Entertainment

Two of the latest no-strings-attached Epic Games Store giveaways, from the same studio that brought you Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush.

Other EGS freebies this week: Eternal Threads and Tandem: A Tale of Shadows.

It was scheduled to debut in June 2024, but it’s now set to release on May 23rd, 2025, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I didn’t say “Part Two” in my headline because apparently this sequel is getting a new subtitle. (Smart choice!)

SAG-AFTRA is still on strike.

If it weren’t for his 2021 Netflix deal, Tyler Perry might not still be making Madea movies, and because their last partnership worked out so well, the streamer is bringing Perry back with a new multi-year, writing / directing / producing contract.

If soundtrack of the games is suddenly running through your head, check out our 10-year anniversary feature about the series from last year.

In case you missed it last year, Hayao Miyazaki’s delightful Spirited Away will be in theaters from October 28th to November 1st. You can check here for local screenings.

It’s the last in a series of short theatrical runs as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2023 that also included Howl’s Moving Castle last month.

The red light / green light doll, marbles, the glass stepping stones... all of Squid Game’s greatest hits are in Netflix’s new trailer for Squid Game: The Challenge, which debuts on November 22nd.

Microsoft is holding an Xbox Partner Preview stream on Wednesday October 25th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET / 6PM UK. “This new show format will deliver a fresh mix of indie games and familiar favorites from our third-party partners... with more than 20 minutes of trailers and new gameplay footage,” says Microsoft. A launch trailer for Alan Wake 2 and the first gameplay for Ark: Survival Ascended are both on the menu.

In my initial hands-on time with Forza Motorsport, I didn’t run into many problems, but now I have seen some issues, even after installing its first significant patch.

An inconsistent penalty system is one thing, but I’ve also had crashes while trying to join races, and trying to view saved replays of multiplayer races turns into... this. You can see it in video form here, complete with cheering crowd audio, as cars are alternatively raptured to heaven or banished to the depths below. It’s listed as a “known issue” on the game’s bug tracker list.

SFB Games is best-known for charming adventures like Tangle Tower and Snipperclips, but the studio’s latest goes in a very different direction. Crow Country is lo-fi horror that looks like a cross between Silent Hill and FF7, complete with blocky characters and hazy levels to explore. It’s not coming out until 2024 on Steam and PlayStation, but you can check out a free demo on both platforms starting today.

UploadVR spotted a “coming soon” listing for VRChat, the virtual reality social platform, in the app store for the ByteDance-owned Pico 4 headset.

I wonder if that Four Seasons Total Landscaping hangout is still around.

In a series of posts on X, the Screen Actors Guild announced yesterday evening that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers invited it back to negotiations.

AMPTP walked away from talks earlier this month over its demand for two percent of streaming revenue. According to Variety, the union has amended that to 57 cents per year, per subscriber.

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the strike.

If Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon’s 3.5-hour runtime is too daunting, consider the recently released Anatomy of a Fall for your weekend visit to the theater. It’s a magnificently twisty courtroom drama centered by a tremendous performance by Sandra Hüller. (But also, you should see Killers!)

Talking to Seth Meyers, director Darren Aronofsky shares a few details about the tech behind “Postcard from Earth,” his new movie made for that giant 18K wraparound Sphere screen in Las Vegas.

Most notably, the camera used to shoot it records 32 gigabytes per second. The end result is half a petabyte file — the storage equivalent of roughly 1,953 base model M2 MacBooks Air.

The RF adapter from old consoles like the NES is actually broadcasting an analog radio signal just like your local TV station did, except over a wire.

Cathode Ray Dude tried boosting that signal with an amplifier (while adding that this may be illegal) and found it produced just as good an image as the composite ports on the side of the US version of the NES.

The amplification takes place about 13 minutes in, but the whole thing is well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it.

Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder came out on the same day (October 20th), and unfortunately for those of us with limited free time, they’re both excellent. Good luck squeezing them both into your weekend.

Elsewhere, you can catch up on the story of Alan Wake inside of Fortnite ahead of next week’s sequel, go on a trippy stroll through Ubisoft history with Captain Laserhawk on Netflix, or be terrified by something living in your phone.

The Front Office Sports Today podcast has a segment digging into the annual 8-K financial report released by Disney this week.

For the first time, it includes ESPN’s revenue and profit details — handy timing if you’re hoping someone will buy a part of the sports network — showing that even with the cable market much smaller than it was a few years ago, in 2022 it had $16 billion in revenue and $2.9 billion in profit. That probably explains why Netflix is about to test a live sporting event too.

If a developer introduces subscriptions before December 15th, Roblox says it will only take a 15 percent cut of those subscriptions instead of 30 percent, according to a post on its developer forum. However, that reduced rate will only be in place through March 15th, 2024. And, importantly, the “fee savings” from the reduced rate will be paid in a lump sum in April, Roblox says.

You can read more about Roblox’s subscription plans in my post from September.

AMD’s Anti-Lag Plus feature got gamers banned — but it looks like that’s getting fixed. The game’s October 19th patch notes reads:

Added a startup check for incompatible AMD graphics drivers. We will now begin reversing VAC bans for affected players

Also: “Fixed a bug in Windows 11 Auto HDR that led to smokes intermittently disappearing”.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is out today, and one of the coolest additions is a thick new goo that you can slowly swim through. At one point in the game, a flower asks Mario “how’s the goo taste?”

Well, since it seems to be the same substance as Luigi’s Mansion’s Gooigi, I might just have the answer. For some reason back at E3 2019 I asked producer Kensuke Tanabe what the creepy character would taste like, and he replied “it might taste like coffee.”

Hopefully they update Wonder with this important information.