While the new season of Jeopardy! has been the talk of social media amid a very awkward week of work from now-former host Mike Richards, Wheel of Fortune also embarked on a new season this week. And while the show isn’t changing its host anytime soon, it is making a big change in its gameplay. No, not the music.
In a video the show posted this week, Sajak was interviewed by his daughter, Maggie, about what’s going on with the show’s final spin. Ordinarily, the show tries to get through as many puzzles as time will allow. And when they get near the end of a taping, play stops on the current puzzle and Sajak will do a “final spin” that sets the dollar amount players will get for puzzle letters until that current board is solved and the game ends.
This season, though, marks the first time that Sajak is not the one making that spin. Sajak joked that “the work was just too hard” to do the spin, much like Vanna White now simply touches letters on a digital screen instead of turning them on the board. But the actual reason is more practical.
“The reason is, honestly, I’ve never liked the idea of imposing the host on the game. That always bothered me a little bit,” Sajak said. “I was looking for a way around it and we finally got to talking and we said ‘Look, someone’s spinning the wheel anyway. We’ll save time and just let them spin it.”
That explanation certainly makes sense, and it does make things a bit faster overall. It’s not like anyone actually spinning has any real advantage, either: anyone spinning that wheel would likely want as much money on the letters to rack up a big score just like the other two contestants.
“So the final spin, at least as far as the host is concerned, is gone,” Sajak continued. “But the final spin remains, I’m just not doing it.”
It’s been about a year and a half since Grimes’ last album, 2020’s Miss Anthropocene, and she’s apparently just about done her next one, which she declares is “by far” her “greatest work.”
She made that claim in a new Vogue video, which goes behind the scenes of Grimes preparing her head-turning Met Gala look. While her team works on her ensemble, Grimes notes:
“I’m just finishing an album and I think it is by far my greatest work that I’ve ever done. I actually just made the last song for it like two nights ago. I think I went into this being like, ‘I’m gonna sign to a major label and I’m gonna be a really big artist’ and all this stuff, and then in that process, I started being like, ‘No, I literally don’t care if anyone listens to this sh*t.’ I just want it to be great. I want it to be unequivocally just great art.”
She also spoke about how motherhood has changed her, saying, “I think having a baby was a big, kind of like rebirth for me artistically. Being a ‘mother’ feels weird to say for some reason; I don’t identify with that word. Which is also really weird because X, he says ‘Claire,’ but he doesn’t say ‘mama.’ Maybe he can sense my distaste for the word ‘mother,’ which I don’t even know why I have a distaste for it. I respect… I just… I can’t identify with it, really.”
Trying to do a movie about Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker seems difficult. Are they good people? Well, Tammy Faye (portrayed by Jessica Chastain here) certainly has sympathetic qualities. Jim (Andrew Garfield) would be hard to classify as “good,” but director Michael Showalter also can’t get himself to demonize him. Basically, in Showalter’s eyes, he’s a buffoon. But there’s so much story here – from their immensely popular variety show and their also very popular theme park, to all the scandal that followed – it’s difficult to not go down a rabbit hole. And Showalter admits he went down the rabbit hole. And there was a lot there they (he and producer Chastain) decided, for various reasons, not to use. Which he explains ahead.
Based on the documentary of the same name, Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield play Tammy Faye and Jim, from when they first meet to the highs of their success – where they were legitimately famous, even beyond the reaches of people who pay attention to Christian-themed programming. Then it all came crashing down and the scandals (there are many things going on here) became huge news. Ahead, Showalter talks about what he thought of Tammy Faye and Jim back then, before the scandal. And it’s obvious Showalter is sympathetic to Tammy Faye, but Jim… well, Jim is a much more complicated figure.
What was your relationship with these two before doing this movie? As in, did you know the show?
Yeah, I have memories of watching their show when I was a kid. It would be on, flipping through the channels, and I’d come across it and just kind of want to watch it out of kind of a fascination feeling of like, “What is this weird thing?”
