Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother arrives in theaters on September 25. This review is based on a screening from the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.

Once upon a time, Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali was meant to play slick vampire hunter Blade for Marvel Studios under Mogul Mowgli and Bait director Bassam Tariq. The project never materialized, but it led the Muslim actor-filmmaker pair to team up for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a surprisingly thoughtful, action-tinged crime drama about a devout hit man trying to find breast milk for his infant daughter. This takes him through mosques and strip clubs alike in rural Virginia, laying out a visually and emotionally multifaceted journey across a heightened American landscape.

The result — born of Tariq’s own experience trying to feed his newborn son while his wife was in the ICU — beats with a lived emotional authenticity, while unfolding against a borderline satirical modern United States whose religious and cultural concerns inform the movie’s sprawling drama. Ali plays sword-wielding contract killer (and former Quran teacher) Latif, a man whose strict and sometimes paradoxical principles — like using blades but never guns, although the result is just as vicious — are challenged when his wife Khadija (Shakirah DeMesier) suddenly dies. This leaves him to care for his rebellious teenage daughter Fatiha (Adia), his delightfully brash adolescent son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara), and his hungry baby girl (who doesn’t take well to formula) by any means necessary.

The repetition of the film’s title is explained numerous times in voiceover as an Islamic hadith (a prophetic edict) about the central role of mothers in Muslim tradition; in a list of important figures in one’s life, they would occupy the top three spots. Before we ever meet the radiant Khadija in brief flashbacks, Latif is informed of her death by phone call during a darkly comedic scene where he’s just finished butchering a target before clumsily disposing of the corpse. Her absence looms large over the movie, forcing Latif to fill her enormous shoes in ways he may not be prepared for, as little hints of his personal code are doled out through dialogue. He kills Christian white supremacists and Islamic terrorists alike — anyone who poses a danger to innocent people or his community at large — though his vigilantism is largely backgrounded and, for better or worse, left to the imagination.

Awkward exchanges stemming from his conservative approach to women complicate his mission to feed his daughter, but his former associate Mike (Laith Nakli), an Arab American security specialist, is eager to help… for a price. Mike’s unruly nephew (a scummy Abubakr Ali) and former student of Latif’s has not only been rejected by their community for his salacious content creation, but has a target on his back owing to suspicions of pornography and human trafficking courtesy of Korean American pastor (and respected former soldier) Hwan Yoon, played by John Cho in a maniacally fun role. Should Latif take out the heavily guarded Hwan, his needs will be taken care of, but the pious assassin wants out of the game.

Tariq crafts a detailed simulacrum of modern America split by the pull of religion — Latif’s Islam, Hwan’s Evangelicalism, and the Mormonism of a kindly neighbor — but bound by the search for community, no matter how warped. As much as Hwan is satirized as a gun-toting extremist playing to a Confederate flag-waving fan base, the purity of his convictions makes him both sympathetic and utterly terrifying. This in turn makes for a powerful mirror for Latif, whose own hard-fought beliefs are forced to waver in the face of unusually difficult circumstances, playing out at great length through arguments and verbal dilemmas. The action is surprisingly scant, but its brief eruptions are intense, realistic, and soaked in both blood and remorse.

The majority of the drama revolves around the loss of Latif’s wife and the hole it leaves in his heart, affording Ali the chance to deliver a devastating performance which Tariq and cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi accentuate through sweltering contrast and saturation. The light bouncing off Latif’s sweat-drenched brow adds as much to the movie’s bleakly comedic mood as Son Lux’s bouncy, intense score. As darkly funny as the film may be — thanks in large part to Fatiha’s rejection of her father and his faith — its drama is treated both seriously and tenderly. This is especially true in the moments Latif has to confront either Khadija’s family, like her Christianized brother (played by Tramell Tillman), or domineering members of his community, like his imam (Giancarlo Esposito), all of whom seem at least vaguely aware of his line of work.

Where the movie falters most is in its refusal to detail what Latif’s code actually looks and feels like, owing to a lack of preceding moments where we get to observe his job (or rather, his mission) unfolding as usual. This might have gone a long way toward dramatizing what it actually means for him to break his solemn vows; without this contrast, a number of turning points and major decisions feel robbed of their potential weight. However, the film is no less aesthetically inviting, accentuating fearful close-ups with spiritual halos as its conflicted antihero struggles with his duties as a father and man of faith in a violent world that has shaped him violently in return.

If you're a bit stunned to hear that there's a new single-player story campaign for Warcraft 3 in 2026 – 23 years after its last expansion, The Frozen Throne – then you can imagine how I felt when Forsaken Kingdom fell into my hands ahead of its surprise announcement and immediate release today. It's honestly great to be back, considering Blizzard hasn't given single-player RTS fans anything new to chew on at all since 2016's Starcraft II: Nova Covert Ops. This expansion maintains the feel of classic Warcraft 3 while mixing in some new ideas, and that's something I might never run out of appetite for.

At the time of writing, I've only had the chance to play through maybe a quarter of the new story: the four-mission Last Days of Lordaeron prologue, which is quite juicy and ambitious on its own, as well as the first three or so hours of what Blizzard says is roughly 30 total in Forsaken Kingdom. The latter really leans into being an RPG so far, like a more ambitious version of Rexxar's Founding of Durotar bonus campaign in The Frozen Throne.

The Last Days of Lordaeron picks up on the day Arthas returned from Northrend to kill his father, perhaps one of the most pivotal moments in all of Warcraft lore, and follows the new hero, guard lieutenant Garek Bandarion, as he fights his way through a besieged Andorhal and a devastated Strathholme in a doomed attempt to save his homeland from the Scourge. This prologue culminates with a confrontation against none other than Baron Rivendare, and contains numerous clever little references to both Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.

I enjoyed the design of these missions for the most part. The Siege of Andorhal, especially, puts a little bit of a MOBA-inspired twist on the typical Warcraft 3 routine by having you capture towers that spawn waves of AI-controlled friendly soldiers at regular intervals to help you push across the map. Another segment of the same mission required me to hold specific objectives to be able to recruit certain kinds of units, rather than simply needing their associated structure in my base.

Stratholme, post-purge at this point, is built like a winding dungeon crawl that requires you to coordinate one group led by Garek and a second led by the elven priest Ilastar Songbreeze – 500 bonus points if you recognize that deep cut, because I definitely had to look up who the heck he was and I practically eat, sleep, and breathe Warcraft. They remain separated for the first half of the mission, which created some interesting opportunities to use one group to complete an objective that helped the other progress. They then unite at the end for the final, dramatic push.

In an extremely heavily-telegraphed twist, Garek doesn't fare well in his confrontation with Rivendare, and ends up raised as one of the free-willed Forsaken in the main campaign. Taking his orders directly from Sylvanas and accompanied by her lieutenant, the Dark Ranger Anya, this free-roaming, quest-driven adventure revolves around establishing the Forsaken in the Undercity beneath the capital ruins. We also know Garek is destined to become the first Forsaken Paladin – an unorthodox combo that is soon to be playable in World of Warcraft – but I'm not sure how this transpires just yet.

Forsaken Kingdom also comes with a third, entirely new graphical style for Warcraft 3 called the "Definitive Edition" option. The idea was to address the complaints people had about 2020's divisive Reforged update, making Warcraft 3 look a bit more detailed and modern while preserving the feel of the original. At first, I wasn't super impressed with this direction. It doesn't look great zoomed in during cutscenes, to be honest. A lot of the textures are extremely flat, matte, and almost unfinished-looking. You can see visible pixels on some of the armor where it transitions from the faction blue to the metallic edging. And the lighting still comes off as pretty dated.

But when I loaded into a custom skirmish match against AI, I suddenly saw what they were going for. Playing zoomed out at a fast pace, I almost forgot I wasn't using the original 2003 graphics. It's like a magic trick. All the units and buildings look like how I remember them, just with higher fidelity. I suspect this will become the preferred way to play multiplayer and custom games for all but the most die-hard, low-polygon grognards.

It's a bit unfortunate to me, then, that these visual goodies are so unevenly distributed. The Forsaken Kingdom campaign can only be played with the Definitive Edition graphics. And, you know, that seems fair enough. Multiplayer and skirmish let you pick between Classic, Reforged, or Definitive Edition. But if you want to revisit the still frankly superb Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne campaigns – and you really should! – they only support Classic or Reforged, not Definitive.

The other significant addition, and the one with a big impact on multiplayer, is Warcraft 3's first new tavern hero since the Alchemist and Firelord were added in 2004. This is the Forsaken Paladin, based on Garek of course. He's in a bit of a strange thematic spot. After all, there's already the Human Paladin hero, and the Death Knight was originally designed as sort of a negative mirror image of that. So where does that leave the Forsaken Paladin?
Well, he is an undead neutral hero who can only heal the living, so he might be the least useful to Undead players, ironically. His Q ability is a dash that does more damage the more enemies it passes through, so he's quite mobile. As a strength hero, he is deadly in melee. His W is familiar to anyone who has played a WoW paladin with Consecration, which damages undead enemies and heals friendly living units in a small circle at his feet. He also has a passive aura that reduces magic damage taken and increases healing received. And his ult is an AoE purge/stun that heals nearby friendly units, with bonus healing and a short damage buff if the purge removed a debuff from them. This could definitely have some strong counterplay against certain builds, and I'm interested to see what pro players think of him.

I should also mention that the number of units in a control group has been doubled across all game modes. It's an ambitious change for a legacy game like this, and one I'm sure the old guard will groan about. But I think it's a positive one overall, from my spot down here in the tryhard seats.

Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for my final review of Forsaken Kingdom once I've gotten a chance to conquer the full campaign.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to take these broken wings and learn to fly again in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is emblematic of a long-extinct era. I’m not actually talking about its famous 1980s setting, though; I’m talking about the games industry at large. While we’ve had to patiently wait more than 12 years between GTA V and GTA VI, 2002’s Vice City arrived first on PlayStation 2 a mere 12 months after the genre-defining GTA III. Nothing as good as Vice City happens this rapidly anymore. And make no mistake – it is very, very good.

Vice City introduces a pile of new vehicle types and weapons, and its missions are immediately more imaginative and varied than its predecessor. It also embraces a noticeably different approach to its storytelling, benching the mute protagonist concept for a fully voiced lead character, giving him the ability to have far more entertaining interactions with a considerably more memorable supporting cast of allies and antagonists. Above everything, however, it oozes unrivalled personality and style thanks to its ’80s backdrop, and is elevated to untouchable heights by its sonically unmistakable soundtrack. I love this game. It grabs me by the crotch and shakes me around until I am not sure if I am a man or a woman. Then I remember I am Luke Reilly – Mister Luke Reilly – and this is Rockstar North with GTA: Vice City.

Realistically, Vice City could have been little more than another serving of the formula that had just completely revolutionised open-world games and it still would’ve sold truckloads. Indeed, for a brief spell, it began life as exactly that. After finalising GTA III on PC, the first thing the team behind it did was begin thinking about what vehicles, weapons, and missions could potentially go into a mission pack for their blockbuster crime sandbox. However, after realising there was too much content to squeeze into an expansion, the next chapter in the GTA saga became a fully fledged sequel instead.

I guess, strictly speaking, the decision to brush aside the present day and place Vice City’s action in 1986 actually makes it a prequel. Whatever you want to call it, it was astounding – and it remains so today.

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

While GTA III changed the trajectory of the GTA series forever – and set the stage for an entire ecosystem of open world action games to follow – Vice City is notable as the GTA that properly introduced the broader spectrum of vehicle variety we expect from the series today. Motorcycles made their first reappearance since the top-down era, and we could now effectively pilot aircraft – including choppers, and a seaplane with a complete set of wings. It also brought in outfit changes, property purchases, and even an in-game map (although it still came with a paper one, too).

Importantly, however, Vice City also introduced a protagonist with a voice of his own. In GTA III, dialogue typically consists of one-sided monologues – or characters simply barking a batch of mission instructions at you. Vice City is completely different. Thanks to leading man Tommy Vercetti having a voice of his own – provided by iconic Goodfellas star Ray Liotta himself – Vice City is far closer in tone and spirit to the classic crime movies and TV that inspired it in the first place. It’s funnier, snappier, and packed with so much more personality thanks to Tommy’s ability to bite back, express emotion, and give voice to his ambitions. Tommy’s ambition is actually a really important part of the equation, too, and something that further distinguishes Vice City from GTA III. That is, while GTA III is about survival as a little fish in a big pond, Tommy Vercetti is here to become Vice City’s great white shark. Vice City is not about scraping by; Tommy is here to take over this whole town.

Rockstar has since largely pivoted away from casting GTA characters with high-profile film actors, but during Vice City the practice was just about at its peak. Alongside Ray Liotta, Vice City features Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, William Fichtner, Robert Davi, Luis Guzmán, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Danny Dyer, and even Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. Yes, Miami Vice’s legendary Ricardo Tubbs was tapped for a key role in Vice City. Vice City is nothing if not hilariously unapologetic about its reverence for classic Miami crime dramas like Miami Vice and Scarface. It’s certainly no accident that Diaz’s mansion practically still has Al Pacino’s butt print in the office chair, or – if you get your wanted level up to three stars – you’ll be set upon by plain clothes Vice Squad detectives who show up in Cheetah sports cars.

Cum On Feel the Noize

In 2002, Vice City absorbed me immediately. I was obsessed and could not stop playing it. In 2026, I’m hooked all over again. I’d honestly forgotten how great it was to look at, certainly by PS2 standards. I actually don’t know what looks better: the evenings, or the sunrises. I also love all the little flourishes embedded in it – from the glinting ocean chop to the subtle way Tommy’s clothes flap as he whips through the air on a motorcycle. Bikes are such an excellent addition and feel great to ride, and I really dig the way they’re tuned to let you slide them aggressively into corners without abruptly gripping up and high-siding Tommy over the top of them. Cars handle more sharply than GTA III, too, and have a better sense of weight, which is such a crucial part of open-world action games for me.

