wide shots, where people are really isolated in the frame.
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Prime Video
Photo: Jupiter Wong/Prime Video
Photo: Glen Wilson/Prime Video
Margaret, for example, she seeks out in her grief a place where she can be alone. And the emptiness of that room gives her comfort somehow, because she’s able to be someone else. She’s not constantly reminded of the tragedy. And so that was a really pivotal image for us was having Nicole in a practical location in Hong Kong. She had to go up the seven flights of stairs. It was her first day of shooting. I was like, Oh my god, she’s gonna hate me. This is Nicole Kidman. I’m having her trek up the stairs, there’s no elevator. We’re in this tiny room, and there’s windows everywhere so that we can really see Hong Kong and all the windows and all the lives inside of all of those windows, you know? And she’s here in this tiny box of a room, and there’s this weird purple bathtub. Like something kind of almost Murakami-esque, right, about the strange places we find ourselves in and the strange feelings we get from them.
Definitely. And to your point about almost dodging the mystery of it, I’m curious how you build the final sort of confrontation between all these women. There’s this sense in the finale of it as a staccato conversation, these bits and pieces chopped up.
In a way, it’s like a visual voice-over, I suppose. I wanted it to feel like they were addressing the audience; I wanted to play with this [idea that] everything they were saying, the other woman could also be saying almost those same things. It’s a specific conversation, but it’s also a universal conversation; it’s endings and beginnings. It’s apologies, and not being able to find the words to apologize. They all have been the other woman in different situations. And the series deals a lot with perpetrators and victims. And we always empathize with victims, it’s easy to identify with them. But it’s much more difficult to actually have compassion for the people who commit the acts and make the mistakes. And it was really important to us that all of these women were perpetrators and victims at the same time — but in different stories. In someone else’s story they are the perpetrator; in their own story, they are the victim. And to be able to hold all of those truths at once — it just felt like having that symmetry of their faces linked them.
If you think Alan Cumming, host of the U.S. version of The Traitors, gives off “guy who killed someone” vibes, he’ll laugh — you’re picking up what he’s putting down. It’s why, in episode 8 of season 2, when he sent the contestants off on their mission, he gleefully turned to the camera and said, “And they were never seen again.”
“I said that many times, on every task,” Cumming admits. “I wanted that to be my new catchphrase, but they only used it a couple times.”
This is exactly why the team behind Peacock’s hit reality game show wanted Cummings in the first place, even if he didn’t understand it at first. He met with producers, initially, out of confusion and curiosity.
“I couldn’t understand why they would want me to do it. Then I realized they wanted a sort of character. And I said, ‘Do you mean you want it to be sort of like a James Bond villain?’”
The answer was an enthusiastic yes. And suddenly Cumming could see the whole persona: “He’s the sort of Scottish Laird, and he’s kind of Machiavellian, [and] brings all these people here,” Cumming says. The look would be a sort of “dandy” Scottish tartan. Cumming’s dog could even come with, so the actor could menacingly pet her while staring down contestants.
“I really love this character. And it’s funny, life just flings these things at you that you never would have seen coming. I never thought I would be hosting a big, successful competition reality show in Scotland and a castle with a bunch of reality stars. I mean — you couldn’t make it up. But I obviously go out going through life open to certain things. I’ve always been quite eclectic. And these things come to me and actually, this one I really, really enjoy.”
And it’s a role he takes really seriously. As he gets ready in the morning he listens in on the players’ breakfast discussion, watching on a big screen so he can “really feel a part of it” as he gets ready to make his big entrance. “It’s good for me to understand, when I walk into the room, the mood of the room and the atmosphere,” Cumming says.
Cumming is often around the castle, but not with the contestants — after his breakfast entrance he usually has a little break when he can look over scripts for the next day, then he and the players go to film the mission. After that, the contestants hang out and Cumming has another break (he says he’s usually eating or walking Lala the dog), but stays briefed on what’s happening. “When the roundtable comes it really does feel like this big theatrical moment because they all go in and they play this scary music in real life,” Cumming says. “It’s like these little performative spurts. And in between I’m trying to keep an eye on what’s happening and trying to get an understanding of how the wind is blowing.”
Even still, he’s just as on the edge of his seat as the rest of us. He likes to maintain a distance between himself and the cast (he feels his character should always have “quite a stern, daddy demeanor” that leaves the contestants scared), and Cumming has been surprised by how things went once he got into the room. “That’s what’s great about the games — there was a person I thought was doing really well, a faithful, and was going to help tear the whole thing apart. And people turned on them. It was like hyenas going for a baby elephant, it really was. I was gobsmacked.”
While he wouldn’t say who that was about, he would say some of the contestants he’s most surprised by: Bergie (when he became the MVP of the graveyard challenge), Phaedra (he appreciates her showmanship and the way it provides her cover), and Parvati (he hadn’t watched Survivor, and she seemed like a “sweet little thing with a hairband”).
But even with a closer view, he’s just as eager to let it all play out as the rest of us. Well, sort of — at least the rest of us don’t live in fear about bumping the wrong shoulder when selecting traitors at the roundtable.
The Traitors season 2 (the U.S. version) airs new episodes on Peacock every Thursday at 6 p.m. PST/9 p.m. EST.
Like many other crypto projects, the native token of the Polygon network, MATIC, was launched with some portion of the supply vested for the team over a period of time. In the case of Polygon, the vesting was for five years, and since 2019, there have been periodic token unlocks. However, the unlocks, which have often been a deterrent for investors, are now over, as the last batch was just released to the team.
Polygon Last Unlock Goes To Team
On Wednesday, February 21, the Polygon Foundation received the very last portion of their vested tokens from the vesting contract. In total, 273,304,816 million MATIC tokens valued at $260 million were released to the Foundation’s wallet.
This unlock marks the very last unlock that the Foundation will receive, meaning that almost all of the available supply of MATIC is now in circulation. The latest unclog brings the circulating supply of the cryptocurrency to 9,618,318,574 out of its 10,000,000,000 maximum supply. As a result of this, the market cap of Polygon is sitting just above $9.14 billion with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $5 billion.
The entirety of the MATIC supply has been unlocked, which means that there will be no more tokens being brought into circulation. This is a huge milestone for the project, whose investors have waited years for the vested tokens to finally run out.
The fact that the entirety of the MATIC supply is now in circulation is bullish for the digital asset, especially in the long term. Inflation is a factor that tends to drive investors away and keep them from holding their coins due to the fear of more tokens coming into circulation, causing supply to exceed demand.
Now that the entirety of the supply is now in circulation, it gives the MATIC price a chance to enter into price discovery. However, there is still some concern about when the Polygon Foundation might start selling their coins as the entirety of the unlocked tokens still sit in the Foundation’s wallet.