Yeah, I’ve tried telling people this. I’d see it by accident and I remember it being pleasant.
Exactly, yeah. They’re fun to watch. They’re fun to watch. They’re very good entertainers. They’re good at what they do. And there was a fascination to it. Sometimes I’m this way with an infomercial or something. It’s like you’re just stuck watching it, you don’t even know why.
Yeah it was this odd variety show, then all of a sudden they’d bring up God and I was like, “Well, that’s weird.”
Definitely. No, I knew that there was the God element, but, I mean, it reminds me of Christian rock or whatever. It’s like heavy metal, but they’re singing about God.
That’s a good comparison.
That was like Metallica, but the lyrics are different. And so then, when the scandal broke, of course we were all paying attention to that as well. I’m fascinated by these stories of good intentions gone wrong. I’m sort of interested by, I don’t know, the human foible of it. It’s fascinating. And then, there’s definitely a very straight line between the televangelism and the religious right and some of the divisions that exist in our country today. It’s not something that had just started in the last, whatever, couple of years. The beginnings of this started a long time ago and so there’s something interesting there too, for me.
I remember it was a huge deal. And now, kind of looking back at it, especially what we’ve been through over the last few years, it strangely doesn’t seem as bad. Like, oh, only embezzlement?
I guess what would make it different, if you could find a more current analogy, was how big they were. What they had built was such an institution, so they had created this entire Disneyland in South Carolina and they were very, very, very, very, very famous. What I do think is that what might’ve been treated differently in the media is some of how Tammy Faye was treated. And I think that has changed – of just making fun of her for wearing makeup or making fun of her for the way that she looked. Those are things that I think, maybe, hopefully, the culture is different about. I don’t know though. I might be wishful thinking on my part.
The movie makes it very clear that you are sympathetic towards Tammy Faye. I’m less clear how you feel about Jim Bakker.
There are certain people that I have a hard time saying aren’t a good person. And I don’t think that he’s not a good person. I mean, just if you’re honestly asking me my own opinion about Jim Bakker, I don’t think he’s not a good person…
Well, last year he was trying to sell Covid cures. That’s bad.
Agreed. You’re right. And yet, for some reason, I just sort of think he’s kind of a buffoon, in a way.
Sure.
Whereas there are other people who I think know what they’re doing is wrong. If you look at Jerry Falwell, if we want to talk about who I think is a bad person, I think Jerry Falwell was kind of a bad person. Whereas Jim Bakker is more sort of…
I’d say ambitious. He’s an ambitious person who wanted to make a lot of money like a lot of people.
Yes. He’s like this nakedly ambitious person and he’s very careless. But in this weird way, I don’t know, he’s tragic, kind of. His weaknesses are kind of tragic, in a way.
Have you heard from him or his people?
No.
Is that surprising?
No, I can’t say that I think that’s surprising. I mean, his children are both still very close with him and both of these children have seen the movie. And so, we know that it’s in the ether. I mean, I’m assuming he must know about it.
It’d be weird if he didn’t. Like, just no one’s told him. “There’s a movie coming out about you this week.”
I mean, his kids definitely know about it. I know that his daughter, Tammy Sue, works with him.
I don’t know this, how did they see it?
I don’t know how Tammy Sue saw it, but I know that Jamie Charles, the son … I don’t know really deeply, specifically, but I think that they feel like this, and the documentary, are sort of the most earnest, fair tellings of the story. Versus some of the others that are more just kind of making it very black and white. Jim was always this sort of tyrant and this ambitious, greedy tyrant, and that Tammy was just like Leona Helmsley or something, just wanting coats and stuff. Which is so not true. Which is so not the case. I think she was a bit naive. I think that there were things that she just didn’t want to know. There were things that I have a feeling she didn’t fully understand and didn’t want to fully understand.
The whole aspect of Jerry Falwell possibly spreading rumors that Jim was gay. How did you approach this? The movie kind of seems to be saying those rumors might be true but we don’t know. It’s presented as “maybe.”