The combat? Well, I’m still in a love/hate relationship with the general blasting. Yes, the auto targeting is effective in locking on and cutting down your opposition, but only when it’s locking onto your actual opposition – and not your literal allies who you drove to the shootout personally. I just wish it knew the cops directly in front of me are a bigger threat than the distant motorcyclist trying to flee the scene, and it remains an annoying idiosyncrasy of this era of GTA, particularly when it causes me to fail a mission. There are still no mid-mission checkpoints in Vice City, but it does introduce helpful, automated taxi rides back to the start of missions you were just wasted on. By cutting down on repetitive travel, Vice City is not only more respectful of our time, I also think it reduces the risk of players growing to resent particular stretches of the map they otherwise might’ve been forced to drive to and fro across one too many times.

That said, it’s hard for me to grow tired of being in a vehicle in Vice City thanks to the soundtrack, which weaponised licensed music so successfully it single handedly reinvented the etymology of many of these songs in my brain. Can you hear Mister Mister’s Broken Wings without thinking of Fernando Martinez? I can’t. Perhaps the most impressive side effect of having a soundtrack this vast, memorable, and expertly curated is the way it flavours the missions in different ways for different playthroughs. Almost a quarter of a century after playing it for the first time, I found myself in a dirtbike chase through the back alleys of Washington Beach to the pop strains of 99 Luftballons. Not a song I would’ve considered for a frantic, high-speed chase – and yet the uptempo pop jam worked a treat. The fact that you can Baby Driver yourself to an unexpectedly brilliant bit of backing music is one of the GTA series’ greatest strengths, and Vice City is arguably the absolute acme. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not just the best soundtrack of the GTA series – edging out San Andreas and Vice City Stories – it’s one of the best soundtracks in video games full stop.

Never Too Much

Vice City occupies a special spot in the history of the series as the first game out of its then-newly rechristened development team, Rockstar North – although it should be noted the studio did have somewhat of a running start. The operation had initially been established as the Edinburgh arm of original GTA creators DMA Design, but DMA’s original Dundee branch had been shuttered shortly after. In other words, the prehistory of Rockstar North stretches back to the founding of DMA in the ’80s – so it’s coincidentally quite fitting its first official project became gaming's most quintessential tribute to that decade.

To be fair to some of the GTA series’ most memorable genre peers, Vice City wasn’t the first open-world action and driving game to use the past as a backdrop. The funkadelic Driver and Driver 2, set in an undefined moment at some point in the late ’70s or early ’80s, rolled back their own clocks some years before Vice City. On top of that, the original Mafia took us on a journey back to the 1930s, during the closing chapter of the United States’ Prohibition era. However, there’s just something richer and more special about the way Vice City transports you back to the beachside, neon-drenched excess of 1986.

There are a combination of elements all working in concert with each other to crank up the atmosphere to irresistible heights. The large fleet of angular exotic supercars and boxy American land whales on the roads, glinting as the beaming sun catches their windscreens. The pedestrians strutting the sidewalks in leather jumpsuits that look like they’ve been peeled directly off Michael Jackson. A bright, sun-kissed cityscape that’s so different to the dense, grimy greys of Liberty City, and which sits atop a seedy underbelly of chainsaw carnage, cartel chaos, cocaine, and cheap porn. The pastel pants, the palm-lined streets, the pulsating soundtrack – all of this in unison made Vice City a magically immersive time capsule like no other game at the time, and like few others since.

I’ve seen it argued that the incredibly successful Vice City served as the primary catalyst for the tidal wave of ’80s nostalgia that followed – ground zero for an exploding obsession with this pastel-powered decade – but I’m not entirely sold on that theory. Don’t get me wrong, Vice City was a genuine cultural juggernaut – but I think it’s better viewed as one significant part of a much broader picture. After all, the back stretch of 1997’s Boogie Nights leaned heavily into the early ‘80s, and The Wedding Singer very famously and successfully transported us back to 1985 when it was released in 1998. 1999’s 200 Cigarettes, 2000’s American Psycho, and 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer also all wound things back to the ’80s prior to the arrival of Vice City. Nostalgia has been powerful and bankable for a long time. Back in the ’90s and 2000s, if we weren’t being whisked back to the ’80s, it was the ’70s, via The Wonder Years, Dazed and Confused, 54, That ‘70s Show, and Detroit Rock City.

No: Rockstar didn’t discover the retro lens with Vice City, nor did it invent ’80s nostalgia. However, all those examples above are movies or TV shows. Vice City is neither. Vice City is a video game, and I probably don’t need to explain to you why that sets it apart. Vice City wasn’t just a window into the past we were restricted to passively peering through for a predefined running time. Rather, it became a living, breathing portal to the past that let us actually explore, experience, and inhabit a long-ended era.

Verdict

To this day, the opening moments of GTA: Vice City remain one of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. After getting into your first car, you’ll immediately hear the unmistakable bass line of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. It’s a small but meaningful moment that instantly plunges you into the past and feels like a happy accident, but it wasn’t – it was engineered to always be Billie Jean. Everyone heard it. Or, at least, they did until later re-issues and remasters of the game unfortunately trimmed it from the soundtrack. Either way, I was completely enchanted by Vice City from that moment. In 2026? I still can’t get enough of it. With its wide variety of vehicles, weapons, and missions, its stacked cast of recognisable voices, and its unmatched atmosphere, Vice City may have gone backwards in time – but it was a huge stride forward for the series and one of my all-time favourites.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, and Grand Theft Auto III, with more to follow over the coming months.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

Perhaps no movie was primed to be a video game more than Aliens. A bunch of marines with guns up against hordes of monstrous beasties? That’s a video game, baby. That was true for the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a game I enjoyed but didn’t stick with for too long because its three-person squads meant someone from my regular co-op group always had to sit out, but its sequel keeps that same appeal while freshening the concept up with an additional player and a new class. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t going to make you leave a co-op shooter you already love at the altar, but it is a good time with friends. I don’t know how long my group will stick with it now that we’ve rolled credits, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the 30 hours it took to do so, even if it’s never as great as the film that inspired it.

Fireteam Elite 2 is a sequel, but you don’t have to be familiar with the original to understand what’s up here: the USS Endeavor received a transmission from a very sick-looking woman named Dr. Pearce based on LV-558, a Weyland-Yutani mining colony overrun by Xenomorphs. The marines sent in an elite squad called Fireteam Banshee to contain the situation. They’ve all gone missing. Your Marine has been transferred to the Endeavor to bring them home and figure out what the hell is going on.

The first game wasn’t huge on story, and it doesn’t bog down Fireteam Elite 2 either. Between missions, you’ll hang out on the Endeavor and chat with your squad. There’s Shipp, the Endeavor’s CO, previously of Fireteam Elite; Ko, your tough-as-nails, no-nonsense squad leader who also returns from the original; Piper, a very earnest and enthusiastic analyst who is new to boots-on-the-ground work and a little nervous as a result; Esther, the ship’s android, who was also in the first game; Raptor, your dropship pilot with terrible (and I do mean terrible) jokes; and Wrench, your mechanic/weapons specialist/shopkeeper who dispenses rad bird facts. I love Wrench.

Truth is, I enjoy the crew, even if you only really interact with them from the waist up in very “look at their face while they talk to you” scenes. My only qualm is that, because they’re mostly just voices in your ear on missions, there’s not much room for camaraderie – and when there is, everyone’s… too nice? One of the best parts of Aliens is that the characters don’t always get along, and while I think it’s great that Ko roasts Raptor (and you), I wish these characters razzed each other a bit more. It adds flavor, you know? You can only make fun of Raptor’s jokes so many times.

I want to be clear here: I don’t think Fireteam Elite 2 is badly written, but it is very light in tone for an Aliens game, everyone likes each other a lot, and the other characters rarely leave the ship, never directly fight alongside you, and you’ll never appear in cutscenes with them. It’s one of those “you’re allegedly the most important person here, but you could be replaced with a superpowered ham sandwich and things would probably be fine” kind of co-op games. That didn’t bother me too much (though the voice acting can occasionally be a bit… stilted?) since it’s not a game you’re playing for the plot, much of which is solidly constructed but also fairly predictable. Someone in the Alien universe always wants to play God. It never works out, of course, but they always figure it might for them. You hate to see it, but you expect to see it.

If there is one piece of storytelling Fireteam Elite 2 nails, it’s the mid-combat dialogue, which often directly quotes the film, especially Hudson and Vasquez. It does sometimes get repetitive (there are slightly fewer lines here than I’d like), but it never gets old hearing your Marine say ‘Sharp sticks, mother****er” after gunning down an acid-blooded H.R. Geiger nightmare.

Really, though, all that is just an excuse to get out there and shoot something. Like its predecessor, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is a class-based, co-op-focused shooter. (You can play it solo, but you’ll be teamed up with The Alphabet Boys: CPU-controlled androids named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.) You’ve got six classes to choose from, many of which have their own Aliens analogue. Duelist is Hicks, complete with a shotgun for close encounters; the smartgun-toting Marauder is Vasquez; Medic is Dietrich (there’s a deep cut for you); and so on. They’re all fun, and I enjoyed fooling around with them all before ultimately settling on Machinist for the long haul. A turret is just too good to pass up, and my buddy was already playing Marauder. The things we do for co-op games. Thank God one of us was willing to play Medic.

The most intriguing is the all-new Specialist, which allows you to combine the features of multiple classes. Say, for instance, you want the special abilities of the Machinist (their turret and floating bodyguard drone) but also like the Marauder’s excellent smartgun. Well, you could max out the smartgun, which will allow you to equip it to any class, or you could just… play the Specialist. It’s rad. That’s not to say there’s no benefit to sticking with the traditional classes; they have modifiers and special abilities that you’ll only get by leveling that class, so getting the best stuff probably means rolling with one of the basic classes for a while. But if you want to mix and match abilities, guns, and everything else, Specialist is your guy (or gal).

The missions themselves are pretty standard fare for the genre, but they are fun. Drop into a Weyland-Yutani nightmare, hunt for intel/break stuff/complete other objectives, kill some monstrosities, hold out for a bit, and then get out. It’s a fun loop, especially with friends, and is set apart from other games like it by how many different kinds of Xenomorphs there are.

Runners go down quickly, so they’re probably not worth spending anything fancy or consumable on (like grenades or mines or special ammo) – but they come in big groups and they’re fast little buggers, so you can get overwhelmed fast. Spitters like to sit back and shoot acid from afar. Then you have the big dudes: the Warriors who will pick you up and try to get you with their second mouth; the hit-and-run Drones (think the Alien from the original Alien) who leap from the shadows and retreat from fire; large red Xenos called Prowlers that pounce on you, and so on. Figuring out the right answer for everything while managing your limited resources is a lot of fun, and Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t scared to throw everything at you in the big moments. And aside from one particularly notable difficulty spike in the game’s fifth act, it manages to be challenging without feeling overwhelming.

If that wasn’t enough, certain missions also ask you to deal with Wey-Yu synthetics. These require a more methodical “take cover, approach carefully” strategy, where the Xenos will just have you running for your lives. It’s a nice change of pace, and you’ll have to equip different weapons and ammo types to deal with them. The smartgun, for instance, is great against Xenos, especially the smaller ones, but it’s a lot less effective against synths, who come with a little more beef. So what’s an enterprising Colonial Marine to do? Why, switch to the railgun and blow their heads off from mad yonder, of course. They do pop so satisfyingly. There’s also a secret third faction (well, maybe not so secret if you’ve played the original, but let’s assume you haven’t) to test yourself against. They all feel unique, but none of the others are quite as much fun as the Xenomorphs. I mean, it does say Aliens on the box. It’s good to have your priorities straight.

It’s not just your weapons that make the difference. You’ve also got single-use items like turrets, mines, ammo bins, and so on to help you survive until the next “resupply or die, folks” ammo crate and health pack rest stops scattered throughout each level. Different elements work better against different factions. Electric ammo doesn’t bother Xenos, but they’re not keen on fire; synths, as you’d expect, are just the opposite, so getting the most bang for your buck means choosing the right ammo (free tip: cryo ammo works on everything), though you can still make do if you don’t. It also encourages you to experiment with builds and try out new guns. Why not take that flamethrower to a level where you know there will be Xenos, or that rifle that comes pre-equipped with a little zap to a showdown with Weyland-Yutani’s robotic security force?

Fireteam Elite 2 encourages you to experiment with both consumables and your build, and rewards you for doing so, and I really appreciated that. One of my friends armed his Marauder with a perk that fired a shoulder-mounted rocket every time he reloaded. Pretty good, right? Well, it’s even better when paired with a M41A1 Pulse Rifle used in the film (you start with a newer model, but it doesn’t make The Sound™ or have a grenade launcher) and its underbarrel grenade launcher, which you can reload after firing once. Many explosions ensued. And if you run out of grenades, why not switch to your pistol, fire once, reload, and get a shoulder rocket? Is that the most efficient way to play? Probably not. Is it a lot of fun? Absolutely.

I also have to give it up for the level design here. See, each of the six acts of Fireteam Elite 2 takes place in its own area, which means you’ll revisit those places multiple times. Some might poo-poo this as backtracking, but I think it adds to the whole thing. Yeah, man, I’m on the colony or in this ship or in the mines or wherever else. It makes sense that I’d visit the same places several times. What matters is how those return trips change my understanding of those areas, and that they feel different when you go back, and they largely do. Fireteam Elite 2 also has some great atmospheric moments: shafts of light cut by a rotating fan, pitch black cargo holds that are so dark you can barely see, all the more terrifying when aliens show up. It gets the vibe, and that matters.

If there’s one weird thing about missions, it’s that you usually end up holding out against a giant horde and then bugging out. But aside from the opening mission, you’re never really at a landing pad where a dropship can pick you up. In general, you’re… well, you could be a lot of places. You kill all the aliens, and then you just… leave. I get that it would be a bit repetitive to wait for the dropship every time, but it’s a little odd to be like “okay, all the aliens are dead! Time to walk to the dropship!” I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s polite of the Xenos to just let us leave and all, but it’s also a little weird for them to be all “don’t worry girls, we’ll get ‘em next time” and then say good game and walk off the field.

