Month: July 2021

Has it really been seven years since P.T. was striking fear into PlayStation 4 owners everywhere? The teaser demo for what turned out to be the next Silent Hill game was a modern phenomenon. A demo that was also an announcement of the next game in a beloved franchise, and it had Hideo Kojima collaborating with Guillermo del Toro working on it? This was going to be a monumental game that completely changed the franchise.

Unfortunately, we all know what happened after that. Kojima and the owners of the Silent Hill IP, Konami, had a rather public falling out. The new game was canceled and P.T. was pulled from the PlayStation store, never to return. After Kojima left the company, Konami showed less of an interest in making video games and it seemed like the Silent Hill franchise was dead for good.

All of that was in 2014 and as time has gone on some of those old feelings have cooled down. Konami isn’t all the way back into video games, but they’re not as opposed to them as they once were, and new hope has begun to form in the Silent Hill fanbase that one day the franchise will return. This hope has been fueled by rumors that Konami is interested in selling the rights to develop some of their most well-known IPs such as Metal Gear Solid and, yes, Silent Hill.

Adding to the bread crumb of rumors is the announcement that Konami and Polish developer Bloober Team are forming a partnership together. The assumption is that Bloober Team will be making a horror game for them, and it just so happens that Konami has one that’s been dormant for quite some time.

It is a historic day for me and the culmination of several years of our work. The fact that such a renowned company as KONAMI has decided to strategically cooperate with the Bloober Team means that we also joined the world leaders in gaming and became an equal partner for the leading players in this market. – comments Piotr Babieno, president of the Bloober Team.

Bloober Team’s previously developed titles, The Medium, Observer, and Layers of Fear were all Psychological Horror games, so a Silent Hill like horror game is clearly in their wheelhouse of games they can make. However, does that mean this newest game is going to be a Silent Hill game? Fans of the franchise certainly hope so. Their love for it is so strong that they recently tried to talk themselves into a conspiracy theory that Hideo Kojima was using viral marketing to secretly develop a new Silent Hill game for a studio called Blue Box Game Studios. In reality, they’re making a game called Abandoned and had to shoot those rumors down multiple times until everyone accepted it.

This idolization of a single franchise from the outside can sound a little absurd, and to be honest, it is, but that absurdity comes from a fanbase that just wants to see a revival of what some argue are the best horror games ever made. Before P.T. came out the bigger question about Silent Hill was if they were going to consistently make good games ever again. Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour were despised by fans, while Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was a welcome surprise. Silent Hill: Origins was disliked, but not as much as Downpour, and Silent Hill 4: The Room was just disappointing. So, after the first three games, which are all considered great horror games, there is a single game that is considered well done. The rest were okay at best and despised at worst. So to have P.T. be a game that not only struck the same kind of fear everyone felt when playing those original three games but also be a new game in the franchise, only to have that taken away from them, it felt like fans were robbed of something great.

That is where the source of this major desire to have a new Silent Hill game comes from. They just want to see a franchise that was so close to being relevant again actually get the return it deserves. Until they get that they’re going to continue chasing every single rumor they can find. Every bread crumb is a new one in the hope that Silent Hill comes back. On the positive side, it really does feel like a new game is in the works somewhere. The town of Silent Hill will call us back eventually. We just need to wait a little longer.

With Madden 22 quickly approaching, we’re beginning to learn more about the latest installment in the long-running EA Sports franchise. They’re advertising a lot of changes to modes such as Franchise, and they’re going to attempt to make some much-needed atmosphere improvements on top of that.

One of the ways they’re working on improving the atmosphere is by adding some more ebb and flow to the games themselves. The last few installments of Madden had a problem where it didn’t really matter what stadium the player was in, who they were playing as, or what the current status of the game itself was, it just felt like two teams with different colored uniforms playing football in stadiums of different designs. In order to address these issues, the Madden developers are adding two big features to the upcoming game: Momentum and a home field advantage system.

