Month: June 2021

After the Nets dominated the first two games in Brooklyn, the Bucks made their second round series much more interesting with a hard fought win in Game 3. Game 4 had a similar vibe to it, with both teams trading runs in what was a hotly contested first half, but in the second quarter the Nets saw a sight they were desperately hoping to avoid when Kyrie Irving landed on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s foot and rolled his right ankle badly, collapsing to the ground in immense pain.

With James Harden already out with a hamstring injury suffered less than a minute into Game 1, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant’s presence became critical for the Nets in being able to keep up their offensive attack. They’ve proven all season they’re capable of dealing with the absence of one of their stars, but missing two is a far more difficult task. Irving was helped up and eventually walked to the locker room under his own power but clearly dealing with significant pain in that ankle.

The alternate angles the broadcast had showed Irving’s ankle rolling dramatically, appearing to go almost 90 degrees and there is obvious concern about his status moving forward in this series.

LeBron James had the reaction to Kyrie’s injury that just about every other NBA fan did while watching from home.

UPDATE: The Nets have ruled Irving OUT for the rest of the game with an ankle sprain.

Polo G’s celebratory weekend came to a rather quick end as the rapper was arrested in Miami following an album release party he held for his new full-length effort, Hall Of Fame. The rapper was pulled over with his mother and manager, Stacia Mac, his younger brother, and security personnel as they were driving in a vehicle. According to Billboard and documents provided by Miami police, the rapper was stopped in order to be searched for weapons as a cop suspected they might be carrying some because they heard a passenger say the vehicle they were riding in was bulletproof.

When the officers stopped the vehicle, they asked all the occupants to step out and this is when the alleged altercation between Polo G and the cops ensued. Officers Brandon Carrero and Joseph Acuna “ended up in a struggle on the ground” with the rapper who also struck the former in the head, chin, forehead, and cheek during the incident, according to the arrest report. The rapper would be taken into custody and hit with a number of charges.

After posting a $19,500 bond, Polo G took to Twitter to speak out about the matter for the first time.

“1 of the officers told us they was on us since we got Off our Jet,” he wrote before following it up with a second tweet adding, “They playin foul in Miami & dat sh*t been like that for a minute.”

Polo G’s charges include battery against a police officer, public servant/influence performance threat, resisting an officer with violence, resisting an officer without violence, and criminal mischief.

One of the more highly-anticipated games from Square Enix has been nothing but a rumor for years until Sunday, when the company announced Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to the world. This is not a game based on the movies that came out over the last handful of years, however, but an original story created by Square Enix meant to be for video game fans.

The trailer itself hits all the right notes. It’s funny, full of character, and features just enough action to have us excited about what it will be like to play as a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. They also managed to avoid a mistake they made with 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers in the character design. They’re unique to the game, yes, but they still look good. The Avengers game of course received backlash for not looking the way they did in the MCU, but the models just didn’t look right.

After the trailer, Square Enix spent time showing what the game is going to be like. While it would have been fun to play as every member of the Guardians, it would have been a mess trying to switch between characters constantly. Keeping the player as a single main character keeps it focused. It also creates a fun gameplay mechanic where the player can make decisions as Peter Quill and the rest of the guardians act more autonomously and react to those decisions.

The gameplay that was shown looked really fun. The characters talked a little too much, but that was probably for trailer purposes so we could get a look into everyone’s personality. Right now, early signs show a game where the developers really understand what a Guardians of the Galaxy game should look and sound like. They even have licensed music sequences, which fits what we’ve seen in the films as well. And with an October release date, we’ll see how it all plays a lot sooner than many thought.

There’s a long list of things that Pharrell has done for his home state of Virginia. In 2017, he pushed forward a plan to bring a new Virginia Beach Dome venue to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. He also brought the Something In The Water festival to the state in 2019 as a highlight attraction to Virginia during their College Beach Weekend. Now, the multitalented act is back with more for Virginia as he announced plans to open a private school in the state for low-income students.