Back on the Endeavor, you can buy new weapons, upgrades, items, and all sorts of other goodies. My favorite are decals. See, you can customize your armor, which is already cool, but you can also add decals that you can move, rotate, and resize. I like the dropship I’ve attached to my Pulse Rifle and the heartbeat monitor that I’ve slapped on my breastplate, but I’m still searching for Vasquez’s Adios because I want to slap it on my smartgun. Feels right, you know? And it gives you something to hunt for in the levels themselves.

If you’re looking for more challenge, you can also equip Challenge Cards, which do things like spawn special enemies after so many kills or ask you to hit a point total in exchange for rewards (or buff you in exchange for fewer). They’re a neat feature that add replayability and encourage teamwork, though don’t be surprised if a random player you’ve been paired with picks one without asking when you’re matchmaking. Sometimes it works, and sometimes… yeah, you get the picture.

One larger complaint I have is progression. If you’re a few missions ahead, and your friend wants to help you out, they can’t really progress until they catch up. Oh, they’ll level and such, but they won’t get access to certain parts of the store until they complete earlier missions, so you’ll either have to go back and help them (which can be fun, but time consuming) or they’ll just have to grin and bear it. Is it a huge deal? No. But it is annoying.

Once you finish the campaign, you unlock Horde mode, which is exactly what it sounds like: multiple waves across three maps. Surviving gives you cash you can spend on turrets, special ammo, mines, and the like. It’s a good system, but I think what I liked the most was that ammo crates offer limited top offs here, unlike in the campaign, where they seem to be unlimited. I had to pick and choose which crates to use because they didn’t restock, and while using the ammo crates that were closer was definitely easier, it also meant I wouldn’t have them during harder waves. I think I ultimately prefer the campaign, but Horde mode is fun, and a little more low-key… provided you extract before you die and lose most of what you’ve earned.

I suppose I should talk about the bugs, and I don’t mean the Xenos. Fireteam Elite 2 has some, but none are gamebreaking. The worst were desyncs, which were mostly the fault of a player on our team who had internet problems. Occasionally, an alien’s foot will get stuck in the vents and the Xeno attached to it will dangle there limply and bounce around, but that’s funny and more than a little endearing. Now and then, the cutscenes will run into some serious slowdown when a bunch of stuff is exploding, or an item will de-equip for a mission. Annoying? A bit. But hardly a big deal. The thing about Fireteam Elite 2 that will stick with me is that I always enjoyed playing it, even when things weren’t going exactly right.

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 8, “Orders of Magnitude.”

And now we’re back to regular Star Trek again with this episode, after weeks of “concept” stories. “Orders of Magnitude” isn’t doing any gimmicks, even if it is trading on a tried-and-true set-up that Trek itself has tackled itself many times before – that of the increasingly erratic and dangerous commander whose questionable decisions put his crew into a moral quandary.

While Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his away team are planet-bound and out of communications range, the legendary Admiral Simon Reeger (Terminator 2’s Joe Morton!) shows up in a shuttlecraft and announces that he’s taking command of the Enterprise. He’s uncovered a way to track a mysterious, cloaked enemy vessel that is believed to be responsible for something known as the Vardan Massacre, which resulted in 5 million civilian casualties. (The way he’s tracking it? The gamma ray burn-off from the ship’s impulse engines, obvs.) But time is of the essence, and so he takes command of the Enterprise while the trail is still hot.

Coincidentally – or not really, since this guy stops by the Enterprise all the freaking time – Lt. Commander James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) not only happens to be onboard, but his oft-mentioned/never-seen (in this universe anyway) father George Kirk used to be Admiral Reeger’s First Officer during the Klingon War, back when Reeger was the captain of the USS Constitution. It was in that conflict, during the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, that Reeger gained fame as a war hero, while the elder Kirk’s career apparently hit a roadblock. And wouldn't you know it, but as the ranking officer onboard after Reeger, Lt. Commander Kirk must take the temporary post of First Officer for this emergency mission.

Morton is good as Reeger, a guy who immediately commands respect and awe as soon as he walks into a room. The crew of the Enterprise hero-worship this guy, so much so that even as his plan to take out the enemy ship becomes increasingly questionable, they’re willing to follow his orders. (Well, most of them are.) Morton gestures with his hands and puts emphasis on certain words in such a way as to both make his character seem like he knows his shit, but also have us wondering if maybe he’s a little… well, cracked?

And that becomes the question at the heart of this episode. As I noted earlier, we’ve seen variations of this story on Star Trek before – in some of the best Star Trek, in fact. Who can forget Commodore Decker’s doomed face-off against the planet killer in TOS’ “The Doomsday Machine,” or the tragedy in TNG’s “The Wounded” of Captain Ben Maxwell, who never got over the loss of his family in the Cardassian War and almost brought the Federation into another war as a result? Indeed, we eventually learn here that Reeger’s family were among those 5 million lost in the Vardan Massacre.

But does that justify the Admiral wanting to take out the 5,000 people on the planet where the mystery ship is hiding? A ship capable of killing millions? Kirk can’t get his head around it, and this puts him on the outs with Reeger, just as his father fell out with the man all those years earlier on the Constitution. We eventually learn that even though George Kirk was the one who actually stepped up in that battle, it was Reeger who got all the glory. And that’s just how history played out, like it or not, fair or not.

Wesley has grown into the Jim Kirk role, or I’ve grown into accepting him as this version of Kirk at least, and here his unwillingness to just roll over and pull the trigger feels very in line with the character. It also has the unfortunate result of painting the rest of the crew in something of a poor light, as they’re apparently so blinded by their devotion to the Great Admiral Reeger that, sure, they might not love the idea of wiping out 5,000 potentially innocent souls, but they are willing to do it – even Spock!

This leads to the biggest disappointment of the episode, which is the cordrazine cop-out, as I’ll call it. That Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) claims he drugged his old captain (turns out he was on the Constitution back in the day too!) only for us to then find out that actually it was Kirk who drugged him – thereby driving him to the point of paranoia and aggression so that the rest of the crew were finally willing to relieve him of command – means that we never really get a straight answer as to whether or not the attack should’ve proceeded as Reeger had planned. The Enterprise crew took the easy way out on this one, alas.

Meanwhile, over on what is as close to a Planet Hell set that we get on this show (and I love it), Pike and his away team have a decent little adventure with some Orion pirates that gives Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) the chance to spread her action wings. She also gets a promotion and learns a valuable lesson when the cadet she’s been mentoring, the Vulcan A'Sha (Bianca Nugara), decides to leave Starfleet. As Pike tells Uhura, you can do everything right and sometimes things still don’t work out in the end. That’s the same thing that happened to Kirk’s father, but somehow it feels like the storyline with Reeger might’ve had a more interesting resolution if that lesson was more cleanly applied there as well.

Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• The Vardan Massacre, eh? Who could the villains be who were behind such a terrible act? And will we learn more about them this season?
• Cordrazine, lest we forget, was the drug that Doctor McCoy got all amped up on in the classic Star Trek: TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” where he went back in time and inadvertently caused Hitler to conquer the world. (Long story.)
• The USS Constitution as flagship of the fleet has long been posited and assumed in books, comics, and technical manuals, but this is the first onscreen confirmation of that fact.
• Not to get too nerdy here [pushes up glasses], but the D7 Klingon cruisers mentioned here as having faced off with the USS Constitution in the war is a continuity error, since we know that class of ship wasn’t introduced until after the war (as seen in Star Trek: Discovery’s second season).
• And speaking of the war, I may have said this before, but I appreciate how Strange New Worlds is willing to delve into the specifics of the Klingon War in a way that Star Trek: Discovery – which freaking started the war! – stopped doing pretty early on. Of course this would’ve been a key part of many of these characters' early lives and it absolutely should not be ignored.
• Whatever happened to Lt. Jenna Mitchell (Rong Fu), who would sit next to Ortegas at the helm console? I don’t think we’ve seen her once this season.
• Scotty in a scant? Eh, I don’t like it.
• The relationship between Jim and Sam Kirk, on the other hand? I do like it.
• La’an likes caves but doesn’t love caves.

I’ve just spilled enough blood to fill four Olympic-sized swimming pools. Thousands are now dead thanks to the adamantium claws given to me by Insomniac Games. Marvel’s Wolverine certainly doesn’t skimp when it comes to violence, and gives you plenty of opportunities to enact it with style. But it takes more than blood to get my heart pumping, and it’s in Logan’s surprisingly nuanced tale of self-acceptance that I felt most connected to this latest portrayal of the most famous of the X-Men. That story is tasked with doing most of the heavy lifting here, with the initially slick and satisfying combat wearing thin well before its conclusion, but even that solid character work can’t quite carry the weight it needs to. Marvel’s Wolverine, much like its lead, is built on a firm skeleton, but what’s crafted around it isn’t nearly as strong.

This tale starts a few decades after James “Logan” Howlett first met Nathaniel Essex and was taken into his mutant community, where he quickly became a crucial member of his task force, Team X. Already an experienced hero, it's clear something sinister is at play when we join him here, and Wolverine is soon sent on a mission to investigate scientist Bolivar Trask amidst reports of missing mutants. From there, it hops around the globe, taking Logan to new places rife with danger and old haunts that stir up buried memories. It’s standard superhero fare, with a couple of predictable turns along the way and some genuinely fun moments in its closing hours. It struggles to tell this story effectively through the action within missions, though, instead reserving any real moments of consequence for the cutscenes that bookend them. That makes for an uneven cadence that joltingly stops and starts rather than flows gracefully.

I like this version of Wolverine a lot, as Liam McIntyre’s performance grants Logan a personality to match his trademark blades – a sharp, surprising hidden depth, housed in a bulky, blunt instrument of a body. He delicately balances the shadows of his past with the future of mutantkind, all while managing his Jekyll and Hyde nature, as animal instincts sometimes break through the compassion he strives to show. That emotion comes through not just in his voice, but in how he’s been designed and animated. He moves around social spaces with a hunched back that reflects a vulnerability that clashes with his biological makeup – a physical manifestation of a dark past weighing him down. That’s a microcosm of Insomniac’s detailed rendition of Wolverine, which has instantly become one of my favourite depictions of the character.

But most of all, I like how he bounces off the other cast members. For all of the screaming and bloodshed, it's when things are taken down to a whisper that this campaign tends to shine. I particularly enjoyed reflective moments in a Madripoor bar with Mystique, a snowy cabin rendezvous with Jean Grey, and the tension between Logan and Victor “Sabretooth” Creed. Krizia Bajos in particular is fantastic as Grey, and anchors a lot of the emotional weight of Wolverine’s tale, often preventing it from fully veering into run-of-the-mill comic book storytelling.

It is frustrating, then, that outside of Logan and Jean, few other characters are given room for their own arcs to develop. They have little to do outside of briefly crossing Wolverine to hinder him, or offering him a few words of wisdom from the other side of a bar. Though it is a credit to the writing team that these more tender moments don’t end up sounding completely out of key, especially when contrasted with the heavy-metal violence occurring on screen whenever the claws come out.

Wolverine’s basic attacks are well-honed tools that sink smoothly into flesh and steel alike, with devastating combos delivered through rapid presses of the square and triangle buttons. It’s incredibly responsive action, with the modern staples like dodges, parries, and special attacks to tear through each enemy. It’s not a complex system, though, and is ultimately quite forgiving. A quick press of triangle will make Logan leap to an enemy within range, and the more you stay on the front foot, the quicker your rage bar will fill up, allowing for critical hits to rip through foes with ease and the safety blanket of a revive in your back pocket. His healing factor also means that he’ll regenerate over time while in combat – a smart, and lore-appropriate, decision that means you never have to scramble around arenas in search of health packs.

Again, the animation work is outstanding. It really feels like after years of making sure Spider-Man didn’t let anyone fall to their death, Insomniac has revelled in all the ways Wolverine can end someone’s life. Brutal finishers, from sliced-up limbs to stabs up through jaws, are employed for a variety of gory outcomes. Maybe I should be placed on some sort of watchlist for saying so, but I really couldn’t get enough of them, reveling in each squelchy spine sever and chest-carving cleave. Throw in some slick camerawork and fight choreography when teaming up with the likes of Jean or Sabretooth for tandem kills, and you’ve got an impressive combat flow from an aesthetic perspective.

There's no denying that wielding those claws is slick, punchy, and wonderfully bloody. It's just a shame, then, that halfway through Wolverine's 15-hour string of missions, I felt like I'd had my fill. The fundamentals are solid, but combat needed a stronger sense of progression to sustain that sensation over a game of this length – especially when you’re asked to cut down hundreds of enemies at a near-relentless pace. Yes, there are unlockable skills and special abilities to build into your repertoire, but only a handful, and you'll gain access to them relatively early on.

I enjoyed spinning around like a lemon-tinged tornado slicing up anyone in my path, and booting people off of skyscrapers and cliff edges is a joy that never got old, but those techniques didn’t change my approach to combat in any significant manner. This lack of evolution in Logan's toolset puts the pressure on two other factors in order for the action to remain exciting: enemy variation and encounter design. Only one of those is executed somewhat successfully.

Whether it be Trask's sci-fi forces or the evil ninja followers of The Hand, there's a consistent drip-feed of new enemy types to sink your claws into, even if every fight is ultimately a test of the same reflexes. These vary from sharp-shooting snipers you'll have to scurry your way toward to hard-hitting brutes with cybernetic embellishments. The problem is, although some may require a few more hits to tear apart or demand two parries to stun instead of one, each fight does pretty much feel the same. When multiple enemy waves are comprised of different units, the action can come alive as you learn to prioritise targets to thin out the herd most efficiently. But this balance isn’t found anywhere near consistently enough.

More often than not, missions take the form of a series of corridors opening up into arenas where getting ambushed is a predictable probability. These arenas aren’t constructed in overly interesting ways either, mainly involving a large flat area filled with melee-based grunts and a sprinkle of higher platforms around the edge for ranged troublemakers. Leaping from enemy to enemy and dodging out of the way of projectiles when a red flash appears takes up most of your time, so the locations these battles take place in quickly start to blend together. For the most part, Wolverine wants you to lunge headfirst into the action and bloody those claws, but it makes for a rather one-note dance.

