The success of Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 Predator movie Prey seems to have been a wake-up call for 20th Century Studios, a reminder both that there was still life in the franchise, and that approaching it in a way audiences had never seen before could pay off. The studio effectively handed...
Every Spider-Man Universe movie Sony promised (or threatened) to make, and definitely won’t now
Arriving just 10 months after the disastrous Madame Web, Sony Pictures’ Kraven the Hunter landed in theaters in December with a resounding critical and commercial thud. Kraven’s failure to draw in fans of Spider-Man’s most famous villains helped underscore a simple fact: Apart from Venom, audiences simply don’t care about...
Three new horror games I can’t wait to get my sweaty palms on
The Horror Game Awards Summer Showcase took place over the weekend, unveiling world premiere trailers for 50 new and upcoming horror titles that are sure to send a chill down even the bravest horror fan’s spine.With so many games appearing in the showcase, it’s hard to play favorites, but some...
Magic’s Commander format is changing. Here’s what you need to know
Ever since it emerged on Magic: The Gathering’s professional tour in the early 2000s, the Commander format has been lovingly embraced by the game’s massive global community. So much so that today the publisher considers it to be the game’s most popular format. Walking the halls of MagicCon Chicago last...
The 2-year hunt for ‘one of the rarest games in history’
Cosmology of Kyoto is a first-person horror exploration game where players navigate a deeply haunted yet surprisingly educational terrain. Originally released in 1993, Cosmology of Kyoto and its disturbing depictions of suffering have since become a cult classic. Roger Ebert, known hater, loved the game so much that he spent...
Grand Theft Hamlet’s creators put Shakespeare in GTA to put chaos back into Shakespeare
Grand Theft Hamlet is a documentary film, kind of. It’s also an experimental theater project. It’s also a rough-and-ready feature-length machinima, made entirely in-game in Grand Theft Auto Online. It’s also a slapstick comedy of errors about three friends trying to fill an empty period in their lives by staging...
When making lots of small games is more sustainable than making one big one
If you play indie games, you may have noticed Strange Scaffold’s incredible hit rate. Every single one of the studio’s games — from Clickolding, I Am Your Beast, and most recently, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown — has ended up somewhere within the “Positive” ranking system on Steam (with...
Dave Bautista still hopes to play Ernest Hemingway: ‘I don’t want to be an action star’
When I last spoke to former WWE star turned action movie stalwart Dave Bautista back in 2021, he was just coming off Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, and looking ahead to his role in Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. And he was thrilled — both with...
Top 10 PlayStations, ranked
The original PlayStation launched in Japan on Dec. 3, 1994, meaning that Sony’s video game brand is celebrating its 30th birthday. Once dismissed as an also-ran beside powerhouse console makers Nintendo and Sega, PlayStation has since become a dominant player in the video game industry. But it hasn’t always been...
The Last of Us writers break down the season 2 ending and 4 other big changes
HBO’s version of The Last of Us is pretty good at maintaining fidelity to the lauded Naughty Dog games, especially when it comes to the blocking of major scenes. But in a way, that exactitude only magnifies the ways in which the show deviates from the games. While viewers expected...