Momentum is exactly what it sounds like, teams that play well will have a boost while ones who are struggling will be at a disadvantage. This should help make deficits feel larger and comebacks more intense. The home field advantage system, or “M-Factors” as they’re calling them, is going to be team-specific. Each team will have their own benefits to playing at home giving them different benefits and personality. In concept, this is a great idea, because we all want to feel the intensity that comes with playing in the NFL’s most well-know stadiums.

Unfortunately, the current homefield advantage buffs feel extremely imbalanced and the reasoning for why each team has them feels kind of random. A few of the, are going to be extremely frustrating to deal with, and not in a “this is a fun challenge” way.

An example: Players on the road facing the Washington Football Team will have to deal with the horrible field conditions that are associated with playing there. This makes it harder for them to change direction while running. It’s a cool idea, but in execution, that very well make playing away games more frustrating than fun. Then, there is the other side of it, where teams have an advantage but it’s barely anything — against the Houston Texans, for example, scoring a touchdown will only give the away team a smaller momentum boost.

In concept, this is a great idea and a way to make games actually feel like they aren’t just taking place in slightly different locations, but it’s also something that has the potential to backfire if it’s not done well. More than likely, there will be an option to turn off M-Factors, so at the end of the day, it’s really not a big deal. But when a significant portion of the player base has been saying for years that the act of playing football is becoming more challenging with every title, it doesn’t make much sense to add a feature that will only make things worse.

No Sudden Move (Warner Bros. film on HBO Max) — Right at home in the comfort of your own living room, you can enjoy the newest Steven Soderbergh-directed picture that’s set in 1954 Detroit. The cast includes half of Hollywood, it seems, including Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Kieran Culkin, Ray Liotta, and Brendan Fraser. The name of the game is a botched plan by a gathering of small-potatoes criminals, who must hunt down who hired them and find out what’s actually going on in the rapidly morphing city.

Martha Gets Down and Dirty: Season 1 (Discovery+) — The frequent onscreen and business partner of Snoop Dogg goes solo while traveling home to her 150-acre farm where, as the title suggests, she gets her hands seriously dirty. Martha Stewart might be 79 years young and a total perfectionist, but she’s entirely engaged in prepping her farm for summertime, and that means some serious digging in the dirt alongside her gardener, Ryan McCallister. That’s only part of the dirty work on this show, and Stewart duly promised, “I’m going to take you behind-the-scenes as I get my hands dirty around my property, as well as help my celebrity friends and surprise some unsuspecting callers.” So… Snoop? C’mon, Martha.

Tom and Jerry in New York: Season 1 (Warner Bros. Animation series on HBO Max) — This spinoff to the recent Tom and Jerry movie (starring Chloe Moretz) strips things down to the classic duo’s adventures while cat and mouse continue to cause mayhem in the Big Apple and, more specifically, the Royal Gate Hotel. Naturally, chaos follows everywhere that the iconic pair travels, surrender to the madness.

Audible (Netflix film) — This coming-of-age documentary follows a group of Deaf high school students as they confront the impending reality of graduation and heading into the real world. A popular athlete, Amaree, tears up the football field following a tragic loss, and overall, this group of teens seek to conquer adversity while looking toward the future and intending to prove their worth to the world.

Young Royals (Netflix series) — A teenage prince heads to a ritzy boarding school, where he intends upon exploring his identity and figuring out what he’d really like to do in the future. His dreams turn to freedom and unconditional live and away from royal duty, but those dreams are thwarted when he finds himself next in line to become king. Will he choose love… or his apparently predestined life?

Holey Moley 3D in 2D (ABC, 9:00pm) — This new season of holes (yes, that’s right) includes a Corny Hole, a North Pole on the Ho Ho Hole, and Holey Matrimony. These puns never get old for the contestants or the audience.