Outside of the action, there’s not too much to shout about, either. Each linear level does contain collectibles, including material caches required to unlock new outfits, which have both deep cuts and surface scratchers alike when it comes to Wolverine’s design history. I particularly enjoy how you can mix and match the over 30 different suits and claws to create your own fantasy Weapon X. Alongside level-up XP for skills, AP is your main resource for progression, unlocking skills that give you a chance to shape a playstyle a little more to your liking – widening parry windows or reducing damage taken, for example. This can be acquired via two methods: collecting whisky bottles and completing nightmare trials.

The former are much like the caches and just require a sharp eye in order to find them, aside from following Wolverine’s keen nose, which is presented as a glowing blue scent line on screen. I never really found the puzzles in the Spider-Man games to be overly complex, but at least they threw a welcome bit of variety into the mix and got my brain cells tingling a little. Here, you simply walk up to optional collectibles and press the triangle button every time. It feels like a missed opportunity to elevate the mundane. Still, I felt compelled to go back through each level to clean them all up, earning a platinum trophy after just 20 hours.

The nightmare trials are a little more interesting, though. They are a mixture of combat and movement challenges that put your skills to the test if you want to achieve the highest scores and, in turn, earn more AP. Of the small selection, I found reasonable enjoyment in the gauntlet variant, which sends waves of enemies your way in a dreamlike world while offering a choice of buffs and nerfs every few rounds. It’s another example of a PlayStation studio adding roguelike elements to a prestige single-player story game, and at least it hasn’t been delivered in the form of DLC this time around. The real reward for completing these trials, though, is memories taken from Logan’s long life that give extra context to the main story. I mostly found myself simply going through the motions while playing through them, but they’re at least a smart way to infuse challenges with bonus narrative nutrients.

Wolverine is built like a brute, a true powerhouse in combat – but he is also agile outside of it, and it’s a shame those skills are never fully put to the test beyond some loose platforming. He’s quick across the ground, though, and charging straight towards turrets hopelessly firing into his deflecting blades is a fun power trip. A blockbuster sheen runs through all of it, and occasionally its cinematic ambitions break out into full-flung sequences full of enthralling action. One chase that took me across the moon-lit rooftops of Tokyo and through its neon-soaked streets is a real spectacle, but while this sort of scripted cinematic affair is thrilling, they come around too infrequently, all boiling down to holding the right trigger to sprint as fireworks go off around you.

A similar thing can be said for its boss fights, of which there are surprisingly few. Most are remarkably similar in design but executed well enough, like an early face-off with Omega Red – a mutant who stalked my nightmares as a young child. It made for some lovely payback as I chipped away at the tentacled terror’s stagger bar via well-timed parries. Similarly, while I won’t spoil anything, the final boss battle is a real spectacle that puts all of your skills to the test. On the other hand, there’s a Sentinel showdown that essentially boils down to whacking a metal arm for 15 minutes, which would feel more at home in a middle-of-the-road 3D platformer than a top-tier action game. It’s the sort of boss battle that should’ve stayed in the early 2000s, where your towering target mostly sits just outside of the arena.

Logan is a naturally reclusive character. Even when out of his suit, he's on the fringes of society, equally happy in solitude as he is reluctantly searching for a connection with those trying to break his walls down. He’s basically me, but much hairier. It’s a stark contrast to Spider-Man's open world, which lets you interact with its population as both Peter and his web-slinging alter ego, allowing you to develop his character and build a connection to the city. Logan's lodgings don't provide this same nourishment. Insomniac has intentionally made a very different sort of game here, to be fair, with a much more linear structure and less of a focus on exploration in general – but it’s still notable that the change in direction it chose is far less interactive, and as a result, far less interesting.

When the story is told through handsomely sculpted cutscenes, it holds my attention completely, but the smaller areas that glue all those bigger moments together are reduced to meandering through spaces at a walking pace to inspect photo frames and audio logs. They’re largely ponderous sequences that just feel like needless bloat in a not overly long adventure. I can’t help but feel more could’ve been done here in terms of interactivity.

A prime example is an early stretch where you’re tasked with coaxing a young mutant called Leech out of a room. He demands a password from you, which Logan finds by slowly walking around Essex’s manor as he picks up three crayon-scrawled drawings. Rather than asking you to then solve the riddle spread across these doodles yourself, Logan does so of his own accord upon returning to the locked door. There’s no challenge here, no puzzle to solve. It’s like Marvel’s Wolverine only has two speeds: full-throttle bloodshed and introspective calm. An occasional middle ground would’ve been nice to fill out the in-betweens.

There’s no denying each of its globe-spanning locations is beautifully rendered, and when you're not spending time in stretches of brown underground caverns and grey facility hallways, they really feel visually alive. You'll occasionally be let loose to explore the streets, but don't expect open areas full of surprises; these are much more limited spaces restricted to a few blocks. That size reflects the scope of its story, though. Yes, there's a larger threat at play here, but it’s very much a personal Wolverine tale at its core, and I appreciate how restrained Insomniac has been in its approach to the wider X-Men ensemble. It serves the few characters it chooses to hone in on well, never running the risk of bloating the cast. From this perspective, it’s a decent first step into a different side of the Marvel Universe.

Runner is in theaters on September 11.

“You come for the king, you better not miss,” says Rodrigo Santoro’s Damian Zaldívar, the no-dimensional chief baddie of the new action/buddy-comedy film Runner. His words are ironic on several levels, not the least of which is because as soon as Zaldívar utters that proclamation, he fires his machine gun… and misses.

But more to the point, Runner feels like a miss, sparked only by some cool action beats and the occasional chuckle elicited by stars Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson in their buddy-not-cop moments.

Ritchson plays Hank Malone, who, when not practicing with his French language app or packing Franco lunches – croque monsieur on Mondays! – works as the “runner” of the title, ensuring the packages of high-priced clients get where they need to go. He’s got all the qualities you could want or expect from an Angel Studios release of this nature – ex-military, reformed alcoholic, tragic past, and Alan Ritchson’s towering form, which comes with a great capacity for murder and mayhem against scummy-looking and anonymous foes.

After a couple of not terribly amusing runner assignments burn off the first 10 minutes of the movie, Hank moves on to the gig that truly sets the film in motion: He’s to escort Wilson’s Ben Bishop, who’s transporting an organ for transplant to a sick little girl named Ellie (Scarlett Crabtree). “Hank is a big guy name,” Ben points out in a barrage of getting-to-know-you lines that immediately put the steely-quiet Hank ill at ease. He just wants to do the job he’s been assigned, the chatty and omnibenevolent Ben wants to make friends along the way, and we as the audience know perfectly well how this formula works. So it’s just a matter of waiting for the sparks between them to kick in, which they sometimes do… when they’re not being interrupted by the rest of the movie.

It’s not that Ritchson and Wilson don’t do the best they can with the material, but the script by Miles Hubley and Tommy White frequently keeps us away from Hank and Ben in order to set up a labored subplot or two over at the hospital, where the sick child’s mom, Kate (Leila George), waits for the organ’s arrival and eventually has to deal with some increasingly ridiculous hijinks. Runner skids to a halt anytime director Scott Waugh (Need for Speed, Expend4bles) cuts away from Hank and Ben to, like, Kate tussling with hospital staff, or Ellie suddenly bleeding from the mouth and being rushed off to the ICU.

Several set-ups wind up feeling undercooked or just don’t get a payoff, such as Hank’s having to fall back on his ex-wife and her new husband for support in the middle of the adventure, or most glaringly, an exotic parakeet that our hero is stuck chaperoning early in the film, only to then hand off for safekeeping to the ex-wife. Wouldn’t Runner be a braver film if it somehow kept the bird in the picture for its full 97 minutes, having to figure out how to balance its action with Hank (and Ben) also having to protect the thing? THE BIRD STAYS IN THE PICTURE, Robert Evans yells from the Great Beyond.

But Runner isn’t very interested in pushing the envelope, and so Santoro’s villain Zaldívar is never more than the “bad guy who shoots his own henchman for screwing up,” the sort of instant screenplay tell that you’ve seen all this before. There’s a potentially interesting dynamic between Zaldívar and his sick mother, as she needs a liver transplant as well, hence the film’s whole premise as Santoro’s character chases down Hank and Ben for their precious package. But it never goes anywhere, unfortunately, despite the promise of Mama Zaldívar (Cecilia Toussaint) being even more vicious than her son.

Shot on location in Brisbane and the Gold Coast in Australia, Runner doesn’t necessarily use these locations to wow the viewer. But when former stuntman Waugh actually gets to the action, he doesn’t skimp. Whether Ritchson is using the spinning wheel of an overturned car to take out a foe, knocking Zaldívar into a wall so hard that he leaves an imprint of Zaldívar in said wall, or just shooting mo’fos left and right like he’s a playable GTA 6 character, Runner is fully capable of doing what it should be doing – giving us carnage amid the amiable duo of our leads. It’s just too bad that it keeps forgetting to do that.

Writer-director Paul Greengrass’ The Uprising is a visceral and kinetic but uneven chronicle of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England, anchored by the ever-reliable Andrew Garfield’s moving performance as a mournful farmer who helps spark a rebellion that seeks to improve the lives of the common folk. As he has done in Bloody Sunday and United 93, Greengrass focuses on everyday people who get caught up in tragic historic events. The Uprising, though, can’t quite find the balance between the "big picture" events it’s depicting and those smaller-scale, more focused docudramas.

Called simply Ploughman, Garfield’s protagonist feverishly works the land every day just to eke out the barest living. His small farm, which belongs to a local lord, is also the resting place of his late wife and two children. He basically has nothing left, a crushing state shared by many of his neighbors. Set at a time when the people are gripped by immense grief — England had lost roughly half its population to the Black Death – their pain fuels not only their fury at the powers-that-be but also their hope that God can miraculously deliver them from their misery.

With problems at home and wars abroad, the government is in need of more funds — the lords are unwilling to let the merchant class enter their ranks and the Church won’t spend anymore — so they enact a heavy new tax that guts the commoners. Collection methods are so brutal and dehumanizing that, sparked by Ploughman’s violent outburst, the peasants finally snap. Ploughman and his neighbors soon join a peasant army led by Cosmo Jarvis’ brawny ex-soldier Wat Tyler and Jamie Bell’s fiery renegade priest John Ball. (Both Tyler and Ball are real figures while the Ploughman is fictional.)

They march towards London not to overthrow King Richard II — their quarrel is more with his council of cads who are really in charge — but to petition him for sweeping reforms. (The King, one must remember, was thought to be divinely chosen, so fealty to him is also showing devotion to God.) But the rage that such long-term oppression has fostered in the peasants — exemplified by Thomasin McKenzie’s fervent Alyce, who seeks to inflict her suffering on her perceived enemies — ultimately explodes into sheer anarchy.

By showing such a savage mob mentality take hold, Greengrass challenges the justness of the peasants’ actions, which muddies one’s feelings about the titular uprising. History is never clean and Greengrass wants to show that, but the film makes you doubt your sympathy for its underdogs once the bloodletting erupts into utter chaos on the streets of London.

Shot in the cinéma vérité style that’s become a Greengrass hallmark, the filmmaker immerses the viewer in the grimy, relentlessly miserable life of medieval serfdom, achieving the you-are-there effect so well that you’re thankful Smell-O-Vision doesn’t exist. Yet Greengrass repeatedly pulls the viewer out of this historical realism by cutting to jarring digital aerial shots swooping over London — attempts to demonstrate the scale of the revolt — images that seem, at best, filmed by a Ye Olde Drone or, worse, AI-generated.

The cast is uniformly solid, with the film’s rogues gallery brought to life by a murderer’s row of British character actors — Tom Hollander as Treasurer Robert Hales, Stephen Dillane as Archbishop Simon Sudbury, Stanley Townsend as Chief Justice Belknap, and an unrecognizable Jonny Lee Miller as London’s Mayor William Walworth — all of whom play their characters with varying degrees of haughty cruelty.

But these men are in the service of teenage King Richard II, portrayed with nuance and complexity by Woody Norman. Richard, who may have a personality disorder of some kind, is bedeviled by nightmares and utterly petrified with piety — before he finally takes charge of his fate with a brutal efficiency that stuns even his own mother, Joan, Countess of Kent (an understated Katherine Waterston). The Uprising initially generates some sympathy for the King until, of course, the little shit pisses away any such good will.

The Uprising also depicts the bureaucracy that keeps the engine of oppression operating, particularly the paperwork that can either expose the rebels’ identities or serve as their literal ticket to a better life. I’ve never seen a suspense set-piece before where a roomful of scribes with quill pens must furiously copy dozens of charters in order to meet a crucial deadline. Write fast! No, faster!

There’s plenty of tension in the final act — which also takes significant creative liberties with the events that transpired at Smithfield on June 15, 1381 — but that’s also where Greengrass’ breathlessly-paced film loses its footing, straining to turn history on its head with a Braveheart-worthy happy ending. The final scenes, which would be at home in a Mel Gibson or Robin Hood movie — it wasn't known to be a Rise of Robin Hood movie at the time I screened the film and Garfield's character is never referred to as such — end The Uprising on an awkward note rather than the crowd-pleasing one that seemed intended.

The SteelSeries Aeon Pro is one of the most advanced controllers I've ever tested. It's also the most expensive – but it brings some features never before seen in a controller.

Notably, the Aeon Pro borrows the outstanding "infinite battery" system from the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro line of gaming headsets. Instead of relying on a cable or dock to charge the controller, the Aeon Pro has two rechargeable batteries – one in the controller and another that charges in the base station. Like the Nova Pro, when one battery runs out of juice, you simply pop it out and swap it with the fully-charged one from the base station. In less than 10 seconds, your controller is fully juiced up and the previously depleted battery is tucked back in the dock to charge.

I'm a big believer in this "infinite" battery system. It's one of the most revolutionary features to come to gaming headsets and is the reason I continue to recommend the Arctis Nova Pro, so I'm thrilled to see SteelSeries implement it in a controller. Even better, the base station also serves as a dock for the controller, giving it a home to live on your desk or entertainment center when not in use.

The dock also solves another headache for players like me who game across multiple systems. The dock has separate USB-C connections for both Xbox and PC, and when both are plugged in, you can swap between them (and a third Bluetooth connection) on the controller itself. Unfortunately there's no PS5 or Switch 2 functionality here.