I mean, it’s what you said. It’s sort of “maybe.” It’s in there as a kind of maybe. It’s possible. It’s plausible. But it’s also been denied by Jim Bakker himself and so you don’t want to not honor that, that he said that. It’s interesting. It’s interesting, the thought of it. So it’s certainly, storytelling wise, something that I liked as a potential, as a sort of a possible explanation for a lot of things. And it further complicates a lot of things as well. Because especially the Jessica Hahn part of it. Which is, what were his real motives there? And I mean, that whole thing, we avoided that as well, but there’s a lot of gray areas to a lot of it that is sort of a lot of rush to judgment.
Why did you avoid some of that?
I know Jessica Chastain has felt strongly that one of the things is that Jessica Hahn was sort of portrayed as a temptress. But she says it was rape. She has a totally different version of it. It was total coercion, I think, and Jessica Chastain didn’t want to exploit that at all. One of the things that I love about this movie, and what I’ve heard some people who see it say, is they go see the movie and then they go online and Google the story. And there are all these things that you get curious about, and then people go back and learn about it.
Before doing this movie did you think you had a read on him? Or did you know it’s a never-ending rabbit hole?
Both. I think I knew it was a rabbit hole. I think I knew that it was going to take me down that path. But, in terms of taking it on, I didn’t think of it thematically. I more just thought of it visually, tone-wise. I feel like I know how to put this world upon his feet. And I just saw it visually. And then, kind of the deeper stuff, a lot of that came through working with Andrew and Jessica and the other actors and talking through the scenes and really trying to figure out what all this was about.
With schools back in session as the Delta variant continues to spike cases across the country, school board meetings have essentially descended into battlefields where angry parents routinely show up to rail against mask mandates. Some of these encounters have gotten downright nasty and many have required the police to show up and physically remove people from the buildings. It’s not been a great situation.
During a Wednesday night school board meeting in Texas, things took a decidedly different turn even though anti-masking was still in the mix. While taking the podium, former Lake Travis ISD school board candidate Kara Bell proceeded to read an excerpt from the book, Out of Darkness, which described sexually explicit acts, specifically the term “cornhole.” Not being familiar with the phrase outside of the backyard BBQ game, Bell Googled the word and learned that it means anal sex, which prompted her to show up at the meeting and proceed to loudly declare that her butt is strictly off-limits while blasting the book’s availability to middle school students.
“I’ve never had anal sex. I don’t want to have anal sex. I don’t want my kids having anal sex. I want you to start focusing on education and not public health!” Bell yelled as the board cut her mic and struggled to bring her time to an end.
You can watch her NSFW rant below:
Y’all. Y’ALL. I don’t have the words to describe to you what went down at our @ltisdschools board meeting last night so I’m just gonna share the video. pic.twitter.com/JJlXhhEaMi
While Bell’s rant is noticeably unhinged, the crazy part is that it actually worked. According to KXAN Austin, Out of Darkness was pulled from two of the district’s middle schools pending a review by the school board. It appears the only thing taking it up the butt on Kara Bell’s watch is reading.
No snack food pairs as perfectly with the changing temperatures of the fall season as a doughnut. There’s just something special about waking up, pouring a hot cup of coffee, and eating a doughnut while you stare out of your window and reflect on how lovely the world can appear, even as it’s rapidly coming to a violent end. Oh, is that just something that I do? Sorry.
While my morning/mourning doughnut ritual may sound depressing and stressful, Krispy Kreme is making it significantly better by dropping a new fall line of doughnuts that include three new Apple Cider Glazed doughnut iterations. Hooray!
This triple doughnut line is only available from now until September 19th — that means you have until this weekend to try these new doughnuts. There’s no legitimate reason to eat all of them in those few days, so we’re here to break down which are worth the trip and which you should ignore like we’re all collectively ignoring the fact that our planet is trying to natural disaster us out of existence. Sorry for the existential angst — now let’s get to the review!