If they do decide to sell, though, it is likely that the foundation would do so through OTC (over-the-counter) deals to minimize the impact of such a sale on the token price. As a result, the MATIC price might not suffer much.
At the time of writing, the MATIC token is trading at $0.95 with a 24-hour increase of 1.11%. Although its performance has been far from encouraging, the token is sitting only 67% below its 2021 all-time high of $2.92.
Disclaimer: The article is provided for educational purposes only. It does not represent the opinions of NewsBTC on whether to buy, sell or hold any investments and naturally investing carries risks. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use information provided on this website entirely at your own risk.
Reddit said it acquired major cap cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, for varying reasons and has received digital asset payments for limited services since at least 2022.
Social network Reddit holds Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Polygon (MATIC) according to its initial public offering (IPO) filing with the U.S. SEC on Feb. 22. The company said it experiments with blockchain technology and crypto tokens, complying with disclosure requirements as it plans to go public under the ticker RDDT.
We invested some of our excess cash reserves in Bitcoin and Ether and also acquired Ether and Matic as a form of payment for sales of certain virtual goods, which we may continue to do in the future. Ether and Matic received from the sales of virtual goods was not material for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023.
IPO SEC filing
The company also said that its product and engineering teams leverage cryptocurrencies for specific use cases. Earlier this year, the social media giant confirmed its forthcoming IPO slated for March. Reddit plans to offer 10% of its shares after being valued at $10 billion in 2021.
Our users have a deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit. We want this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership; for our users to be our owners. Becoming a public company makes this possible.
Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder
The social network is a hub for blockchain discourse and crypto alpha, with over 850 million monthly active users recorded last year. A CoinWire report said 80% of Reddit’s crypto conversations in 2023 were positive.
However, the platform has not been without crypto controversy as the site’s administrators received backlash over a decision to sunset its blockchain-powered community points program.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a playable demo on PlayStation 5, allowing you to step into Cloud’s implausibly polished Doc Martens ahead of the game’s Feb. 29 release.
Here’s a rough rundown of what to expect from the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo, and what progress will carry over to the main game.
How to download the FF7R demo?
You can download the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo directly from the PlayStation Store on your PS5. The demo is 48 GB.
How long is the FF7R demo?
The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo covers the “Nibelheim” episode set a few years prior to the main game. You’re cast as Cloud and hair metal model Sephiroth in a flashback sequence. Depending on how methodically you play, it will take you about an hour or two to complete.
On Feb. 21, Square Enix added a segment covering Junon, one of the explorable open-world areas of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. You’ll be able to try out some gameplay features (like the new synergy moves between party members) not available in the first portion of the demo. Since it’s a bit more open-ended than the Nibelheim chapter, your playtime may vary. Polygon had a chance to play this particular demo during a Sept. 2023 preview event. You can read more about what to expect from this segment of the demo in Polygon’s hands-on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth preview.
Since the demo initially went live, Square Enix patched improvements to the game’s “performance” graphical mode.
Does progress carry from the FF7R demo to the main game?
Having save data from the demo on your PS5 will grant you a number of items to use in the full release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. You’ll get the Kupo Charm — an accessory that boosts how many resources you receive — plus a smattering of potions, ethers, and other items, referred to as the “survival set.”
Completing the Nibelheim episode will allow you to skip that segment in the full game. Any progress made during the Junon area, however, won’t carry over; that particular section has been “altered to make the content more compact,” so it’s not representative of what you’ll experience in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth comes out on PS5 on Feb. 29, 2024.
Nintendo will broadcast a new Nintendo Direct presentation on Wednesday, Feb. 21, a showcase focused Switch games coming in the first half of 2024, the company announced Monday. The new Nintendo Direct starts at 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m. PST, and will run about 25 minutes, Nintendo says.
Wednesday’s Direct will be viewable on Nintendo’s YouTube and Twitch channels. The presentation be on-demand, meaning the entire showcase will go live at once.
Nintendo notes that its newest Nintendo Direct presentation is a Partner Showcase, meaning that third-party publishers and developers will be the focus during the video showcase. In other words, don’t expect a big blowout on Nintendo’s first-party slate.
Nintendo’s currently announced first-party lineup includes Switch games Princess Peach Showtime!, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Of course, Nintendo may have a few surprises in store as well. The company still has Metroid Prime 4 on its release schedule, and is rumored to be sitting on a handful of remakes and remasters.
Less likely to appear during February’s Nintendo Direct is the company’s next console. “Switch 2” is reportedly coming sometime in 2025.
Much like the mystical religions spread by its Bene Gesserit, the influences of Dunespread to every corner of the universe of science fiction. In some stories, the inspirations are woven so tightly into the fabric of the story they’re nearly impossible to pick up, maybe even for the author themself. In others, the homages to Dune are unmissable, occasionally to the point of being distracting. And then there’s Star Wars, the most blatant ripoff of all — at least, according to Frank Herbert.
The Dune author didn’t talk much about George Lucas’ landmark science fiction film before his death in 1986, but he answered a few questions about it over the years, and he always seemed at least a little annoyed at the similarities between the two stories.
The first public comments he seems to have made about the movie come from an interview with the Associated Press from 1977, the year A New Hope was released. The article is pretty straightforward shit-stirring, but it’s clear that while Herbert hadn’t yet seen the movie, he did have some thoughts about its similarities to his seminal series, which was already three books in.
Herbert starts by saying an editor for the Village Voice had called him and asked if he had seen Star Wars, and whether or not he was going to sue. It’s a strong lead-in, but apparently that’s what was top of mind of Herbert.
“I will try hard not to sue,” Herbert told the Associated Press. “I have no idea what book of mine it fits, but I suspect it may be Dune since in that I had a Princess Alia and the movie has a Princess Leia. And I hear there is a sandworm carcass and hood dwellers in the desert, just like in Dune.”
Herbert goes on to brag, rightfully, about the ubiquity of Dune, both in popular culture and even as a college textbook on subjects like “architecture, psychology, writing, English, human living, space analysis, and some I’ve forgotten.” Herbert doesn’t get too specific in this early article, but it’s clear the movie’s reported similarities to his own work didn’t sit quite right with him. And later it would be even clearer that they stuck in his craw, one way or another.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Now, with decades of hindsight and years of interviews, it’s easy to see that Star Wars, particularly the first film, is an amalgamation of many genres and stories, including (but not limited to) science fiction, mythical fantasy, and the samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa. There’s also an entire expanded universe of history in the Star Wars galaxy that borrows from all over the sci-fi canon, and has helped inspire just as many future writers.
But if you consider the time when Star Wars was just one tremendously successful summer blockbuster, it’s easy to understand why Herbert might have had a bone to pick. And as the years went by, it’s clear that he thought quite a bit about the subject, enough to count the similarities between the titles.