The one drawback to this system is it doesn't work great if your PC and Xbox aren't near each other. If they're in different rooms, or far enough that a wired connection from the base station to each device would be cumbersome, a simple dongle that you can unplug and take with you would be more convenient. It would be a lot more useful if it had PlayStation support, since your consoles likely all live with your TV, while PC is the wildcard that might be in another room.

The Aeon Pro packs in just about every high-end "pro-controller" feature on offer. Hall-effect thumbsticks join an Xbox-layout of ABXY buttons backed up by tactile switch connections. The triggers have two-stage Hall-effect sensors as well, while around back there's four paddles for additional inputs. All the buttons, bumpers, paddles, and even the D-pad, as well as the triggers when set to the short-throw position, offer a pleasing audible click.

Finally, there's a small OLED display above the Xbox button to show battery life and aid in configuration, whether that's just swapping between systems or full-on custom button remapping. It's a useful feature that takes the guesswork out of wondering which profile or custom button map you have active, though it's not quite advanced as the "has its own OS" capabilities of the totally over-engineered Genki Manta.

I spent most of my testing time slashing through corrupted fiends in the excellent new Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and the Aeon Pro served as an outstanding conduit for my mind-body-sword connection. Whether I was slashing and dodging or chaining together Issen counterattacks, the Aeon Pro felt excellent in hand and never failed to deliver my strikes.

All of this adds up to an excellent controller that is quickly becoming my go-to for anything that I don't need the Steam Controller's trackpads. The biggest caveat of course is the price. At $260 it sits well above even other high-end "pro" controllers like the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra and Asus ROG Raikiri II, but it does offer unique features never before seen in a controller.

I haven't spent enough time with the Aeon Pro yet to render final judgement, especially considering how expensive this thing is, so I'll be testing it more over the next week and will update this article with my final thoughts once I've fully put it through its paces.

I've been a fan of Dungeon Crawler Carl for years now. I've read all of the books and listened to the audio versions, so the obvious next step for me was to pick up a copy of the first graphic novel. Having experienced Matt Dinniman's story multiple times already, my biggest concern going into the graphic novel adaptation is that it wouldn't feel additive. But despite a few minor issues, I can honestly say it is an awesome way to experience Carl and Princess Donut's chaotic integration into Dungeon Crawler Carl World.

The first thing you'll notice, from the cover alone, is the art style. Carl and Princess Donut are drawn to look like manga versions of themselves with big eyes and exaggerated expressions. For the most part, I really liked how Laurel Pursuit Studios decided to portray this universe. There are a lot of crazy creatures down in the dungeon, and each and every one of them looks like they belong in anime. With the Dungeon Crawler Carl TV series making the decision to go live-action, this graphic novel is a neat look into what it would look like if they'd decided to go in an animated direction instead.

All of the things that make the art style great are also what hold the story back at times, however. Carl has a generally grumpy or angry expression throughout (which makes sense), but occasionally the illustrator will show pops of gleeful madness that I don't think belong in the story just yet. It felt a bit like they were trying to showcase too wide of a range of emotions than were strictly necessary for book one Carl.

Questions like "What does a Bopca actually look like?" are answered here and it just feels right.

With that being said, I think the studio did an excellent job of adapting the parts of the books you wouldn't actually see. You don't get nearly as much of Carl's inner monologue in this format, so all of that has to show up in how he's drawn and interacts with the world instead. This translates beautifully into how combat and dialogue are portrayed, only stumbling when I felt my mental image of the characters differed slightly from what I was seeing. In most instances, though, I felt like the graphic novel was able to add a depth to the story I'd never been able to get with the books themselves. Questions like "What does a Bopca actually look like?" are answered here and it just feels right.

Seeing as this is an adaptation of a LitRPG series, I was also thoroughly impressed at how well system messages were incorporated into the story. Pop-ups about achievements, rewards, and AI nonsense are initially shown as a completely overwhelming experience before getting neatly integrated in between panels. The AI is such an integral part of the story, but I could see how some of the lengthier messages it sends throughout the story could feel bloated on the page. The way it was done here felt totally seamless.

The first volume of the series collects the first 13 chapters of the ongoing Webtoon series, which equates to about a third of the first book. Without spoiling anything for anyone who hasn't read the book, I can tell you that the ending of volume 1 doesn't feel abrupt. The story hits its first major high note and you get just the right amount of cool-down time before setting up a part 2. You can already read more of the story for free on Webtoon, or wait for Volume 2 to arrive on October 6 for that paperback experience.

Practical Magic 2 is in theaters on September 11.

In 1998, director Griffin Dunne, along with Bullock and Kidman, delivered the equivalent of a warm autumnal Wiccan hug of a movie with Practical Magic. A modest hit at the box office, its power grew over the years as a cult favorite because of the luminous charm of the two leads as love-lorn, cursed witch sisters Sally and Gillian Owens.

Twenty-eight years later, it’s actually a little bit of Hollywood magic that Practical Magic 2 even got made with the returning cast of Bullock, Kidman, Stockard Channing, and Dianne Wiest as the matriarchs of the Owens family, all still residing together in their family home in Massachusetts. As beguiling as it is to see the return of these actresses, their alchemy is impeded by a hyperactive screenplay that’s too busy bouncing them through plot beats and muddled stakes instead of giving them, and the new cast, better stories.

Practical Magic 2 adapts from author Alice Hoffman’s novel series about the Owens clan of witches, this time primarily drawing from 2021’s The Book of Magic. It’s about 20-ish years since the end of the first film, which had the Owens witches “outing” themselves on Halloween to their little town, publicly embracing their Wiccan legacy.

Today, Bullock’s Sally is the town librarian and dedicated single mother to grown daughters Kylie (Joey King) and neurosurgeon-in-training Antonia (Maisie Williams). Because of the still intact 300-year-old Owens curse that brings death to any man to whom they confess their love, Sally has kept her girls in the dark about their magical abilities. She’s made her still free-spirited yet vaguely employed sister Gilly (Kidman) promise not to tell them, along with the reluctant buy-in of their aunts, Jet (Weist) and Franny (Channing).

But time and curses can only be held at bay for so long, and Kylie’s serious relationship with earnest Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) and the chirping of a deathwatch beetle means heartbreak and a lot of secrets are going to spill at the same time. The intersection of a curse-induced accident and Jet finding a long-hidden tome, The Book of the Raven (written by their ancestor and curse creator Maria Owens), prompts a dramatic breach in the family. A livid Kylie lays out her mother for hiding their magical abilities all their lives, and proceeds to impulsively listen to a beckoning voice compelling her to England, where it promises a way to save Gideon’s life. A road trip ensues with a panicked Sally engaging Gillian to follow, while looking up a UK expert, Dr. Ian Wright (Lee Pace), for help in unlocking the secrets of the Owens book and the history of Maria’s birthplace.

In theory, it’s not a bad idea to shake up the single locale dynamics of the first movie and dig into the family history. However, the screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel sacrifices the insular charm and Wiccan history of the Massachusetts community for an odd-couple travel comedy featuring the still oil-and-water sisters. Sally has been, and remains for the majority of this film, in emotional stasis, too broken and closed down from repeated losses. Thankfully, Bullock still knows how to make an audience feel the pain of her character. But there’s also a strong sense that the script is wasting the broader talents of what Bullock could have brought to her character rather than give her a one-note trajectory that you see coming a mile away.

Kidman does her impish best to play Gillian as the devil on Sally’s shoulder, trying to break those tall emotional walls while pushing her towards the very handsome and multi-tattooed Dr. Wright. But outside of playing her frustrated sister’s keeper, the script shorts the actress any parallel meaty story like she had with the murder of Gilly’s truly frightening ex-boyfriend Jimmy (Goran Visnjic) in the first film. When Bullock and Kidman get some rare quiet moments to just let the sisters talk, they make the most of it every time. But those moments are few and far between the more the chase for Kylie picks up and gets burdened with an overly convoluted exposition dump about the ancient history of the area where Maria was burned to death, and who or what has been summoning Kylie.

As for Pace, I’ll never understand how an actor as charming and compelling as he is gets handed such underwhelming material. If you can’t write a character for the man that is clearly swoon-worthy from the get-go, you’re doing something incredibly wrong. In fact, it’s a little insulting that Wright is introduced in a stunt set piece that frames him purely as eye candy, with little clarity of purpose aside from playing a potential love interest. And even then, the script gives Bullock and Pace scenes with so much tonal whiplash it’s never clear if they’re actually flirting, or just being passive-aggressive with one another. The heat and charm found between Sally and Aidan Quinn’s Detective Gary Hallet in the first film is sorely missing between Sally and Wright no matter how hard the actors try, and that's a big problem in getting the audience to buy the power of love.

The film’s other cardinal sin is separating the main cast, with Bullock, Kidman, Pace and King essentially in their own mini chase movie in picturesque, tax-incentivized England. Director Susanne Bier doesn’t frame the locations or set pieces with much scale or even the fairy-tale charm that Dunne shot the first film with, so the sequel lacks the mood and menace that gave the original such memorable vibes. Meanwhile, Channing, Williams and Maridueña are stuck back home in what feels like a single-room loaner hospital set from a soap opera. In particular, Williams is done dirty, given nothing of note to do, which is a travesty. Ageism also looms with Weist and Channing, who are relegated to cliché fates that work as well as they do only because of both women’s immense talent for wringing the most out of any scene they appear in.

I was also particularly disappointed that Alan Silvestri’s score from Practical Magic, so essential in creating the tone of the original, is only gently alluded to in Rupert Gregson-Williams’ original score. Instead, Bier and company lean on other nostalgic reprises that just don’t have the same weight or impact as Silvestri’s themes.

Though Practical Magic 2 isn’t a terrible second chapter, one is left at the end with the feeling that a much better sequel, with more deeply considered and well-crafted versions of the Owens women, might be floating somewhere out there in the winds above Massachusetts.

This review is based on a screening from the Venice Film Festival. Musk will be released in theaters on October 16.

I like a long movie. Give me five hours of Russian journalists talking and I’ll gladly take six more, but if someone balks at the idea of spending 225 minutes (plus intermission) with Elon Musk — one of the world’s most off-putting celebrities — I couldn’t blame them. Directed by Alex Gibney, the documentary Musk is a wide-spanning exposé of things already known about the South African business magnate, who casts a long shadow on American politics. The film is certainly watchable; Gibney is a pop filmmaker after all, and this would make for great distraction when viewed in several parts, after scrolling through your streaming service of choice.

If you’re aware enough of global power players (or really, just online enough), then little in Musk will surprise you. However, the effects of seeing this much about the man laid end-to-end can be quite unsettling. So, Gibney and editor Michael J. Palmer deserve kudos for assembling a documentary epic that is — despite its lack of novelty — never boring. Although it eventually takes its subject to task over his troubling views and ventures, the film is surprisingly balanced, and gives Elon his flowers for achievements in electric cars and space exploration, up to a point. This helps answer a question Gibney poses in the opening minutes, about how so many people could become ensnared by his cult of personality, especially for someone with the charisma of a damp towel.

Elon himself declined to be interviewed; in fact, an early moment depicts a Twitter exchange where he turns Gibney down, but the director is not deterred. To retain his subject’s presence in a thematically fitting way — given Elon’s involvement in A.I. and his proclivity for wondering if we live in a simulation — Gibney’s team creates a hand-crafted digital avatar of the SpaceX CEO, with all the uncanny ugliness of an A.I. generated monstrosity (even though it isn’t one). This digital golem, who appears as though Musk had entered an arcade game and got trapped there, speaks lines from a database of everything the man has ever publicly said.

This flourish is not dissimilar to Rodney Ascher’s A Glitch in the Matrix, which builds digital representations of interviewees who believe they’re living in a computer — only in Musk, Gibney spends far less time on this and other individual conspiracies. Beginning with Elon’s early successes (as an investor, rather than an inventor), the film makes clear how he usurps companies before claiming them as his own, often stripping them for parts. Its initial hour is surprisingly nuanced for a figure either reviled or worshipped, with a fair amount of paternal backstory that explains at least some things about him. However, it soon gets into the weeds of why Elon is so downright weird, by way of interviews with several exes, and women with whom he’s fathered children.

Gibney is usually adept at deconstructing both famous figures and fanaticism. His works like Going Clear and The Inventor get to the root of how Scientology leaders and Silicon Valley swindler Elizabeth Holmes could ensnare so many, while his other film from this year, the Sundance premiere Knife, carefully peels back the zealotry that led to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. Each of these films is incredibly accessible. Although the same is technically true of Musk — which treads subject matter similar to all three — it doesn’t feel nearly as exacting or comprehensive, despite its nearly four-hour runtime.

Chapter by chapter, the movie re-constructs Elon’s journey en route to billions in his pocket, dozens dead from self-driving automobile incidents, and eventually, a seat at the table next to U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom we see him cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs. Numerous interviews with loved ones, former colleagues and tech reporters stand-in adequately for the lack of Elon himself, whose digital avatar doesn’t add all that much beyond peripheral texture, despite being central to the movie.

It’s also unfortunate to see the movie flail when Gibney tries to re-create video game aesthetics in order to heighten and cheekily dramatize major decisions in Elon’s life. These go on a little too long and don’t have much modulation, which holds the movie back from being too provocative or subversive.

Gibney is highly aware of the radioactive personality at the center of his film, so there’s enough by way of absurd humor to counteract the unpleasantness. However, as a tale of one of the architects of our modern world, the movie’s emotional and intellectual foundation is seldom sturdy enough to stand on its own. It tends to lean on existing footage (Elon’s cameos on The Simpsons and in Iron Man 2; segments about him by comedian John Oliver and streamer Hasan Piker) to detail conflicting or evolving views in a punchy manner. It’s by no means a bad thing to pull from various sources, but each of these makes it clear that the story of Elon Musk has been told more coherently and more completely elsewhere.

Much like Elon himself, Gibney simply re-assembles existing ideas into something marketable — even though selling people on four hours on someone who comes across as a vapid, awkward huckster (with a white supremacist streak) is an uphill battle. Rare are the moments where Musk digs deep into the issues it broaches, remaining content to weave a fabric about how Elon is perceived, and will be perceived for years to come, without getting to the cultural or psychological root of why. It’s painfully ironic that Gibney’s wide-spanning documentary is unlikely to contribute to the man’s legacy in meaningful ways.