In case you missed this pick from last Thursday:

LFG (HBO Max film) — This documentary film presents an unflinching look at the fight by U.S. women’s soccer team members (Megan Rapinoe, Jessica McDonald, Becky Sauerbrunn, Kelley O’Hara, Sam Mewis, and more) for equal pay. This battle takes a look behind the curtain of the 2019 class-action, gender discrimination lawsuit (filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation) mere months before the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Expect to see the legal fight coverage interspersed with transcendent athleticism while the documentary highlights how these women’s courage will hopefully lead to society-wide change that hasn’t been seen since Title IX.

While we’ve had our Joel, Ellie, and Tommy for quite some time now, we now know who will be playing another one of the The Last Of Us series’ most important roles: Joel’s daughter, Sarah. According to Deadline, Dumbo star Nico Parker is joining HBO’s The Last of Us as Sarah Miller, the daughter of Pedro Pascal’s character, Joel. Parker joins Game of Throne’s star Bella Ramsey and Agents of SHEILD‘s Gabriel Luna, who are set to appear as Ellie and Tommy, respectively.

For those unfamiliar with The Last of Us, the game follows the story of Joel and Ellie as they make their way across the country in hopes of finding a cure to the virus that caused society’s ruin. However, what begins as a simple job for Joel — to smuggle Ellie out of the city and bring her to a safer place — turns into a heartbreaking and violent journey where the unlikely duo are forced to find family and strength within one another. While the upcoming television series focuses solely on the first entry in the IP, a sequel to The Last of Us — The Last of Us Part II — was released last summer to record-breaking sales and critical acclaim.

For the upcoming series, The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann is teaming up with Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin to produce, write, and bring Joel and Ellie to life. Russian film director Kantemir Balagov will be directing the pilot episode of The Last Of Us, and the whole project is a co-production between Sony Pictures Television and HBO. The series has yet to be given a release date.

After journalists caught wind that William Shatner has a new show on RT, the infamously state-funded propaganda network for the Kremlin, the Star Trek actor spent the bulk of Thursday raging on Twitter at any and all criticism of what he calls a simple “distribution deal.” While the Q&A show titled I Don’t Understand doesn’t air until later in July, journalists have attempted to explain to Shatner that his mere presence on RT will be used as a propaganda for Vladimir Putin.

Shatner was hearing none of it.

One of Shatner’s largest critics was independent Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev who wrote a thread on how RT works and why Shatner can’t feign ignorance because he’s just an actor getting paid for work.

According to The Daily Beast, RT is a well-known “propaganda machine” for the Kremlin:

The various news shows featured on the network are largely packed with Putin loyalists dedicating significant amounts of airtime denigrating the U.S—and any Putin rivals, for that matter.

The head of RT, Margaret Simonyan, has warned of an “inevitable war” with the U.S., is a staunch supporter of a “sovereign” state-controlled Russian internet, and once tweeted that she was “jealous” of Belarus over their abhorrent nabbing of a dissident journalist mid-flight.

However, efforts to educate Shatner on his new TV home fell on deaf ears:

(Via William Shatner on Twitter, The Daily Beast)

Just one month after the former president’s “blog” was shuttered because of poor readership and plenty of internet ridicule, Team Trump is making another attempt at a social media come back with, what may in fact be, the most unfortunately named app we’ve ever heard of.

According to a Politico report, Trump’s former shady spokesman Jason Miller recently launched an app called GETTR, which appears to function as a poor man’s Twitter for the ultra-conservative set. According to the site’s tagline, GETTR is the “marketplace of ideas” whose mission includes “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, and challenging social media monopolies.” (The jokes really just write themselves these days, huh?)