“Lucas has never admitted that they copied a lot of Dune,and I’m not saying they did,” Herbert said in 1985, during a speaking engagement at UCLA. “I’m just saying there are 16 points of identity between the book Dune and Star Wars. Now you’ve had stat — what is it? It’s 16 times 16 times 16 times… over 1, the odds against that being coincidence? There aren’t that many stars in the universe.”
Herbert’s frustrated quote stemmed from a question about whether or not Lucas ever bought Herbert dinner — a reference to a long-standing joke of Herbert’s that even if Lucas didn’t blatantly steal his ideas to make Star Wars, he at least owes Herbert dinner for the coincidence.
But Frank Herbert was one to lose out on a war of pettiness. A year before that UCLA interview, he published Heretics of Dune, the fifth book in the series and the second to last written by him. Late in the book, which is mostly about the future of humanity after the death of The God Emperor, Herbert has a small, inconspicuous passage that certainly feels like a reference to Star Wars. He doesn’t seem to have ever said that officially, so we’ll let you judge:
In the time of the Old Empire and even under the reign of Maud’Dib, the region around the Gammu Keep had been a forest reserve, high ground rising well above the oily residue that tended to cover Harkonnen land. On this ground, the Harkonnens had grown some of the finest pilingitam, a wood of steady currency, always valued by the supremely rich. From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with the mass-produced artificial materials known then as polestine, polaz, and pormabat (latterly: tine, laz, and bat). As far back as the Old Empire there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and Families Minor arising from the knowledge of the rare wood’s value. “He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances.
The wait for Nintendo’s next-gen console may have just gotten a little longer. According to multiple reports, Nintendo now plans to launch its Switch successor in the first quarter of 2025 — or about eight years after it launched the original Nintendo Switch.
Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, citing multiple sources, reported Friday in a new video that Nintendo recently briefed publishers on an updated launch window for the new console, colloquially known as “Switch 2.” That report has since been corroborated by reports from VGC and Eurogamer, also citing sources, that say Nintendo’s original plan for a next-gen launch in the second half of 2024 has been pushed to Q1 2025.
VGC’s report says that the delayed launch of the Switch 2 may be due to Nintendo’s desire to prepare “stronger first-party software for the console.”
Nintendo has not officially announced a successor to the Switch, nor has it indicated a potential launch window for the system. But multiple reports previously pegged it for a 2024 launch.
Company president Shuntaro Furukawa recently told investors that the original Switch would be Nintendo’s “main business” for its upcoming fiscal year, which runs from April 2024 through March 2025. Furukawa has also promised a “smooth transition” to any next-generation platform.
Nintendo’s current-generation console-handheld hybrid continues to sell well, despite its age. More than 139 million Switch systems have been sold to date, making it Nintendo’s second-best-selling console of all time.
If the Switch 2 has been delayed to 2025, Nintendo fans will have to sustain themselves on the company’s currently announced lineup. Mario vs. Donkey Kong just released Friday, and still to come are Princess Peach: Showtime!, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Nintendo also has Metroid Prime 4 on its release schedule but that long-awaited sequel does not have a release window.
Polygon has reached out to Nintendo for comment and will update when the company responds.
The meta for the best guns in Modern Warfare 3has developed considerably since launch, and has evolved significantly since the Feb. 7 rollout of Season 2.
From the get-go, there were a plethora of guns to choose from in the latest Call of Duty because every gun from Modern Warfare 2 was also made available, alongside a host of new weapons. We’re not including those as there are far too many to choose from, and for the most part, the new MW3 guns are stronger anyway.
So if you’re looking to dominate MW3 multiplayer in Season 2, look no further than these 10 guns.
Modern Warfare 3 best guns to use in Season 2
The best weapons in Modern Warfare 3 are as follows:
MCW (assault rifle)
Rival-9 (SMG)
WSP Swarm (SMG)
RAM-7 (assault rifle)
BAS-B (battle rifle)
RAM-9 (SMG)
HRM-9 (SMG)
Holger 556 (assault rifle)
XRK Stalker (sniper rifle)
SVA 545 (assault rifle)
Believe it or not, the MCW is still the best gun in Modern Warfare 3 and has been since launch. It’s the most jack-of-all-trades gun you’ll find, as you can kit it out for long-range engagements — which our suggested attachments below are apt for — or to deal with enemies in close quarters if needed.
However, the list has been shaken up a little with the introduction of some new guns and balance changes through Season 1 and Season 2, skyrocketing the Rival-9 (the best SMG in Modern Warfare 3) into second place. The WSP Swarm isn’t far behind it, though, and the RAM-7 is still a solid assault rifle despite its significant recoil.
The BAS-B is by far the best battle rifle and the optimal choice if you want to engage in much longer distance firefights, while the RAM-9 and HRM-9 were seasonal additions that have quickly found their place in the meta. The Holger 556 is still very strong, the XRK Stalker sniper rifle is the best choice for any marksmen or quick-scopers, and the SVA 545 excels thanks to its ability to shoot the first two bullets almost simultaneously.
(As an aside, for anyone returning to this list from Season 1, the AMR9 and Riveter have both been dropped in favor of the Rival-9 and RAM-9, and the HRM-9 has been added to round the list out to a solid 10 entries.)
Let’s go through our updated selections for the best guns in Modern Warfare 3 one-by-one.
1. MCW (assault rifle)
Image: Activision via Polygon
Kicking things off is the MCW, which is unlocked at rank 44. Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t have real weapon names, so the MCW is best known as the ACR from previous installments. Which is all to day, the MCW is a very reliable assault rifle that is fully automatic, with consistent range, recoil, and damage.
Essentially, with the right attachments, the MCW becomes a laser beam. Any of the heavy barrels do the job — we’d recommend the 16.5” MCW Cyclone Long Barrel — along with any vertical grip, though we found the Bruen Pivot to be the best (which requires leveling the SVA 545 to level 12 first). As for the rest of the attachments, an optic is always a good shout for enhanced visibility, alongside any combination of muzzle/stock/rear grip that assist with recoil control and bullet velocity.
For more on how to kit out this weapon, see our dedicated MCW loadout page.
2. Rival-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The Rival-9 wasn’t considered to be one of the best guns in MW3 on launch, but it has quickly risen to the top thanks to its fast fire rate. It packs a huge punch when you get up close and personal. As the meta has developed, running and gunning has solidified itself as a very strong style of play, particularly in Season 2.
Bearing that in mind — that you won’t often be engaging with enemies beyond a few meters away — you want to manage the recoil to an extent while also maintaining the weapon handling and mobility. We recommend the Rival Vice Assault Grip in the rear grip attachment slot, along with the Rival IGS-800 Barrel to deal with most of the recoil issues. Make sure you also stick the 9mm High Velocity ammunition on to deal the most damage.