In the calming meadows where my journey in Valheim began almost six years ago, at the start of an Early Access expedition that has now finally come to an end, I came across a runestone in a lonely field bearing words I've been thinking about ever since:

A full belly
A full sail
The weight of a spear to your hand
And a song on your lips
Let all the mountains crumble
And the seas boil to salt
One day in the sun is a life well-lived

This is the essence of Valheim, the grim-eyed but warm-hearted Norse king of survival crafting games. For as harrowing as its dark dungeons and challenging bosses may be, and unforgiving as its extreme environments of fire and ice may seem, it's a saga about returning home with chips in your shield and blood on your face to sit around a roaring hearth fire – in contemplative solitude or with friends – and feel a bright stirring in your heart, knowing that you have conquered great foes and may now rest and revel. And in those slower moments I came to realize that this was truly the best the genre has ever been.

Valheim's art direction and world design give it a distinct identity from moment one. It has a deliberately lo-fi look with pixelated textures and not a lot of polygons to go around. But even so, it's truly a beautiful game. Every creature, sunbeam, and forested hillside is filled with a sort of fairy tale ambience that made me want to get lost in its procedurally-generated regions. And there's a lot to get lost in, from peaceful meadows to dreary swamps to snowy mountains. Every time I generated a new map, it impressed me with its scale and how it looked like it could’ve been hand-made. Because of the naturalistic, Northern European feel, it comes across as very cohesive and authentic.

The first time Valheim really made me go "Wow!" was when, after about 15 hours of preparing, I set sail on my own hand-built ship. Like a proper viking, your main method of long-distance travel is to take to the seas and riverways. The controls for steering are kind of clunky, and I love them for that very reason. Mastering the art of making tight turns and managing my speed was a satisfying skill-building exercise.

Realistic waves can bounce you up and down, and a sudden storm can even damage your vessel and force you to make for a safe harbor. The ever-changing direction of the wind is a constant consideration that may encourage you to go out of your way and discover something new rather than simply sail in a straight line. Having a ship makes it feel like a whole new world is opening up – and then it tries to eat you.

The improvements to Valheim since its Early Access launch are really too many to list, even if you gloss over the obvious stuff like nearly doubling the number of biomes and bosses. Perfect dodges, trinkets, and even a magic system have made combat so much deeper and richer. One of my biggest complaints back in 2021 was that certain elements of progression could feel a bit grindy. But even that's adjustable now with fine-tuned difficulty settings. I found that a 3x resource drop rate made the pacing incredibly smooth for me as a solo player (especially while I was retreading the early areas I had already seen on an entirely fresh 1.0 world), though it might be a bit too much for a big group.

Each of the eight biomes is extremely distinct in terms of vibes, enemies, and geography. The bug-infested Mistlands have taken the place of the Swamps as my least favorite, with obnoxious terrain made even harder to navigate by dense fog, but they are beautiful to look at when you're not being swarmed. The Ashlands represent a dramatic escalation that really sells the thrill of entering the endgame with a jump in difficulty and foreboding volcanic landscapes.

As for the Deep North, I don't want to spoil too much of what secrets lie beyond its icy shores, but it really puts the ambition of all the other biomes to shame and leads into a conclusion worthy of a viking hero. I already loved Valheim's Norse aesthetics, and the Deep North is the most Norse it ever gets, so it really leans into its strongest visual and mythological themes right at the end.

For a game that already felt fairly complete in terms of both size and polish half a decade ago, Valheim 1.0 seems more like an instant classic from years back that's gotten three big expansions already, not a saggy skeleton of something that had the potential to be great that is now finally fleshed out. I feel completely spoiled by its finished scope. They've even added some really well-animated 2D cutscenes that play after each boss and announce the biome you're about to explore, which definitely help flesh out and keep up the momentum of the unfolding story.

Valheim's action hacking and slashing (and shooting) was familiar and invigorating to me as a modern action RPG player. It's not just "good enough for a survival crafter," either, with the same care and attention paid to it as any other system. With a wide variety of weapons and enemy types, elemental damage and resistances, and timing-based dodges and parries, it kept challenging me to sharpen my skills and learn new enemy patterns right to the end.

The satisfying, hectic, dramatic boss fights really demonstrate the strengths of this combat, even though it's occasionally obvious that their AI can't quite cope with the varied arenas you fight them in. Not only do they serve as climactic capstones to each area and tier of technology, they have highly distinct mechanics and gradually raise the skill ceiling needed to progress, which I found very rewarding. I do wish fully half of them were not resistant to pierce damage, though, since it feels a bit like saying, "No archery allowed past this point," especially with how long it takes for bow-wielders like me to get any significant upgrades to elemental damage in the mid-to-late game.

The randomized dungeons are also a treat, from werewolf-infested frozen cave systems to gooey insect hives, with each featuring a unique layout, loot, and challenges to navigate. The Plains and the Ashlands replace underground lairs with large, complex outdoor structures, which even further helps to keep things feeling unique. Laying siege to a charred fortress made the whole exploring and looting routine feel brand new again, even 80 hours in.

Among Valheim's most clever tricks is how your hearty feasts tie directly into progression. While you can skill up in different weapons and abilities, like running and swimming, your health and stamina meters are completely tied to what's in your belly. This means that "leveling up" mostly involves finding new ingredients and learning new recipes to ensure you're always as well fed as you can be. Valheim also wants you to eat a balanced diet. You can benefit from up to three types of food at any time, but stacking more than one of the same thing gives you no benefit.

All of this also made my character feel more alive and connected to the world, and it set Valheim apart from the rote, old-fashioned RPG progression routines where experience translates to levels, which then translate into more hit points and energy. There's something deliciously thematic about heading out to battle evil with a full stomach, a good night's rest, and a flagon of invigorating mead to quaff. It's a truly cozy warrior's paradise.

Of course, a cozy warrior needs a cozy hall to settle down in. Valheim is voxel-based, but it's also much more limited in how you can alter the terrain than something like Minecraft. It took me a while to master the little tricks needed to make a structure that doesn't clip into the ground or look like it's slightly floating. But once you do, you can construct some very impressive-looking stuff, and the in-depth system for weight and support beams means your buildings generally end up looking and feeling realistic and in keeping with the world around them. Far from a restrictive annoyance, I loved how this became like a puzzle that made me think the way actual medieval Norsemen might have when figuring out how to hold up a towering roof.There are plenty of different styles of building pieces as well, but I still wish we could get triangular or rounded floor tiles so it wasn't so hard to build something with anything but a perfectly rectangular footprint.

Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Lanterns Season 1, Episode 4!

Lanterns sure left us hanging these past couple of weeks, ending Episode 2 with the debut of Ulrich Thomsen’s Sinestro and then pivoting away to tell a flashback storyline in Episode 3 (a great flashback storyline, but a flashback all the same). Only now in Episode 4 do we see the full reunion between Sinestro and his former protege. It’s a definite high point of the episode, albeit an all too brief one.

It’s slightly ironic that a show about Manhunters is taking some inspiration from 1986’s Manhunter (and its literary inspiration, Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon). Sinestro is clearly being cast as the Hannibal Lecter figure in this particular investigation, providing his former protege with some much-needed advice and also taking the opportunity to screw with him psychologically. Thomsen really shines in this opening scene. He conveys a clear menace, but you also get a real sense of the history and camaraderie between Sinestro and Kyle Chandler’s Hal. As readers of Geoff Johns’ seminal Green Lantern run will know well, Sinestro ultimately sees himself as nothing more or less than Hal’s friend. He may have ulterior motives in this show, but he seems to be genuinely trying to help Hal out of a dangerous predicament.

My main complaint here, again, is that the Hal/Sinestro reunion is over too soon. Sinestro is too key a character to the Green Lantern mythos to be treated as such a small supporting player. I would have loved more of this sci-fi-flavored spin on the classic Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter dynamic, whether that consists of flashbacks to their pre-uprising relationship or simply more scenes of the two conversing in the prison. Later on, Hal recounts what Sinestro told him about Manhunters struggling to replicate human hearts. Why couldn’t we have seen that portion of their conversation? We can only hope the series finds room to bring Thomsen back in a more substantive role in the back half of Season 1, but right now, it seems just as likely this is all we’re going to see of the character.

I feel similarly about the other key GL villain introduced in Episode 4, Jason Manuel Olazábal’s Hector Hammond. We basically get one good, solid sequence out of Hector and that’s it. The standoff between Hector and Hal/John (Aaron Pierre) is tense and stressful in the best way, but it’s also over very quickly. At that point, we learn that Hector is really just Hector Gutiérrez, another fakeout used by the Manhunter to throw our heroes off their scent. And unlike Sinestro, there’s not even any prior history between Hal and Hector in this universe. This is a major DC villain who’s being effectively wasted as a one-off misdirection.

So there’s definitely a newfound element of frustration to Lanterns in Episode 4. Up till now, I haven’t minded the series’ decision to downplay some of the franchise’s more fantastical trappings. It’s necessary from a practical TV-making perspective, and it suits the story being told. But seeing such major GL characters being introduced and then whisked off the board so unceremoniously is harder to stomach.

Fortunately, Lanterns still has its biggest selling point to fall back upon - the eternal friction between cantankerous veteran Hal Jordan and ambitious rookie John Stewart. That strength remains fully on display in Episode 4, which manages to deftly balance the inherent comedy of this pairing and the simmering tensions within Rushville. In the case of the former, we get a lot of fun banter between the two characters, and even some good jokes regarding John’s dour, stoic demeanor. Plus, there’s the heightened nature of their latest, very awkward meeting with a proudly naked Will Macon (Garret Dillahunt). Investigating Macon’s Weenie indeed.

Episode 4 is at its best when it highlights the growing friction between Hal and John. Both men are increasingly at odds with one another. Each is hiding things from the other. Moreover, each has been given clear advice to betray the other and elevate their own station. The question of whether John will backstab Hal and claim the ring hangs over every scene that follows his conversation with the Guardian Lianna (Laura Linney). We’ve seen that years of abusive parentage and single-minded training have molded John into a man who follows orders without question. Is that blind obedience what the Guardians crave, more than fearlessness? What happens when John is inevitably forced to choose between his desire for the ring and his loyalty to Hal? Does that loyalty even still exist following this episode’s dramatic final scene? A lot to ponder heading into Episode 5.

Also of note is that we seem to have our answer regarding the mystery of the undercover Manhunter. Despite the giant red herring that was Zoe’s “death” scene, she’s been revealed as Macon’s mysterious benefactor. As far as twists go, this one is pretty obvious, so it’s just as well the writers didn’t drag things out any longer. Predictable or not, it’s a reveal that works, and I’m excited to see where things go now that the Lanterns (and Antaan’s crew) know who their quarry is. We may be only halfway through the season, but the 2016 conflict sure is heating up.

One final sidebar - I didn’t really hone in on this before, but it’s certainly interesting that Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) is a former Gotham City native whose last name is Kane. Is she somehow related to Kate Kane (and by extension, Bruce Wayne himself)? I can’t imagine the Kane/Gotham connection is mere coincidence. Presumably, we’ll get more on Kerry’s backstory before Season 1 is finished.

A custom pre-built gaming PC like the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 is going to save you a lot of work if you’re not technically savvy or simply don’t have the patience to put together a modern-day puzzle. With its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card and AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, you’re getting solid mid-tier performance. And it’s all packed away in an easy-to-open glass case with shiny RGB components.

That said, it’s not without issue. Upgrading or replacing components is likely going to take moving a few things out of the way, as it’s a bit crowded on the motherboard. Even if you don’t plan on upgrading, you’ll either be annoyed by the finicky RGB lighting or the fact that the power button and front ports are at the very bottom of the tower, making floor placement very awkward. These may not be dealbreakers for some, but you should know what you’re getting into.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Case Design and Build Layout

The Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 isn’t terribly bigger than your average mid-tower, coming in at 18.3 x 20.6 x 9.4 inches. A good chunk of the sides are wrapped in tempered glass and RGB LEDs, with light bars found around the case, on the seven case fans, the two RAM sticks, and the PSU shroud – the GPU is the only component left out of the fun. The rest of the case is painted black, which isn’t my favorite gamer aesthetic, but it does allow the rest of the RGB to shine.

Breaking into this rig is pleasantly easy. The glass panel pops off with a little pressure, held in by several pegs and a larger clip. The RTX 5070 isn’t terribly large, but it doesn’t leave a lot of headroom for one of the two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots that are available just beneath it. If you did want to plug something in there, it’d need to be relatively thin, and I’d worry about how tight it would be squeezed up against the GPU. All the cables are neatly tucked away, but you’ll need to work around a few things to replace some components. For example, the CPU fan cables are blocking the RAM and the SSD sits very snugly between the CPU and the motherboard’s heatsink.

Popping open the panel on the opposite side was just as easy, held in place by the same mechanism. All the cables are zip tied and lined up cleanly on the front, but of course, there’s a mess of wires down by the 850W Gold PSU. The PSU is non-modular, too, so if you need to replace a cable, you’re going to have to buy a new PSU and play connect the dots.

The front glass panel pops off easily from the top and slots back in just as smoothly. You’ll find the front connectors just below the glass panel, near the power button. There’s a headphone jack as well as two USB 2 Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C slot. The placement for the power button as well as the ports is mighty annoying if the PC is placed on the floor as opposed to your desk.

On the back, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, five USB 2 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, an RJ-45 Ethernet, and three audio ports. There are also connectors for Wi-Fi 6 extenders as well as an HDMI and DisplayPort on the motherboard, which are helpful for troubleshooting. There was a sticker on the back blocking the ports and pulling it off left a sticky residue in places, which is very silly, but you’ll need to clean it up.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Software

Fortunately, there’s no real bloatware clogging up the metaphorical pores of the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5. However, it does come packaged with the SignalRGB app, which is a slightly annoying app that gives you access to the system’s RGB lighting settings as well as control over your fans and the ability to monitor hardware performance. You do have to customize the monitoring interface yourself. And it asks you to create an account to get access to more lighting features. And then it asks you to sign up for a Pro account ($6 per month) to remove the ads. Yes, there are ads in your RGB lighting configuration app. Like I said, it is an annoying app to deal with.