The Yellowhab school will be opened in Norfolk, Virginia’s Ghent neighborhood, which is close to his Virginia Beach hometown. Children in grades 3-5 will be able to enroll at Yellowhab and tuition for at least the first year will be free with other costs to be paid for by charitable donations.

“If the system is fixed and unfair, then it needs to be broken,” Pharrell said in a press release according to The Virginian Pilot. “We don’t want lockstep learning where so many kids fall behind; we want bespoke learning designed for each child, where the things that make a child different are the same things that will make a child rise up and take flight.”

Pharrell chose Norfolk for the school because of its history of housing segregation and the city’s plans to redevelop three public housing complexes. Yellowhab is also designed to group students by skill level rather than grade with a curriculum that gives priority to STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art, and math. The school will open on September 7 and families can apply for enrollment on July 1 through Yellowhab’s website.

When Halo Infinite was first shown back in 2020 it was met with a significant amount of scorn from fans of the franchise. It didn’t look good, sound right, or even feel like a Halo game. For many the best way to describe its debut is that it looked like a different kind of shooter with Halo paint on top of it. Considering Halo is still one of Xbox’s major franchises that just wasn’t acceptable and it seems to be a large part of why the game was delayed into 2021.

On Sunday, Halo Infinite had a second shot at unveiling itself to the world, and it did a far better job this time around. The multiplayer trailer alone was enough to get fans excited, but it also featured a new campaign trailer as well. This one was unfortunately cinematic, so we still haven’t seen if they’ve improved the gameplay, but the story itself at least seems interesting.

More importantly, the showcase gave us a release date: Holiday 2021. As long as there are no more delays, which can always happen with these AAA titles, we’ll be on another adventure with Master Chief by the end of the year. An adventure that at this point is six years in the making.

It’s just unfortunate that they couldn’t have shown us a little more gameplay of what the campaign is going to look like. Even a 30 second or minute-long clip would have been enough to show fans that it’s going to look and sound better than the original demo, but we’ll have to take what we’ve been given. As long as the game plays well at launch, few will really care about its much more troubled debut in 2020.

Lost in all the games news at Microsoft’s E3 presentation on Sunday was news of a new system coming this holiday season. But rather than replace the quite new Xbox Series X and Series S, the gaming giant used some of the cooling technology it needs for its next-gen systems to solve a very different cooling problem for gamers.

The Xbox Mini-Fridge was one of the cheekier announcements at the Microsoft/Bethesda presentation, but it still got its own trailer and a holiday 2021 release date. Billed as “a new system that leaves others cold,” the fridge was revealed alongside some gameplay scenes from various titles that initially made it look like a very different kind of announcement.

Described as the world’s most powerful mini-fridge, the device actually uses some of the Xbox Velocity Architecture that helps keep all the very powerful processors and chips at a reasonable temperature inside a real Xbox.

It’s a very silly product, one that’s doubling down on the joke many gamers have made that the Series X looks a lot like a fridge. Whether a full-size fridge is next will probably depend on how many mini-fridges they manage to sell, but no matter what it’s a really good chance to use the phrase “Xbox and chill” in some marketing materials over the next few months,

Bethesda has revealed an official teaser trailer — and a release date — for their upcoming space exploration RPG Starfield. After years of anticipation, fans of Fallout and Skyrim can expect the next larger-than-life adventure from Bethesda Softworks just in time for next year’s holidays: November 11, 2022.

According to the trailer’s description, in Starfield players can “create any character [they] want and explore with unparalleled freedom as [they] embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.”

The trailer comes as a part of Xbox and Bethesda’s merged E3 conference, the first since the two joined forces late last year. Based on the footage shown, Starfield is seemingly deviating away from the sleek and shiny space games we know, instead choosing to embrace a more realistic, low-tech aesthetic similar to Fallout. While not much else is known at this point and we’ve still yet to see any gameplay, we’re anticipating another open-world Western RPG experience from the studio that helped popularize the genre.