Apple Cider Brown Sugar Kreme — Apple Cider Glazed Cake — Apple Cider Glazed
Dane Rivera
All three of Krispy Kreme’s apple cider-infused donuts are delicious, but they definitely aren’t all worth your time. So before you buy a dozen of all three, let’s separate the good from the bad so you end up leaving Krispy Kreme with a box of 12 dope limited-time doughnuts. Let’s begin with the good — the Apple Cider Brown Sugar Kreme Doughnut.
For these doughnuts, Krispy Kreme made a new special glaze from real Apple cider and spices and each bite provides a refreshing and comforting flavor reminiscent of the bitter, sweet, and subtly tart qualities of apple skin. The Apple Cider Brown Sugar Kreme features the cider glaze, a few stripes of candied apple flavor, and a light dose of fluffy and sweet brown sugar filling.
Dane Rivera
The doughnuts are already pretty moist, but that gentle injection of cream filling really helps to keep each bite bursting with flavor, and the brown sugar creme has a light and sweet profile that pairs nicely with the autumnal spices of the glaze.
It’s great, a definite must pick-up, and worth the trip to Krispy Kreme this weekend alone. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the next entry in the lineup — the Apple Cider Glazed Cake.
Dane Rivera
Okay, maybe calling this doughnut “bad” is overkill, it’s not inedible. It has the same sweet and tart glaze as the cream-filled but it’s too cakey and thick and forces you to hyper-focus on the glaze, which tastes a lot more tart here without the brown sugar to balance it out. I found this doughnut a chore to get through, it desperately needs to be dunked in coffee or something to help even it out.
If the idea of an apple doughnut is unappetizing to you, this one will affirm your beliefs. Skip it.
That brings us to our final doughnut of the lineup, our ugly little friend — the Apple Cider Glazed Doughnut.
Dane Rivera
The ACGD, as I’m fond of calling it, is your basic Krispy Kreme-style old-fashioned doughnut, sure it looks weird and wrinkly, like a doughnut you’d find under a towel in the corner of a steam room, but it’s a massive improvement over the cake-version. The glaze covers the entire donut here, and the old-fashioned form-factor is smaller and thinner than the cake doughnut and it makes all the difference.
You won’t feel the need to dip this baby, and it isn’t so filling that you’ll feel guilty for wanting two. If you can’t get behind the idea of a cream-filled doughnut (you should really try it though, the Brown Sugar Kreme is amazing), this is going to be the ideal choice for you.
The Bottom Line
This weekend hit up Krispy Kreme and pick up the Apple Cider Brown Sugar Kreme doughnut or the Apple Cider Glazed before you can’t anymore. Skip the cake, it’s too thick and dry, even if cake doughnuts are your jam.
Nothing says (twisted) family bonding like two parents digging a grave for their murder victims while an infant sits in his car seat and does his best to amuse himself. Yikes.
Netflix’s You fast approaches with Season 3, and from the looks of things, it somehow manages to sustain its own gimmick after a second season of barely containing its own crazy (and careening off a cliff). Near the end of that sophomore round, Stalker Joe (Penn Badgley) found himself trapped in a relationship with a woman, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), who’s just as homicidal (if not more) as he is. Naturally, it seemed that Joe didn’t quite learn his lesson by the end of the season, and we saw him noticing that he’s got an attractive neighbor that perhaps he might stalk. This sounds like a good time for the ghost of Beck to deliver a lecture, and who knows what shall happen there, but in Netflix’s freshly released Season 3 trailer, Joe appears to be scared out of his mind.
Love definitely has the upper hand. From the synopsis:
In Season 3, Joe and Love, now married and raising their baby, have moved to the balmy Northern California enclave of Madre Linda, where they’re surrounded by privileged tech entrepreneurs, judgmental mommy bloggers, and Insta-famous biohackers. Joe is committed to his new role as a husband and dad but fears Love’s lethal impulsiveness. And then there’s his heart. Could the woman he’s been searching for all this time live right next door? Breaking out of a cage in a basement is one thing. But the prison of a picture-perfect marriage to a woman who’s wise to your tricks? Well, that’ll prove a much more complicated escape.