I also noticed some issues with the RGB lighting overall. There’s no direct setting to turn off the RGB – only to pause or dim the effect, both of which do disable the lighting. However, the lighting will occasionally flicker back on and then off again. And when starting the PC, the app doesn’t remember that you disabled the lighting so it’ll kick back on. Another issue I noticed is that the RGB lighting occasionally stutters when active, like it’s skipping a beat.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Performance

The Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 features an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GPU, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 32GB of RAM, which will get you mid-tier gaming performance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like mid-tier pricing (at $2,299), but perhaps that’s to be expected given the current computing climate. Overall, you can get roughly 50 to 60 fps in select AAA games at 4K on high settings. And of course, Nvidia’s DLSS frame generation will get you further to capitalize on high refresh rate displays.

Taking a tour through Night City in Cyberpunk 2077, the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 averaged 60 fps at 4K on the Ray Tracing Ultra and DLSS Performance settings. It achieves greater heights with frame generation (x2), scoring 97 fps, and then 167 fps with frame generation (x4). Unfortunately, the RTX 5070 can’t reach the full potential of super high refresh rate panels, like 240Hz.

With simple DLSS Performance, the Blaze 5 managed 56 fps in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and 78 fps with frame generation enabled. Naturally, the Blaze 5 fell low on the Metro Exodus benchmark, at 40 fps, since it’s a heavier workload with no upscaling. In a more competitive game, like Black Ops 7, it operated smoothly at 121 fps, which is more than enough to get you up on those leaderboards.

Pragmata is a little intense to run on an RTX 5070 at 4K, max settings without any additional help. I started scouring space-dystopian New York City in the space-daddy simulator, and I averaged 40 fps on the highest settings with DLSS Performance enabled. Then I turned on frame generation (x4) and fought the freaky baby-looking robots that haunt my nightmares, which got me around 124 fps. Meanwhile, at 1440p with no frame generation, the Blaze 5 scored 71 fps.

You can definitely get by when gaming at 4K, but the Blaze 5 will really shine with a 1440p monitor, capturing those higher frames you want to see. It does cost a hefty sum, so you might as well optimize accordingly.

Rami Tabari is a contributing writer at IGN with over 9 years of experience in the tech and gaming industry. You can find his bylines at Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide (and on a random Predator review at Space.com). When Rami isn't wading through a sea of the latest gaming tech, he's agonizing over the worldbuilding in his upcoming novella.

This review is based on a screening from the Venice Film Festival. Primetime is in theaters on September 25.

You don’t have to be familiar with Chris Hansen or To Catch a Predator to enjoy Primetime — director Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut — but it certainly helps. That’s not because the movie sticks closely to real events, but rather, because it takes some audacious swings while purposefully fudging the timeline. Watching exactly how and why it takes these liberties is a delight of its own; the result is a sleazy, rollicking, razor-wire drama that’s every bit about the rise of reality TV as it is a spiritual part of it. Anything is fair game if it makes for a good story.

It begins with TV personality Hansen (Robert Pattinson) privately repeating sexually explicit chat logs sent from a skeevy former Marine (Tony Revolori) to a fictitious adolescent. As he rehearses to ambush the unsuspecting perv — the premise of his hit sting operation, which ran from 2004 to 2007 — the movie starts to reveal its lurid flourishes. Awash in shadow, its heightened version of Hansen is a cartoonishly sinister figure who steps before the cameras with all the boastful poise of a Broadway veteran. When he finally reveals himself to Revolori — after gazing at him through a crack in a door, like some stalker or slasher villain — he towers over the former soldier like a hunter cornering prey.

As his show rises through the ranks, NBC executives make eager demands — Bigger! Flashier! More! — which leads Hansen and his team to more opportunistically (and more voraciously) pursue potential perps, eventually chasing someone they suspect of having a position of influence. Those in the know will recognize this throughline as that of the series’ botched episode emanating from Murphy, Texas, and the subject of the incredible long-form Esquire piece on which Primetime was based. However, en route to that tragic debacle, the movie takes incredibly entertaining turns, buoyed by a raucous visual energy while remaining rooted in surprisingly cogent drama.

The film has no qualms about its culprits’ misdeeds, but it makes sure to frame Hansen and, well, almost everyone involved with the show as some kind of seducer too, whether through its visual framing or its cast’s creepy physicality. A magnetic Merritt Wever plays Hansen’s fictitious producer Andie Bender, whose polite tone disguises exploitative commands, while Matthew Maher portrays the real Xavier Von Erk, the keyboard warrior enthusiastically ensnaring potential perps. Rounding out the sting crew are the experienced, conscientious adult decoy Del (Phoebe Bridgers), a self-professed activist who has the bait-and-switch process of welcoming child predators down pat, and nubile newcomer Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) — based loosely on Dan Schrack — a wannabe actor out to prove himself and join the Screen Actors Guild.

Gisondo is the movie’s naïve heart and soul. While initially unaware of the job he agrees to, Dan is eager to please his bosses, especially the imposing Hansen, with whom he forms a perverse father-son dynamic. All Dan wants is approval, but Hansen’s attention is always elsewhere, either on trying to up his TV ratings, or on retaining the illusion of domestic bliss with his wife and sons, while he’s either out philandering — a later development in Hansen’s life brought forward for the movie — or worse, making money off garish spectacle.

The real Hansen hasn’t seen the film at the time of this writing, though this hasn’t stopped him from threatening legal action. Regardless, it’s hard to imagine he’d be pleased with Pattinson’s portrayal — but unfortunately, he might be alone in his displeasure. The Batman star has never been better or more explosive, delivering a jester-like performance as a man envious of other news hosts’ success — and by proxy, of the era of war-as-entertainment. Pattinson smuggles, beneath the character’s wholesome poise, a petulant, paranoid man with a distinctly rehearsed quality. That he nails Hansen’s voice is a fantastic party trick, but this is, quite fittingly, the only truly Hansen-esque thing about him. He’s Chris Hansen in name and occupation; in spirit, he’s an impish embodiment of Hollywood id at the turn of the century, a TV landscape defined by façade, and the willingness to step on anyone to get ahead.

Driven enough to believe his own hype, Hansen commands the movie’s breakneck unfurling as the sickly centerpiece of several rapid montages and a palette that’s both oversaturated and has too much contrast for comfort. Its sensory re-creation of cheap, mid-2000s video recordings makes it especially eerie, as though Primetime were a version of a events we were never meant to see — made all the more haunting by Hansen’s strange segues into fictitious Indian folklore, meant to build himself up as some spiritual savior.

The dialogue and its double meanings are incredibly on-the-nose — what Hansen says, versus what he means deep down, is a disconnect apparent to everyone but him — resulting in some jaw-dropping hilarity. While there’s certainly a wider discussion to be had about the show’s methods and its modern legacy, this conversation is already underway courtesy of the aforementioned Esquire piece, as well as David Osit’s 2025 documentary Predators, an intimate retrospective on the series.

Primetime, on the other hand, is a macabre, poetic echo of the temptations To Catch a Predator first tapped into. Its public pillorying led to plenty of cases that couldn’t be prosecuted, but the film doesn’t seek to paint that wider picture. It instead remains nauseatingly focused on the base desires of the show’s creators and its fans, which it dramatizes through its radioactive texture. The film feels practically toxic, with characters who are entirely off-putting to watch, whether by way of Wever constantly popping her chewing gum, or a cameoing Creed Bratton (of The Office fame) appearing as a Hansen admirer turned on by fantasies of violence.

At the center of it all is Pattinson’s borderline sociopath. His Hansen is an animated, empty, Patrick Bateman-like vessel for celebrity allure, who remains the fulcrum of Oppenheim’s spinning, voyeuristic camera and its high-octane thrills. These are born not from guns and bombs, or even the stakes of catching a predator, but from the sheer exhilaration of seeing just how low Hansen and his cohorts will stoop to create entertainment, paving the path for the content-at-all-cost landscape in which we live today.

Asus already had one of IGN’s favorite 4K gaming monitors on its hands with the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP, delivering a gorgeous OLED panel that could render 4K games at a zippy 240Hz or swap to 1080p for an even faster 480Hz. It’s still an excellent option on the market and made all the more affordable by its age. Now almost two years on, Asus has the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM, a very similar monitor with a smaller 27-inch panel that gets some new display tech for slight visual refinement. Of course, newer tends to mean more expensive, and this model is set to come in at $1,199, putting it well ahead of other competing OLED displays like the earlier PG32UCDP, which was sitting at $859 at the time of writing, or the 1440p/500Hz MSI MAG 272QP QD-OLED X50 at $599. Let’s have a look at how it stacks up.

Design and Features

Asus didn’t leave much out when it designed the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM. That said, it doesn’t have speakers, but you’ll find it checks boxes in just about every other department.

From the front, it looks like a fairly tame, cleanly-built gaming monitor with perhaps a bit of a gaudy stand thanks to the angular, gamery aesthetic and the LED bat signal of the ROG logo that it wants to splash onto your desktop day and night (this can be turned off, thankfully). If you want, you can swap for a VESA stand using an included adapter. The provided stand is plenty functional, though, offering the typical range of adjustments you’ll find on a high-end monitor. There’s also a slot in the neck of the stand for passing through cables, and where some monitor stands make it quite a squeeze to even get power and a single HDMI cable through this portal, the PG27UCWM provides plenty of room for multiple cables.

The PG27UCWM is ready for a lot of cables, too. You’ll find two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 2.1a port, and even a capable USB-C port that’ll take in video and send out up to 90 watts of power. There are two USB ports for passing data to a connected system, letting the monitor serve as a USB hub as well with a KVM switch so you can pass that connection to the USB-C link or a separate USB-B link. If you want to connect speakers, there’s a headphone jack, too.

Around back, the PG27UCWM spices things up a little. Rather than the classic black ABS plastic you’ll find on half the monitors in the world, the PG27UCWM opts for a transparent plastic that gives it something of a cyberpunk aesthetic. It may still feel like cheap plastic, but it looks damn good.

Another feature is a presence sensor that can help preserve the lifespan of the OLED panel by dimming it whenever you step away. I didn’t find it overly sensitive, so I wasn’t concerned it’d blink off while I’m in the middle of a game.

Adjusting settings in the monitor is easy with a joystick control for navigating menus and making selections. This sits just behind the presence sensor at the bottom edge of the display.

Then there’s the display itself. The ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM packs a 4K/240Hz display with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, variable refresh rates down to 48Hz, and a setting that swaps the display to 1080p and cranks the max refresh rate up to 480Hz.

The display is glossy, which can hurt in a bright room, but it has a decent anti-reflection coating that at least cuts down on how bright reflections appear.

Testing

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM proves its worth with strong performance in objective measurements. My colorimeter measured a wide color gamut with 100% coverage of sRGB, 89% coverage of AdobeRGB, and 97% coverage of DCI-P3 color spaces. The monitor delivers the color accurately with an average dE1976 of 1.04 and a max of 2.66, making this a solid option for creative work. The monitor achieved these results in its default Racing picture profile, but not all different settings will perform as well. The Scenery picture profile, for instance, had a bad color accuracy dE1976 average of over 10.

By default, the display ran a tame 147.6 nits that would be comfortable in a modestly lit room, and that comes alongside infinite contrast thanks to 0.0-nit black levels. This level came alongside a standard 2.2 gamma curve and a comfortable 6600K whitepoint. Bumping the brightness level to 100% raised the white level to 249.7 nits.

HDR is a specialty for this display. It may not go incredibly bright for a full screen in normal use, but it can bring out more light in HDR. I measured a 294.8-nit whitepoint for a full screen and a 519-nit whitepoint for a 10% window with the remaining screenspace blacked out. That could go higher still for smaller highlights, but required switching the monitor to its Adjustable HDR setting and raising the brightness to 100%. In those conditions, I measured a 4% window at 1,066 nits and a 1% window at 1,172 nits. Those high brightness levels can sag quickly, but for temporary, bright bursts of HDR highlights, they’ll dazzle.

Motion clarity is also exceptional. The monitor's support for a 240Hz refresh rate in 4K or 480Hz in 1080p combined with the ultra-fast pixel response time of OLED keeps details sharp in fast motion.

Gaming and Performance

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM’s panel is excellent for both work and play. OLED panels had already been shifting away from troublesome sub-pixel layouts that could show color fringing on fine detail and text or basically anywhere with a sharp edge. With the PG27UCWM, Asus incorporates a panel with an RGB strip sub-pixel arrangement, aligning with the sub-pixel arrangement of your typical monitors and thus avoiding the issue entirely. Working in text documents, watching movies, and playing games, I never spotted the color fringing that had impacted some earlier OLED display.

Even if it had the fringing, it might have been hard to spot since the 4K panel is stunningly sharp on a 27-inch screen. I didn’t find myself pixel peeping. The screen looks great for movies, which are sharp and really play up the contrast and color the panel can provide. If you pair the monitor with the right video source, you can even tap into Dolby Vision.

Gaming just makes things all the better. Getting to run at up to 240Hz even at 4K makes the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM quite the sight, and for more competitive or fast-paced games, the option to drop down to 1080p and crank it up to 480Hz can come in clutch. I played through a chunk of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and enjoyed the sharp detail and potent contrast that brings the game world to life one day, and the next swapped over to 1080p so I could blitz through levels in Hades 2 and power through enemies in Trepang2. The monitor kept up with all the intense action and kept the details incredibly clear.

Switching modes is also simple. A single tap on a dedicated shortcut button switches between modes (a clear on-screen indicator of this happening would be helpful, though).

The 1080p resolution starts to hurt a little on the 27-inch panel, but you really only need to swap over when you are playing something that calls for more than 240fps, and in those cases, the pixels will generally be moving too fast to notice them individually.

Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.

Plenty of things are terrifying about a man in a boiler suit creeping up behind you, but it's hard to be scared of Halloween: The Game's Michael Myers when he strolls around the neighborhood with all the urgency of a retiree on a golf course. Admittedly, my early experience with the latest asymmetrical survival horror based on a famous movie came without the obligatory day one patch, so everything I’ve seen so far comes with that giant, flashing caveat. But after several hours, my immediate reaction is that this just isn't ready. I would barely think it’s ready if it were labeled asan early access game, which it’s not. Clumsy, buggy, and often frustrating, Halloween: The Game seems in need of considerable polish and bug squishing.