3. WSP Swarm (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
Next up we have the WSP Swarm, the second SMG on our list of the best guns in Modern Warfare 3. This gun is seriously powerful, but as you’d expect given its machine pistol form, it has a boatload of recoil. This means it suits a very aggressive style of play, and while the Akimbo attachment may be tempting to dual-wield hip-fire these bad boys, we’re going for something a little more reliable.
Your entire aim should be to reduce the recoil while also not hindering the mobility too much, so look for muzzle and/or barrel attachments that strive toward that goal. Much like the RAM-7 below, the WSP Swarm has a very fast rate of fire, so you can’t go wrong with an extended magazine either. You definitely don’t need an optic though, as the iron sights are absolutely fine and, to be honest, you’ll often find yourself hip-firing — if you can reduce the hip fire spread with any attachments, even better.
4. RAM-7 (assault rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The RAM-7 was introduced in Season 1 and quickly found itself as a mainstay in the meta. It kicks like a mule but deals some serious damage. As such, you don’t want to kit it out for extremely long range, but it is one of the best choices at short to mid range for an assault rifle. A barrel or muzzle attachment that ideally silences the gun and helps with damage at range is key.
Alongside this, we recommend putting on an extended magazine thanks to how quickly the gun fires, then aiming to strike a balance between mobility, handling, and damage for the rest.
Tweak the attachments until you find the exact fit that works for you, or check out our guide to the best RAM-7 loadout in MW3.
5. BAS-B (battle rifle)
Image: Activision via Polygon
All the weapons in this list are fairly similar: fully automatic guns that are best at varying ranges. The BAS-B is no different. The first and only battle rifle on the list, this is the gun you want to switch to if our MCW build above still doesn’t have enough range for you. It doesn’t fire quite as quickly as the MCW, but each bullet packs way more of a punch, and once you have some recoil-managing attachments on there, you can put a longer-range optic on it, such as one of the 2.5x options.
When you’re in the opening levels of using the BAS-B though, we have just a few recommended attachments. The Bruen Venom Long Barrel is a no-brainer thanks to the range it adds, and the 30-round mag — or the 45-round once you unlock it — ensures you can mow down multiple enemies without needing to reload. We’d also recommend the Ravage-20 Heavy Stock, which you unlock once the BAS-B has reached level seven.
For more on how to kit out this weapon, see our dedicated BAS-B loadout page.
6. RAM-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The RAM-9 was introduced at the start of Season 2, and is the newest weapon on this list of the best guns in Modern Warfare 3. It’s another SMG with a rapid fire rate, but the recoil can be managed a little better than the Rival-9 above, so this is better suited for slightly longer engagements. The must-use attachments are the ZEHMN35 Compensated Flash Hider muzzle attachment and the HVS 3.4 Pad stock thanks to how they assist with recoil.
Make sure you equip an underbarrel grip of some description too — our recommendation is the SL Skeletal Vertical Grip — and we found a rear grip also does the job, ideally the Retort 90 Grip Tape. The iron sights are usable here, but if you’d rather equip an optical sight for better visibility, any red dot sight will work.
For more explanation on these attachment choices and details on the best class to use with this SMG, check out our dedicated RAM-9 loadout guide.
7. HRM-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The final SMG on the list, the HRM-9 with our build is actually very strong at a slightly further distance than you’d expect most SMGs to be effective. With that in mind, the Sonic Suppressor S muzzle attachment is a godsend as it buffs the bullet velocity, damage range, and it makes you undetectable by radar when firing.
It does mean the recoil control takes a minor hit though, so you want to use other attachments that help bring that back up. Any underbarrel grip geared towards that will do the job — our choice is the VX Pineapple — along with a rear grip and stock attachment. We’d recommend an optical sight here too, though a basic one like the Slimline Pro or Slate Reflector is good enough.
Our full HRM-9 loadout guide has more details on how to best utilize this SMG and the attachments to kit it out with.
8. Holger 556 (assault rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
Next up, we have the Holger 556, which is unlocked at level 37. Now, to be frank, there’s not a whole lot special about the Holger; it’s a reliable, fully automatic assault rifle that isn’t quite as good as the MCW or RAM-7. However, if you remember (and loved) the G36C from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, this is very reminiscent of that.
As always, you’ll want to focus on recoil management and damage output when kitting out the Holger. Find barrel, muzzle, and underbarrel attachments that assist with that, then stick your optic of choice on and you’ll be good to go. It has a higher base damage but slower fire rate than both the MCW and SVA, so bear that in mind when finding the best attachments.
9. XRK Stalker (sniper rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
With its introduction in Season 1, the XRK Stalker took the crown from the Katt-AMR to be the best sniper rifle in Modern Warfare 3, and that’s thanks to its impressive damage and mobility, making it the prime choice for those quick-scopers among you. This is a position it’s held through the launch of Season 2.
Your goal needs to be to improve the ADS speed, re-chambering speed, and sprint to fire speed so you can pull up your gun and one-shot enemies with ease. To this end, we’d recommend having the No Stock stock attachment, alongside the Light Bolt and FT Match Grip. You should also equip an optic that isn’t quite so zoomed in as the default, as you’re unlikely to be sniping at range.
The SVA 545 is the first assault rifle you’ll unlock in the game, so while you’re grinding for the MCW and AMR9, it’s the one you want to be using. As soon as you unlock create-a-class you can equip it, and it comes with one very interesting perk: the first shot fires two bullets, almost simultaneously. This isn’t just the first shot of the magazine though; if you tap fire, you can ensure every shot is a twofer. It’s not overpowered or anything, but it is a nifty trick if you can get the hang of it.
As is always the case with assault rifles, you’ll want to manage the recoil on this, so we recommend an underbarrel grip such as the VX Pineapple, a barrel attachment that can improve the range and damage, and other attachments that support recoil management. It’s one of the only guns in the game with decent iron sights though, so you don’t need to stick an optic on it.
Chargers are big, nasty bugs in Helldivers 2, and you’ll need to take out multiple of them if you want to complete some Personal Orders (as of this writing, it’s “Strain Culling”) and pick up extra Medals.
In this Helldivers 2 guide, we’ll tell you where to find Chargers and give you some bonus tips on how to deal with them.
Where to find Chargers in Helldivers 2
Image: Arrowhead Game Studios
Chargers aren’t the first “mini-boss” style enemy you’ll encounter in Helldivers 2, but they’re the first that should really scare you. They have loads of armor, are very fast once they charge, and even their weak spot can take a ton of punishment. But we’ll get to how to kill them later; first, you need to actually find a Charger.
Chargers only seem to appear in missions that are rated Medium difficulty or above (meaning you’ll have to work your way up through the difficulties by clearing easier missions first). However, even on Medium you’ll only really find Chargers in missions that ask you to specifically kill Chargers. And while that can be useful, none of the Chargers I killed on the Medium difficulty counted for “Strain Culling.” That could have something to do with the server issues at the time of this writing, but your best bet regardless is to play on the difficulty above Medium: Challenging.