It’s doubtful this new platform will perform any better than Trump’s press release strategy — and we’re positive we’ll see even more weird, completely tone-deaf social media sites from Trump’s camp in the months to come, but for now, we’ll enjoy the best Twitter reactions to GETTR’s genesis. (You gotta laugh to keep from crying, right?)

https://twitter.com/timodc/status/1410648490909179910?s=21
https://twitter.com/petridishes/status/1410648117486272516?s=21
https://twitter.com/palmerreport/status/1410657429960994818?s=21
https://twitter.com/not_vikash/status/1410656418999332864?s=21
https://twitter.com/blackknight10k/status/1410662500853600256?s=21
https://twitter.com/covie_93/status/1410666753378619400?s=21
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1410648721260429319?s=21
https://twitter.com/pappiness/status/1410671070093451273?s=21
https://twitter.com/jeremynewberger/status/1410673171511091201?s=21
https://twitter.com/joexhunt/status/1410666509752438786

UPDATE: Apparently, Trump is not officially affiliated with this site and he currently has no plans of joining. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Multi-talented 11-year-old UK musician Nandi Bushell first won over hearts last August when she challenged Dave Grohl to a drum battle. Grohl responded, spawning a several-week interaction that included multiple battles and even a song the two penned together. Ever since becoming a viral sensation, Bushell has been taking up other instruments and connecting with various musicians. This week, Bushell even got the chance to host a jam session with Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.

Bushell invited Helders to play some covers of Arctic Monkeys’ music in her Ipswich, England home. Helders obliged, and Bushell spent the afternoon showcasing her skills. Together they performed a cover of “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor,” “Brianstorm,” which saw Bushell and Helders side-by-side on the drum kit, and a rendition of “R U Mine?” with Bushell on electric guitar.

Sharing their version of “R U Mine?” to social media, Bushell described how much of a blast she had making music with Helders. “Matt Helders came to my house for a cup of Tea and a Jam with me,” she wrote. “We had the best time! We jammed loads of songs together and had a lot of fun improvising drum beats.”

Watch Helders and Bushell cover “R U Mine?” above.

After collaborating with artists like Ariana Grande and The Weeknd, Doja Cat seemingly has joint tracks down to a science. The songs she wrote with other artists were important in boosting her music. She even earned her first-ever No. 1 single for her Nicki Minaj “Say So” collaboration. But Doja Cat says collaborations can also hinder her artistry at a certain point, which is why her fans shouldn’t expect to hear her on many in the future.

Following up on her Planet Her album, Doja Cat sat down with Ebro Darden for Apple Music. During their conversation, Doja Cat explained that, going forward, she only wants to focus on career moves that give her energy.

“Sometimes I do stuff that maybe I don’t feel as excited about. I try not to do that, I do that maybe five, six percent of the time in my career,” she said. “But right now, I’m trying to do what I want to do for the most part. I want to really develop myself and not regret anything. I think I have to think more about what I’m doing now.”

Doja Cat continued that part of her artistic development includes focusing on her solo music and shying away from collaborations in the future:

“I like to say this a lot, but, Michael Jackson and Prince [were] not doing a lot of collabs all the time. They almost have no collabs. You look at that, and you’re like, they were doing fantastic without anybody. I like to, not compare myself — I definitely sound like I’m doing that but I’m not trying to — but that’s my bar. I want to focus on what is best for me. At this time and in this age, everybody is collabing. What happens is that things sound like mashups, like fan mashups. They’ll put Nick’s verse with Meg on ‘Kiss Me More’ or they’ll put my verse on ‘WAP’ or something. I don’t want it to feel like that anymore. I want it to feel very special, and very carefully done. So, I’m trying not to do as many collabs in the future. I think it’s important.”

Listen to Doja Cat’s full interview with Ebro Darden on Apple Music above.

Planet Her is out now via RCA. Get it here.

Doja Cat is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Donald Trump presidency was an in-your-face era of American politics that was the first to move at the speed of social media. Every day the news cycle seemed to churn multiple times. There were the scandals, palace intrigue, reckless tweets, lurid affairs, impeachments, legal battles, arrests, comings and goings of cabinet members, and the daily destruction of presidential norms.