Developer Illfonic is, of course, almost synonymous with asymmetrical horror at this point, if not quite able to break the stranglehold Behaviour Interactive has with Dead by Daylight. In keeping with the traditions of the genre, you either play on your own as the killer, Michael Myers, and rampage through the town, or you work with up to three other humans and a handful of AI companions to loot items and keep yourself alive long enough to find, open, and escape the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night in 1978.

Because of Illfonic's back catalog, I came in with high expectations, and knowing Halloween creator John Carpenter was also involved sent them soaring even further. You'd think, with the best part of a decade's learning and all that asym trial and error behind it, Halloween: The Game would be the most polished of all Illfonic's games. But — so far at least — that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Animations are broken or missing completely. I've had hard crashes that sent me back to my PS5 dash, averaging at least one an hour. Combat is beyond janky — several times now, I've stabbed a player and had my weapon phase right through them. Often the sound gets messed up, so when I open a door to my left, I hear it to my right, which is hugely irritating given sound is vital to a stealth horror game. And on two occasions, a quick time event bugged out and trapped me in a broken animation, giving Myers all the time in the world to step up right behind me. That was just as much fun and not-at-all-frustrating as it sounds.

The NPC AI is also hysterically stupid. Once, playing as Myers, I (loudly) busted through a front door and found all three remaining NPCs in the same room, still standing at the same window. I had executed two before the remaining one decided it was time to make a run for it.

It's galling because there are some excellent ideas here. I had a great time with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's spin on asymmetrical horror back in 2023, but within days it was clear no one wanted to play as Leatherface because it was so much easier — and considerably more fun — to clock up XP and escape as a survivor.

In Halloween: The Game, however, Illfonic seems to have really worked to balance the odds between killer and civilian, and Myers is a blast to play. Even though he never, ever runs, making it next to impossible to take out a player if they've seen you, his special abilities — snuffing out all the lights in the immediate area; jumping from shadow to shadow; detecting nearby players — help mitigate that deeply unsatisfactory walking speed, especially if you nail the timing. Plus, the execution mechanic is a neat shortcut if you manage to get close enough to… well, execute it. The death animations, if often out of sync, are brilliantly brutal, too, particularly if you manage to catch a civilian, by a window or next to an electric oven. (I'm sure there's more still to discover!)

Best of all, this isn't just four humans against one killer. As Myers, your job is to wipe the map clean of all survivors, human and NPC alike. As a civilian, you need to creep around the deliciously 70s-inspired maps — everything, from the cars to the decor to the rotary phones, is on point here, not to mention the fashion! — quietly warning NPCs and instructing them to either hide, follow you, or escape.

There are plenty of items to gather as you creep through residential homes, including offensive weapons, defensive tools, and a host of goodies to bolster the odds of getting out of there unscathed. You'll never be able to take Myers out completely — just like the movies, this is a dude who does not know how to take the hint and die — but you can temporarily immobilize him with the right timing and the right equipment.

That said, why do we have to sit and watch Myers finish killing off idiot NPCs if all the human players are already dead? You're given QTEs when spectating — I hate them; there are too many, they're too boring, and I swear there's occasionally an input delay — but it's so tedious, especially as the maps are pretty chunky and make hunting down one last survivor time-consuming.

And it just doesn't perform well. Even beyond the poor AI and broken QTEs, I experienced numerous crashes, rubberbanding, and framerate drops for no discernible reason. Characters sometimes walked three feet off the ground. Interacting with items is completely hit-or-miss — half the time you can pick stuff up or remove a chain with a bolt cutter; half the time you cannot. Oh, and sometimes you can open a door, step through it, lock it, and then find yourself back outside the front, unable to get back in.

Like I said, I need to play on the launch patch before finalizing my thoughts — but, generally speaking, a day one update is rarely a miracle fix for all of a review build’s issues. Still, I'll be back once I've spent some time on the live servers with both the single and multiplayer modes (so far the former has completely underwhelmed me — again, mostly due to idiotic NPCs). I'd also like to better understand how the card perk system works and experiment with all the civilians' passive abilities. For now, though, it's difficult to recommend Halloween: The Game to anyone other than a horror fan with a Michael Myers shrine in their home (now that's a scary thought) or those with deep, deep affection for asymmetrical games.

The “hidden movement” genre of board games is one of my favorites and I still remember where I discovered this type of game. I was watching Wil Wheaton’s “Tabletop” series, when the game of the week was “Fury of Dracula”, a game where one person assumes the role of Dracula, spreading terror and attempting to grow his vampire forces around the globe, while the others are vampire hunters, try to track him down and drive a stake through his heart. Despite falling in love with what I saw, it was unfortunately at a time when Fury was out of print, and while eventually I would find myself a copy, it remained a rather sought after game for fellow hidden movement fans. Thankfully, at long last, the good folks at Avalon Hill have brought it back in a brand new 5th Edition, and fans around the world can once again hunt down dracula during their next board game night.

For those familiar with either the Fantasy Flight Games’ 3rd or WizKids’ 4th editions, the 5th edition is largely the same but for everyone else, Fury of Dracula is a one-versus-many with one person playing as the count and up to four other players controlling the hunters. As I mentioned a moment ago, this is a hidden movement game, where Dracula will be moving around the map, placing cards face down noting where he is and was, leaving dangers in his wake, while the hunters try to trap and kill the vampire lord. Each round, consisting of a Day and Night phase, begins with the hunters moving, supplying themselves with tools and special event cards, purchasing travel tickets, or searching for their target. During the day, these actions are generally safer, while attempting to resupply invites potentially hazardous events that may help Dracula instead.

Dracula’s turn is a bit less eventful, but debatably more important. Once all the hunters have taken their nighttime actions, Dracula is then able to move to a new location, placing face down a new location card on their growing trail and an encounter card. These encounters, secret much like the locations themselves until a hunter uncovers them, may spawn enemies, create diversions and delays for the hunters, or worse. Should one of these ever move off the board, “maturing” as it’s referred to, the despair track will increase, putting Dracula that much closer to securing his victory!

Despite the rather simplistic nature of these fights, it also has led to some of the tensest moments in board games I’ve ever had.

Unlike other hidden movement games, such as Whitehall Mystery (another personal favorite of mine) that is purely a game of cat and mouse, Fury of Dracula incorporates a combat mechanism. During situations where the hunters have cornered Dracula, both sides pick a card from their hands, composed of moves or helpful items like holy bullets and pistols on the side of the hunters, and then flip them, then resolve their effects. Despite the rather simplistic nature of these fights, it also has led to some of the tensest moments in board games I’ve ever had. Moments when misreading my opponent led them to safety, or one especially board-flipping time when I expected Dracula, who being only one hit away from death, to flee, only to have him decide to bite and knock me out instead. A defeat that pushed the despair track past its end, and handing the win to Dracula. Utterly infuriating, but also one of the aspects of Fury of Dracula that sets it above many other hidden movement games for me.

In addition to redone artwork (more on that in a bit), this new fifth edition does offer a couple of optional new elements that can shake up the formula a bit for those Fury vets out there. First is the addition of a fifth hunter to pick from, Jonathan Harker, who previously had been relegated to just an ally card. Mr. Harker now can be picked to replace one of the other hunters, and has some powerful abilities that should certainly help the good guys out. He’s able to not only deal additional damage when hitting Dracula but also, similar to his wife Mina, can force him to announce if Jonathan is in an adjacent spot. While a neat addition, it also feels like a bit of a halfbaked attempt too. Unlike the other hunters, Mr. Harker doesn’t get his own unique event card, and instead can simply use the one made for the hunter that he replaces. The balance of the game also doesn’t quite feel like it’s been balanced for him, and I found that when both Harkers were on the board, with their tracking talents, it made for a decently harder time for Dracula. He’s a fun “sometimes” change, but I plan to stick with my normal squad for most games.

Fury of Dracula is typically a game that can take a surprising amount of time, with some games I’ve played lasting past the four hour mark, and the second new addition with 5th edition is a faster game mode that can cut that in half or more. This new faster variant removes a couple of cards and blocks off a couple of the regions of the map (damn that Black Plague) while setting the board state roughly around where it would be after a “week” (about a third of the way through), granting hunters some items to start, Dracula with some damage, despair up a bit, and a few other tweaks. By-and-large I found this new variant to be a solid choice and makes Fury of Dracula a much more viable option on a weeknight. The smaller region and other adjustments (such as the instantaneous water movement and removing the single value train tickets) can make things far more swinging where getting away and staying hidden as Dracula can be more challenging. Again, just like with Harker, it works, but I’m curious how much balance testing went into it.

As one would expect from a new edition of a game, it isn’t usually just the gameplay or mechanics that get a refresh, but the artwork too, and it’s here where the 5th edition sees its biggest departure. Not because the map changes (though the town of Whitby, which plays an important role in the story of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, is finally included) but the aesthetic has changed. And it’s also here where I think the new edition takes a step backwards from the third and fourth editions.

With exception of Dracula’s location cards, the artwork for the event, encounter, item, and combat cards all have ditched the dramatic and detailed full color artwork of the earlier iterations in favor of what I would describe as drawings you may see in an old Victorian-era newspaper. These black-and-white illustrations work, but just don’t have the same impact, with some appearing, dare I say, even a bit corny? The “Dark Call” card for example, now features Dracula staring at the moon with a few bats in front of him, compared to earlier versions where he appears to be basking in the night with hordes of bats all around, against a stormy sky. Then there is the new “Misdirect” which basically makes him look like Batman from The Animated Series, as opposed to a mysterious man in a top hat, lurking in the fog. Hunter and Dracula character cards don’t fare much better either, with the portraits replaced with sepia-tinted photographs of the character. Which, now that I think about it, could you even take a picture of Dracula? I mean, vampires don’t have reflections in mirrors, so can you photograph them? Oh well, questions for another time.

This review is based on a screening at the Venice Film Festival. Bucking Fastard does not have a release date yet.

Basing his film loosely on Yorkshire twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, who notoriously spoke and moved in sync, Werner Herzog unfurls a real-life tale of codependence into a unique episodic drama about sheltered adults entering society for the very first time. The result, Bucking Fastard, is strange and wistful, verging occasionally on the surreal — it’s fittingly dedicated to David Lynch in its opening titles — and though its final notes lack the intended impact, the result is fantastical and worthwhile.

A large part of this comes down to the challenge of casting and directing such an idiosyncratic endeavor. Sisters Kate and Rooney Mara have had parallel careers which finally collide in Herzog’s latest. They play Jean and Joan Holbrooke — respectively, though it rarely matters. When the movie begins, the American siblings (“We’re not twins, we’re sisters,” they clarify emphatically and in unison) are placed on trial in Ireland, where they were raised, for stalking and harassing their suave neighbor, Mr. Mulroney (Orlando Bloom), who they claim to be in love with and married to after a number of eager threesomes. The stakes here are low — a restraining order rather than a criminal conviction — allowing the story to take on mischievous hues as their obsessions play out in flashbacks.

Two things become immediately clear during this opening act: one, that the Mara sisters are a delight to watch together, delivering overlapping or echoing dialogue interspersed with wry smiles and knowing looks at one another; two, that the Holbrookes have a tragically incomplete understanding of the world despite their attempts at sexual independence. They have an antiquated way of speaking, moving, and dressing, so much so that the movie’s time period is practically obscured. Freda and Greta’s own harassment trial was in the 1980s — the film’s title comes from a verbal slip they made together in court — so it’s easy to assume a similar setting on screen until the first iPhone appears some thirty minutes in (courtesy of a curious onlooker demanding a selfie once the sisters become local celebrities).

The real twins were the subjects of their own documentaries, but Herzog, who actually met them, circumvents the need or desire to craft a traditional biography. Instead, he extrapolates the isolation and self-loathing that he imagines might have defined their adult lives, as a pair of women so in tune with one another that they could barely communicate with the outside world or function apart. He also imbues his fictitious stand-ins with a certain naïveté of which men throughout the movie threaten to take advantage, creating an imposing uncertainty whenever the sisters step outside. In male-dominated pop culture, twin girls and women tend to occupy either a scary or salacious place; think the twin ghosts from The Shining, or the pornographic fantasy of bedding two identical women. These ideas loom large over the Holbrookes, as Herzog has them unknowingly wrestle with these forces during mundane interactions with men who are either devious or paternalistic, and whose benevolence might just come with invisible strings. Doubt always looms, even if the sisters seldom feel it themselves.

However, once the film moves on from their trial and follows their attempts at living alone — which is to say, just the two of them — it takes on a more subdued tone, and not without good reason. Bucking Fastard seldom delves into the details of their past, but instead reverse-engineers its drama from fleeting mentions of their complicated upbringing by parents we never see and who want little to do with them once their impish antics begin to encompass arson. The absence of real love and acceptance hovers over the Holbrookes, causing them to misunderstand their own feelings at every turn, even if what they feel is pure. They are, in a sense, alien — twin souls who have no one but each other since the world rejects them both.

The movie is at its most poignant once they move far away from society to the lush Irish countryside. Once the sisters visit their ailing aunt Louise (Marion O'Dwyer) and befriend her sweet, burdened neighbor, the elderly shepherd McFarlane (Brendan Conroy), Bucking Fastard presses pause on its whimsy so that Jean and Joan can more carefully reflect on what they want from humanity and what it gives them in return. The answer isn’t always kind, but this setting affords them poetic promises of escape via a local legend surrounding a nearby cave, which — although they don’t have the capacity to digest its fiction — sparks something deep within them.

The film has a bittersweet lust for life, which Herzog finds nestled in still and painterly scenes between his crowded fish-eye close ups and uncanny framing (the camera, fittingly, moves in sync with both his leads). And although its eventual abstractions don’t quite reach meaningful catharsis or enlightenment — if anything, it ends on a surprising downswing — Herzog’s gentle tragedy of two women cast out by the world veers between amusing and straightforwardly touching, like an adult fairy tale about yearning for connection.