Starting on Challenging difficulty, Chargers will just show up in nests or when you’re trying to complete an objective. They seem to spawn more frequently when you’re in a group (which can be difficult given the aforementioned server issues). Just keep playing missions on Challenging and hunting down nests. You should find all the Chargers you need in just a handful of missions.
How to kill a Charger in Helldivers 2
Image: Arrowhead Game Studios
So, you’ve found some Chargers, but now you have to actually deal with them. I won’t lie to you, until you and your squad have a handle on how Helldivers 2 really works, a Charger is probably going to kill one or two of you unless you’re very well-equipped or extremely careful.
But that actually leads us to one of our first big tips for Chargers or any big enemies: Drop directly on them. Yes, that’s right, you can drop your respawn pod on top of a bug and they’ll explode. It’s not worth the revive if you can kill the Charger another way, but if you’re already pulling in a reinforcement, do your best to squish the Charger on your way in. It’s a pretty fast way to end any fight.
Now you’re not going to squish a Charger every time you kill one, so it’s important to have other tactics. First, you can just shoot it in its big, glowing ass. The Charger is heavily armored at the front, but its back is exposed. Shred it with a turret or your own personal heavy machine gun. You can, of course, just use your primary assault rifle or pistol, but on Challenging and above, it’s going to take a long time if you do that.
You can also destroy the Charger’s armor with something like the Recoilless Rifle. Now this is a great option if you can consistently get two to three shots onto the same spot on the bug, as the Recoilless Rifle and other armor-piercing weapons seem to be better at punching a hole through armor and finishing the job that way than raw damage against already exposed weak points.
Your best bet for Chargers, however, is to simply blow them to hell with Stratagems before they even get the chance to see you. They’re big — big enough that you can spot them in their nest before they spot you. And, until they’re threatened, they move pretty slow. You and your group can use this to your advantage by dropping Orbital Strikes, Eagle Strafing Runs, and all other kinds of Stratagems on top of the Charger. If you can score a direct hit, you’ll probably kill it before it even gets the chance to chase you.
The seminal role-playing game’s official 50th anniversary was last month, and it passed without much fanfare from its owner. Then, on Monday, Wizards shared a news briefing containing a partial release calendar for the next 12 months. Buried at the bottom is the fact that Monster Manual, the third and final book in the new set of revised 5th edition rulebooks, won’t be available as a physical product until Feb. 18, 2025 — over a year from now. That means fans won’t have the full complement of revised core rules until after D&D’s 51st birthday. For comparison, the original 5th edition Monster Manual arrived in the same year, 2014, as the other two core rulebooks.
Making matters worse, that date further complicates the revised edition’s proposed naming convention. It, perhaps erroneously, started out being called One D&D and shifted to be known as the 2024 revision. But that’s largely academic at this point.
Here are the highlights from the announcement, including details on a few new adventures and a history book:
First up, the Player’s Handbook (2024) is expected to release on Sept. 17, 2024, followed by the Dungeon Masters Guide (2024) on Nov. 12, 2024, and Monster Manual (2025) on Feb. 18, 2025. According to Wizards, all three will have the now customary two-week digital pre-release window for those who pre-order it through D&D Beyond. That means you could potentially start playing with the revised rules for characters, combat, and adventuring by Sept. 3, 2024.
The standard cover for Vecna: Eve of Ruin.Image: Wizards of the Coast
Alternate art cover, available only at local game stores.Image: Wizards of the Coast
Vecna: Eve of Ruin is a campaign for characters starting at level 10, and tops out at level 20. It’s set to arrive as a physical product on May 21, 2024, and as a digital product for those who pre-order two weeks ahead of time. From the official description:
A high-stakes adventure in which the fate of the entire multiverse hangs in the balance. The heroes begin in the Forgotten Realms and travel to Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk as they race to save existence from obliteration by the notorious lich Vecna who is weaving a ritual to eliminate good, obliterate the gods, and subjugate all worlds.
Quests from the Infinite Staircaseis another anthology, a format that Wizards has excelled at in the past with hits like Candlekeep Mysteries and Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.Expect it on store shelves July 16, 2024, and as a digital product for those who pre-order two weeks earlier. The official description reads:
This anthology weaves together six classic DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventures while updating them for the game’s fifth edition. The Infinite Staircase holds doors leading to fantastic realms. It’s home to the noble genie Nafas, who hears wishes made throughout the multiverse and recruits heroes to fulfill them.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
The ultimate book showcasing D&D’s inception, including Gary Gygax’s never-before-seen first draft of D&D written in 1973, a curated collection of published fanzine and magazine articles contribute to D&D’s origin story. Each document is introduced, described, and woven into the story by one of the game’s foremost historians, Jon Peterson.
The news release teases a few more things to come in 2024, including projects that have yet to be announced. Highlights include a return of adversarial, tournament-style play common to the original version of D&D. There will also be “footwear and apparel from Converse, an official LEGO(tm) IDEAS building set complete with minifigures, and delicious treats suitable for snacking around the gaming table from Pop-Tarts.” More convention appearances by the D&D team are promised, as is the rollout — in some form — of the highly anticipated 3D virtual tabletop.
Ninja Kamui doesn’t waste any time getting from zero to 100. Within five minutes of its first episode, a bespectacled salaryman is ambushed by a flurry of projectile needles and attacks thrown by a dozen or so armored assailants, bobbing and weaving with uncanny precision as he counters each of their strikes before being viciously beheaded by a sneering brute with dreadlocks. It’s a strong first impression for the first original series from director Sunghoo Park following his work on Jujutsu Kaisen, one that boldly spells out Ninja Kamui’s declaration of intent with bloody and balletic finesse. In an anime season packed with strong premieres, Ninja Kamui positions itself as an action anime worth keeping an eye on.
Image: E&H production/Adult Swim
[Ed. note: Minor spoilers for Ninja Kamui episodes 1 through 2.]
Produced in collaboration with Sola Entertainment, the first original anime production from Park’s studio E&H Production follows the story of Higan, a former ninja who flees with his wife and infant child to build a new life in America after escaping from his clan on threat of death. Assuming new identities and making their living as farmers, Joe and his family live an idyllic and quiet life — that is, until Higan’s clan finally catches up to him, massacring his wife and child and leaving him a hair’s breadth from death himself. Surviving the attack on his home, Higan embarks on a single-minded quest for revenge as he attempts to hunt down his former masters and avenge his family’s murder.