Trump’s time in the White House had everyone’s head on such a swivel that it was nearly impossible to grasp its historical meaning in real-time.

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But now, the waters are calmer in Washington and we are getting the first bird’s eye view of what the era meant to historians.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t positive.

Since 2000, C-SPAN has asked a group of historians, professors, and experts in the field to rate each president on a scale of 1 to 10 on 10 categories: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All, and Performance Within the Context of the Times.

The responses resulted in a definitive ranking of the presidents from 1 to 44. Currently, Joe Biden is the 46th president and Grover Cleveland was elected twice, so 44 people have held the office.

Trump’s debut on the list is a less-than-impressive #41. The only three presidents who fared worse are Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan and they aren’t the best historical company.

Pierce failed to stop a bloody guerrilla war in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery groups. Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached and James Buchanan’s inaction led to the Civil War.

Trump was impeached twice, is accused of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and was criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among all presidents, Trump was ranked last in Moral Authority. He fared better in Public Persuasion where he was ranked 32nd and Economic Management, where he was 34th.

Four years after leaving office, Barack Obama has seen his ranking increase from #12 to #10. Obama’s improved ratings for Relations with Congress and Context of Times both propelled him upward.

Another recent president, George W. Bush has seen his ranking rise as well. Bush now ranks at #29, up from #33 in 2017, and #36 in 2009.

The presidential rankings have remained steady at the top. Since 2009, the top four presidents have been Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Here’s the full top 20:

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. George Washington

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. Theodore Roosevelt

5. Dwight D. Eisenhower

6. Harry S. Truman

7. Thomas Jefferson

8. John F. Kennedy

9. Ronald Reagan

10. Barack Obama

11. Lyndon B. Johnson

12. James Monroe

13. Woodrow Wilson

14. William McKinley

15. John Adams

16. James Madison

17. John Quincy Adams

18. James K. Polk

19. William J. Clinton

20. Ulysses S. Grant

The bottom 5:

40. William Henry Harrison

41. Donald J. Trump

42. Franklin Pierce

43. Andrew Johnson

44. James Buchanan

See the full rankings at C-SPAN.

Kevin Gates dropped his first official mixtape when he was in his early ’20s, but the rapper has been writing music long before that. He’s spoke about his childhood in various interviews in the past, but Gates recently revealed on Mike Tyson‘s podcast that he was sexually abused when he was young and began writing lyrics as an “escape” from his tumultuous childhood.

Gates began his conversation on Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast by addressing how growing up in a racist environment still affects him to this day. “It’s going to be a different type of interview because I’m going to tell the absolute truth,” he began. “It’s a real racist place, being in Louisiana, just being down south, period. And I’m still kind of breaking that stereotype in my mind. It’s a barrier.”

When asked about the path that led him to music, Gates revealed that he suffered sexual abuse as a child. Because he was coping with trauma, Gates turned to rapping as a creative outlet:

“It was an escape for me. I’m going to say something — I’ve never said this in no interview, no podcast or anything like that — I grew up real, real violent, aggressive. Not because I wanted to be, but I was molested when I was a child. So I had this fear of being vulnerable. I took every kind of martial art you can take. I even boxed, I did everything and I wanted to be the toughest person on earth. But writing and making music was always an escape for me. I never had the nuts to come out and say that. This is my first time saying that today.”

After opening up about his abusive childhood, Tyson responded with empathy. According to Complex, Tyson opened up about his own experience with childhood sexual abuse in 2014. “I know that route, too,” Tyson told Gates. “Why do you think I became the meanest motherfucker on the planet? Somebody did something to me. I didn’t want it to happen again, so I became this guy.”

Elsewhere in the 50-minute conversation, Gates spoke about his devotion to his Muslim faith and his relationship to his children. He also mentioned that he now lives on a blueberry farm and takes care of camels on the property, which he says is akin to having a pet dog.

Watch Gates’ full interview on Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast above.

Kevin Gates is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.