For those wondering why Starfield has been such a big deal the past few years, the game marks the Fallout and Elder Scrolls studio’s first new IP in nearly 25 years. It’s also the first huge title to come out of the industry-altering Xbox and Bethesda merger, and for months now folks have been wondering whether or not it would mark the start of Bethesda games coming exclusively to Xbox. Thanks to today’s conference we now have an answer, and unfortunately for PlayStation owners it seems to be a “yes.” Luckily, that far off release date gives us a bit more time to save up for the next-generation console — or ask Santa Claus very very nicely for it this year.

After more than a year of delays, the Euro 2020 tournament arrived this week with plenty of fanfare and excitement, but on Saturday all of that quickly went away during as scary a situation as you can have in a sporting event when Denmark star Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch.

Eriksen received medical attention for a significant amount of time and the medical staff had a defibrillator out to resuscitate the star midfielder before he was taken off on a stretcher and sent to a local hospital. Happily, Eriksen survived the incident and was awake, alert, and stable when he arrived at the hospital, but the Denmark team doctor confirmed on Sunday that he had suffered a cardiac arrest and had to be revived on the pitch, via ESPN.

“He was gone, and we did cardiac resuscitation. It was a cardiac arrest,” Morten Boesen said. “How close were we [to losing Eriksen]? I don’t know.

“We got him back after one defibrillator, so that’s quite fast. I’m not a cardiologist, so the details I will leave to the experts at the hospital.”

It was a horrifying scene and that the match was resumed later that evening was a decision that many found questionable, with Finland beating Denmark 1-0 with everyone still, understandably, shaken. That Eriksen survived is obviously great news, but it’s a sight that will stay with everyone on that field and watching in person or at home forever.

When The Outer Worlds came out it was a game that was enjoyed, but not loved, by most people. It was in many ways the spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas, but it never quite reached the same level of praise or popularity among fans. And despite a major expansion for the 2019 action RPG, a sequel is apparently coming soon.

In a rather humorous and self-aware trailer, The Outer Worlds 2 was announced to the world during Xbox’s E3 showcase. The trailer itself was very entertaining because it couldn’t help but make jokes about how similar E3 trailers are to one another. It’s also perfect for a tongue-in-cheek game like Outer Worlds.

Unfortunately, while the trailer was comedic and fun, that was all it ended up being. It was completely cinematic so we know nothing about gameplay, but it’s probably a pretty safe bet that it’s going to play extremely similar to the first The Outer Worlds. We’ll eventually hear about whatever new things they plan to offer, but for now, we’ll just have to settle with what they give us.

What’s more surprising is just how quickly a sequel has been announced. Of course, this trailer was just an announcement so this may have just been telling us they’ve entered development and nothing else. Either way, more The Outer Worlds is good for fans of Xbox and the Obsidian RPG experience in general.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has been a beloved PC game for years and on Sunday, during the Xbox Bethesda E3 event, they showed a new trailer to announce that it is coming to Xbox Series S/X this summer. That was exciting as is for folks like me who are very much into hyper-realistic games that are equally serene and soothing with beautiful views and wildly frustrating because, well, it’s a crazy realistic flight simulator and flying a plane is hard.

However, not only is Flight Simulator coming to console but it’s bringing a familiar face with it.

Oh yes, that is Maverick from Top Gun, who you can fly around as in an expansion pack coming this fall to Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is even more exciting. At first it looked like a full on Top Gun game was getting announced with how they ran this trailer after the Flight Sim trailer, but while that was a bit disappointing, it still looks incredible — as all Flight Sim things do — and as long as you can fly around while the Top Gun music plays, it’ll be worth it. This is obviously some spon-con with Top Gun Maverick on the way in November, but whatever gets us more Top Gun content.

The new Microsoft Flight Simulator will release on Xbox Series X/S and Windows 10 PC on July 27, 2021 (and on Xbox Game Pass), with the Top Gun expansion coming later in the fall.