There isn’t a whole lot in the way of subtlety in these initial episodes, though there are some cool minor details that convey the scrupulous lengths Higan was willing to go to protect his family, such as covertly wiping their fingerprints after leaving a supermarket or setting up an elaborate multi-camera surveillance system to spot potential threats. While the primary focus of the series is on Higan bashing and slashing anonymous baddies, there are still notable supporting characters, such as FBI agent Mike Morris and his partner Emma Samanda, an eccentric cat-loving doctor who previously worked with Higan before defecting from his clan, and the as-of-yet unnamed CEO of Auza, a ubiquitous mega corporation heavily implied to be in league with Higan’s former employers.
Image: E&H production/Adult Swim
Not much time is spent focusing on these characters though in these first two episodes, but that’s fine, because those details are all in service of the real draw of Ninja Kamui: the action. Park earned significant acclaim for his work on the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen and its 2021 feature-length prequel Jujutsu Kaisen 0, both of which featured fast-paced and creative fight sequences with memorable choreography and editing. Fans of Jujutsu Kaisen won’t be disappointed here, as the action in Ninja Kamui is easily on par with JJK’s, albeit far more gratuitous in the amount of blood and viscera. Character designs by Takashi Okazaki, the creator of Afro Samurai, also add to the appeal of the Ninja Kamui, as fans of 2007 anime and its 2009 sequel film Afro Samurai: Resurrection will also feel right at home with the level of violence and action choreography on display here.
There’s no especially grandiose or bold ambitions on display when it comes to Ninja Kamui’s opening episodes. The series knows what it is: A hyper violent revenge thriller with expertly calibrated action sequences and uniformly dark and somber tone. With that in mind, Ninja Kamui thoroughly succeeds as an engaging and entertaining action anime. With a confirmed total of 12 episodes, only time will tell how this initial premise will evolve and change over the course of the season. But what I know something for certain, which is that Ninja Kamui is a stunning addition to Adult Swim’s catalog of anime programming, and no matter where this story goes, one thing is certain: There will be blood.
Ninja Kamui airs Saturdays on Adult Swim and is available to stream on Max.
Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week, American Fiction, the Oscar-nominated comedy drama starring Westworld’s Jeffrey Wright, is available to purchase on VOD. That’s not all, as Jeymes Samuel’s The Book of Clarence starring LaKeith Stanfield and the ecological drama The End We Start From starring Jodie Comer (The Last Duel) also arrive on VOD this week, along with a few other exciting releases. There’s plenty of streaming premieres as well, with Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels finally arriving on Disney Plus following its VOD release last month. Down Low, a new comedy starring Zachary Quinto and Lukas Gage, is now streaming on Netflix, while the supernatural “Dracula on a boat” horror thriller The Last Voyage of the Demeter finally docks on Paramount Plus.
In this dark comedy, Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) stars as Gary, a recently divorced and deeply closeted father who forms an unlikely friendship with young masseur (Lukas Gage). Determined to help him come out of his shell and embrace his sexuality openly, the masseur sets Gary up with a date on a hookup app, but things quickly take a turn when the two must work together to avoid going to jail for murder.
New on Disney Plus
The Marvels
Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus
Photo: Laura Radford/Marvel Studios
Genre: Superhero action Run time: 1h 45m Director: Nia DaCosta Cast: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani
The 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe sees the return of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), also known as Captain Marvel. This time around, she’s teaming up with the superpowered Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) to save the universe from the threat of a vengeful Kree leader bent on restoring her home world.
In its best moments, The Marvels just throws wonderful ideas at the screen. There’s a planet of people who only sing, a space station full of cats that blithely devour furniture and humans alike, an animated depiction of Kamala’s internal monologue — the movie can feel like a mood board assembled by an overcaffeinated Star Trek fan, with a sense of imagination suitable for reminding the audience that comic books can be cool in the moment that you’re reading them, as opposed to for what they promise in the future.
Genre: Psychological thriller Run time: 1h 58m Director: Susanna Fogel Cast: Emilia Jones, Nicholas Braun, Geraldine Viswanathan
Based on Kristen Roupenian’s viral 2017 short story for The New Yorker, Cat Person follows the story of Margot, a college sophomore who enters into a brief relationship with an older man named Robert (Nicholas Braun). Things seem okay at first, until Margot begins to question whether or not Robert is telling the whole truth about his life.
Cat Person gets it wrong so consistently, makes its points so inelegantly, and pads out the short story in such an ill-conceived way that it ends up invalidating the same concerns on which it’s built. When a cop tells the protagonist that she should stop watching murder shows, it’s not institutional indifference toward violence against women. It’s a voice of reason, as the protagonist’s own actions later prove. This is a film that includes both a therapist who appears to state the subtext as text, then vanishes, and a one-dimensional best friend of color who exists solely to drop feminist buzzwords from five years ago (Geraldine Viswanathan, who deserves better). It’s confident in its cluelessness, and not in a way that underlines that same quality in its 20-year-old heroine.
Genre: Coming-of-age drama Run time: 1h 49m Director: Laura Chinn Cast: Laura Linney, Nico Parker, Woody Harrelson
This semi-autobiographical drama follows Doris (Nico Parker), a self-conscious teenager who strikes up an unlikely friendship with an older activist (Woody Harrelson) while caring for her dying brother and navigating the pitfalls of high school.
New on Prime Video
Upgraded
Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video
Genre: Romantic comedy Run time: 1h 44m Director: Carlson Young Cast: Camila Mendes, Archie Renaux, Lena Olin
I know what you’re thinking and no, this is not the sequel to Leigh Whannell’s cyberpunk action thriller starring Logan Marshall-Green. This is a romantic comedy starring Camila Mendes (Riverdale) and Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone) as Ana and Will; two strangers who meet during a first class flight to London who strike up a romance after Will mistakes Ana for his new boss. I think these wacky kids are gonna make it!
Genre: Period horror Run time: 1h 58m Director: André Øvredal Cast: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, David Dastmalchian
Dracula’s on a boat, and guess what? He’s PISSED. This supernatural horror thriller adapts a chapter from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and centers on the unfortunate crew of a transatlantic merchant ship who discover an unearthly threat among their cargo. As time dwindles away, and with it their chances of survival, the crew must make a last-ditch effort to kill the creature before they reach England.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter makes very little of most of its potential assets. It’s a film with no vision, a puzzling adaptation that’s so straightforward, viewers might believe every beat comes from Stoker’s novel and not a screenplay imagining what happened between the pages. Maybe the two decades the film spent in development, being rewritten and recast, are to blame; every colorful choice seems to have been wrung out of the script. At every moment, there’s potential for Demeter to become something distinct and interesting, but the screenplay and Øvredal’s direction choose otherwise, embracing straightforward competence over any style or flair. It’s dry historical fiction, Horatio Hornblower’s Dracula.
New to rent
American Fiction
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: MGM/Amazon Studios
Genre: Comedy-drama Run time: 1h 57m Director: Cord Jefferson Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown
The Oscar-nominated debut from Cord Jefferson stars Jeffrey Wright (The Batman) as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a frustrated novelist living in Los Angeles who writes a scathing satire of stereotypical “Black” books, only for it to be sky-rocketed to the prestigious heights of literary acclaim. Feels like a shoe-in for fans of such movies as Putney Swope and Bamboozled.
The Book of Clarence
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Legendary Entertainment/Moris Puccio
Genre: Historical comedy Run time: 2h 9m Director: Jeymes Samuel Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Omar Sy, RJ Cyler, Anna Diop
Jeymes Samuel (The Harder They Fall) returns with a new film, this time a biblical comedy drama starring LaKeith Stanfield. The Book of Clarence follows the story of a down-on-his-luck man living in A.D. 33 Jerusalem who aspires to free himself from debt. His plan? Take a page out of the book of a local preacher claiming to be the son of God and proclaim himself as the Messiah, performing “miracles” in a bid for fame and glory. When Clarence’s schemes run afoul of the Romans, he’ll be faced with not only the consequences of his deception, but a choice that will shape his life and the course of history.
The End We Start From
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Sunny/March Hera Pictures
Genre: Post-apocalyptic thriller Run time: 1h 42m Director: Mahalia Belo Cast: Ramanique Ahluwalia, Elena Bielova, Shiona Brown
Jodie Comer (The Last Duel) stars in this new thriller as a woman attempting to protect her infant child after London is submerged by flood waters. With nowhere else to turn, she will have to embark on a search for a way to raise her child and build a new home.
Cobweb
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Anthology Studios/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Genre: Black comedy drama Run time: 2h 15m Director: Kim Jee-woon Cast: Song Kang-ho, Im Soo-jung, Oh Jung-se
Song Kang-ho (Parasite) stars in this period black comedy as Kim Ki-yeol, an obsessive director in the 1970s on the verge of completing his latest film, Cobweb. There’s just one problem: Kim’s suddenly has a change of heart and wants to completely reshoot the ending of his film in two days. He’ll have to get his confused and uncooperative cast and crew to cooperate, as well as escape the ire of Seoul’s censorship authorities.
I.S.S.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: LD Entertainment
Genre: Sci-fi thriller Run time: 1h 35m Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite Cast: Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, John Gallagher Jr.
Imagine if you were an astronaut aboard the International Space Station during an apocalyptic event where the world is consumed in nuclear hellfire — what would you do? That’s what the characters in this bracing sci-fi thriller have to figure out, as a crew of American and Russian astronauts must decide whether to cooperate in the face of extinction or surrender to their nationalistic anxieties and resentment.
GTA Online runs on money. That’s why there are no cheats for it in the game. (There are, however, cheats in GTA V proper.)
Everything you want to do in GTA Online costs money — basically, everything from a high-end car to the real estate you need to start a new type of event is going to cost you just shy of GTA$2,000,000.
Our guide on how to make money in GTA Online will tell you everything you need to know to get rich quick in Los Santos. Well, quick-ish.
Be patient
The answer to the question “how do you make money in GTA Online?” is slowly. What you do to earn cash is really a question of how much time and effort you want to put in. More time and effort means more money.
Image: Rockstar Games
Very few things you can do are going to earn you millions of GTA$ per hour (or even day) — especially if you’re playing solo. Saving up enough for that new car, submarine, or business is going to be a big time investment.
How to make a little money fast in GTA Online
These activities aren’t going to change your life, but they’ll be enough to refill your ammo or buy some health-replenishing snacks.
Steal a car and sell it at a Los Santos Customs. You’ll only make a few thousand GTA$ and you can only do it a few times a day, but it’s a quick and easy way to make a little cash.
Participate in events around Los Santos. Things like races will earn you up to about GTA$5,000 each for 10 minutes of effort.
Rob a store. Head into any store and point a gun at the cashier, and you’ll walk away with a couple thousand GTA$ (and a wanted level or two).
Watch for weekly 2x and 3x events
Each week, certain events and activities pay out double or even triple GTA$. You can check our weekly guide to see what this week’s are. Depending on the week, you might even get free money just for logging in — like this week’s GTA$188,888 for Lunar New Year.
How to make money in GTA Online every day
Image: Rockstar Games
Beyond the big things (below), you can also get yourself a steady income just by doing certain things every day. Things like:
Spin the wheel at the Diamond Casino. You’ve got about a 20% chance of winning between GTA$20,000 and 50,000. You’ve also got a chance to win a car that changes weekly.
Empty the safes of your legitimate businesses. Your businesses like the bar in your motorcycle club clubhouse or salvage yard will earn some cash every day and store it in the safe. You’ll have to visit each one to pick it up, though.
Find G’s cache. Gerald will drop a package that will earn you roughly GTA$20,000 in cache cash each day. The location changes, though, so you’ll have to do some driving to find it.
Clear stash houses. Each day, you’ll also find one stash house somewhere in Los Santos that you can clear of enemies for Gerard. Once you find the combination and open the safe, you just have to flee the scene. You’ll be rewarded with a little GTA$ and, just as importantly, you’ll get supplies for one of your businesses.
Buy businesses and facilities to unlock new ways to make money
Most activities that make you money in GTA Online require you to own a specific kind of business or facility and the cost of entry to just about all of them is between GTA$1,000,000 and 2,000,000.
Image: Rockstar Games
But, just remember, each time you buy a new piece of real estate or new business, you unlock another way to make money. And keep an eye on the weekly updates — each week a property (or type of property) goes on sale for 30% off.
Agencies unlock Security Contracts and Payphone Hits
Your apartment gets you access to heists (which is where you’ll make the most money)
Auto shops unlock Auto Shop Services, Contracts, and Exotic Exports
Bunkers (or facilities) unlock the Gunrunning business
Clubhouses unlock MC Contracts and MC Work (and a bar)
Hangars unlock the Air Freight Cargo business
Nightclubs allow you to store additional good from other businesses and make money on their own
Offices unlock Special Cargo, Vehicle Cargo, Special Vehicle missions
Salvage yards unlock Salvage Yard Robberies and the Tow Truck Service
The best activities for a lot of money in GTA Online
With the right properties and a good crew (or a lucky roll of the rando pool), you can make a lot of money pretty quickly in GTA Online by focusing on the best paying events.
Heists are multi-step events that will take you about an hour to complete, give or take. They’re also the best payout you’ll get in the game, with rewards ranging from GTA$100,000 to 4,000,000.
Salvage Yard Roberies work a lot like heists, but they’re doable with only one person. They’ll earn you GTA$200,000 to 300,000 for about an hour of work.
A player can find tons of cute or capable Pals on a tour through Palworld’s Palpagos Islands, but in order to fill out their Paldeck, they’ll need to dabble with breeding. Breeding is a surprisingly deep part of Palworld, and it’s quickly become a rabbit hole — or a Caprity hole, if you will — for my group on our shared server.
Once I got past the original hook of “What if survival game, but Pokémon?” in Palworld, I was surprised to find that I was still engaged. I’m on a server with my friends, and we all handle different roles. I pump up my carry weight and bring Pals who could help haul, and I’m constantly loading up with tons of ore to smelt into valuable ingots. My buddies Jake and Matt pitch in, too; Jake is a forward scout, whereas Matt runs what we politely call “Pal Resources.”
Pal Resources is the name for our breeding camp. Now that we have the ability to build ranches and bake delicious cakes, Matt is off to the races. It’s entirely possible to just casually dabble in breeding, but we are now entirely engrossed by the process. There are three main reasons to breed. The first is that by combining two seemingly unrelated Pals, a third Pal can be born. If you want to fill out your Paldeck and be a proper collector, breeding is essentially mandatory.
But while creating new Pals was a fun trick, what really snagged us was perfecting our existing roster. For instance, the Relaxaurus is an adorable dope of a dinosaur — but with the power of Pal Resources, we were able to create an electric variant who keeps our infrastructure running. Breeding can create new elemental types of existing Pals.
Image: Pocketpair
Sometimes, this offers utility. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have a little bit of variety in my life. Why roll around with one bouncy, cuddly Kingpaca like an absolute fool when I can have two Kingpacas, one of which is an Ice type?
Matt also discovered that you can breed two of the same Pals together, and their traits will pass down to their offspring. This is the third, and arguably the most potent, reason to get into breeding. Sometimes, the process doesn’t work out — nobody needs a pyromaniac Pal running around endangering the whole base. But if you have a diet-loving, burly-bodied workaholic Pal — boy howdy, you don’t even need to get on the platform and cruelly command your Pals to get to work.
Our bases are now staffed by a set of Pals, all several generations deep into breeding, who tend to our every need. Have a large work order to complete? Don’t even bother; Anubis will run over and finish that for you in seconds. Hungry? Why not go into the fridge, chilled by a tiny hedgehog, and grab yourself 500 omelets? Such a bounty is nothing to us.
Pal breeding reminds me of the Chao Gardens from Sonic Adventure 2, which served as a place to bring and hatch eggs, and then raise the ensuing Chao. What is meant to be a side thing has now become a full game in and of itself, where we dutifully bake cakes and cart massive eggs to and fro, all in the service of building our empire on the Palpagos Islands. As for the Pals that don’t make the cut — don’t worry about it. We’ve found a big, open field where they can run, and play, and definitely don’t get put into the Goodbye Tube to get turned into meat sluice to strengthen our A-team. That simply doesn’t happen! It’s fine.
Square Enix has released a free demo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PlayStation 5, after showing off the second part of its remake of the 1997 classic in a dedicated State of Play stream on Tuesday.
The demo comes in two parts, with the second to be added later in an update. The first part, available now, is almost the first full chapter of the game. It lets you play as hero Cloud and antagonist Sephiroth in an early flashback section called “the Nibelheim episode,” based on a memorable moment from the original game. It’s very dramatic, and makes a brilliant jumping-on point for the Final Fantasy 7 story.
The second part of the demo, which will be added between now and the game’s release on Feb. 29, gives players a taste of combat and exploration in a more open setting, Junon, ending in a boss fight at the fishing village of Under Junon. In this second section, you can pick from Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Red XIII to form a party of three, and experiment with the characters’ synergies as you hunt down monsters on the world map before facing a boss. Polygon had the opportunity to play this section back in September, and it’s a great taster for what the majority of Rebirth will play like.
Sadly, since the demo features sections from across Rebirth, progression won’t carry over to the full game once it releases for PS5 on Feb. 29.
Elsewhere in the State of Play, Square Enix offered a deep dive on Rebirth’s structure and features, including the often surreal and funny side quests and minigames that will flesh out what looks to be a colorful and expansive adventure.
Polygon recently had a chance to play the opening hours of Rebirth. After that momentous first chapter recalling the Nibelheim Incident, the action moved to the picturesque town of Kalm, where Cloud and his friends are resting after the events of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There, we could chat with the party and locals and explore some of the game’s systems, including a promising Gwent-alike collectible card game called Queen’s Blood. After an escape from a Shinra raid on Kalm, the action moved out onto the Grasslands for open exploration reminiscent of the Junon section of the demo.
The Pokémon Company’s life-size Psyduck is back. It’s up for preorder on The Pokémon Center United States-based store, just weeks after it was restocked on the Japanese site. The Pokémon Company originally released its 31-inch Psyduck plush back in 2020, a blessing to Pokémon fans during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. It’s been back in stock a few times before, and here it is again, with perfect timing with Netflix’s Pokémon Concierge, starring Psyduck.
Psyduck remains exactly the same as it was then, both stunning and perpetually stunned by its chronic headaches. (Psyduck is a migraine-haver’s icon.) Psyduck measures 31 inches in its Pokédex entry, making the big yellow duck true to life. The only problem is that it’s $324.99 — $45 more expensive than it was in 2020. That’s inflation for you.
The good news, though, is that you now can read user reviews to tell you how awesome owning a life-size Psyduck is:
Words cannot express how pleased I am with this massive Psyduck. Truly, massive. I’m thrilled that he finally came back in stock, and I had no qualms about purchasing him this time around. He shows up in random places around the house and it’s always a shock at first when I see him (most definitely he is using his confusion attack) but then a calmness quickly washes over me, and I feel comfort in knowing that he too, is confused all the time. Be aware that the shipping box is quite large, and says Psyduck on the outside, so don’t let him sit unattended for too long or someone else might try to capture him! He is way too rare and precious. Trust me – buy him and you will not regret it!! PS…he looks fantastic in hats.
There are actually two four star reviews out of the total 70 — the rest are top scores. The main gripe is that Psyduck is a little top heavy, so it falls over relatively easily. But for the most part, Psyduck has been worth the purchase for many Pokémon fans:
He is incredibly rotund and looks confused and distressed at all times, it’s like looking into a mirror! I couldn’t bring myself to place Psyduck on the floor so he takes up half my bed instead. A small price to pay for Psyduck to watch over me while I dream about an Appletun plush restock.
Also, Psyduck came in a box that was not discrete at all. Anyone will be able to read in big bold letters that a 31” Psyduck plush is inside so be ready to intercept the package once it is dropped off otherwise Team Rocket might steal him away.
The Pokémon Company expects to start shipping this new batch of yellow ducks in October. If you can’t wait until then but don’t care about what big Pokémon you have, a tall Lucario, big round Spheal, and massive Wailord are all in stock. In the past, The Pokémon Company’s sold big Mareeps, Slowpokes, and Gigantamax Pikachus among several other large dudes.
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