You previously revealed in a teaser that Joe’s awfully nervous that his kid will follow in his parents’ footsteps. From the vibe of Showtime’s newest Dexter trailer, it’s a theme that might rule fall TV, even though Joe’s kid is too young to wreak havoc just yet. [Looks out the window, and whew, no crazy baby out there yet.]
If you’ve been online this week you know that a rapper’s cousin’s friend’s testicles has been in the news quite a bit. At least, you know, a lot more than you’d probably assume.
We’re now five days into the discourse about Nicki Minaj’s tweet about vaccine skepticism, and after an offer to clear things up from the White House you’d think any hesitancy to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus would be eased. Much like the swelling of testicles which, according to Minaj, a Trinidadian cousin claimed a friend experienced after getting a nuptials-ruining but potentially life-saving vaccine.
If Minaj and her anti-vax supporters aren’t swayed by some pretty standard ball-based logic, though, The Daily Show gave Trinidad’s health minister a platform to dispel the myth that getting the jab swells your balls enough that your fiancee will leave you for a person with more reasonably-sized genitals.
The segment, which you can watch above, does have a good amount of joking in it. As it should because, well, balls are funny and this is about as absurd as it gets. But about halfway through, Trevor Noah invited the Honorable Terrence Deyalsingh, Minister of Health for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, to clear up misinformation and elaborate on the press conference he had earlier in the week following Minaj’s tweet.
Deyalsingh said that the nation has administered more than 1 million doses of vaccine across its population of 1.4 million, and they’ve only had five cases with abnormal side effects. None of which, of course, are swollen testicles.
“The advantages of vaccination far, far outweigh the minuscule risk,” he said, stressing also that Minaj’s claims that you must be vaccinated to work in Trinidad were also false. The minister also made it clear that vaccines of all kinds are safe and effective.
“This is not new,” he continued, stressing vaccine safety. “What is new is social media trying to throw doubt on this vaccine.”
The full segment is certainly worth watching, especially if all of the words above are completely bewildering to you. Hopefully, everyone’s testicles remain at their normal size and weight and we can all get through this pandemic as healthy as possible moving forward.
While it might be hard to hear it, we are now nearly two whole years into the current decade. Two. Whole. Years. Now, if you’re looking for a way to process that information — or simply want to soak in some nostalgia to escape it — I’ve got just the way to do it: a good ol’ fashioned retrospective.
Now that we are two years out, it’s the perfect time to look back upon the 2010s with newfound clarity and round up all the best things the decade had to offer. As it turns out, when it comes to games, it offered a lot. In the 2010s, we saw the creation of the Nintendo Switch and the rise of the “narrative-driven PlayStation exclusive.” We watched developers craft up bold new takes on our most cherished series, and got the chance to sit down with new stories that somehow already feel like classics. In short, it was a great decade for gaming, and if you don’t believe me, I’ve got a list of 20 games right here to back it up and maybe even get you a bit misty-eyed.
Oh, but before we get to that, let’s touch on just how I settled on these 20 games. When it comes to how this list was rounded up, I turned to trusty, aggregate review site Metacritic for aid. You see, while I absolutely could create my own personal list of the top 20 games of the 2010s, it felt most fair to turn to what both the critics and fans were saying to compile a list that won’t exclude any important titles I never got around to playing. So, now that we’ve got that cleared up, here’s a complete list of the 20 most well-reviewed games of the 2010s! As always, feel free to comment on what games you think are missing or shouldn’t have made the cut.
While the original Persona 4 was released in 2008, Golden (it’s enhanced edition) is absolutely worth the spot on this list because, quite simply, no one does enhanced editions like Atlus. Whereas many times a re-release of a game means it looks a bit better, some cool skins were thrown in, and a couple of hours of content were tacked on to its ending, Golden offers fans a massive expansion with in-game months of new content, a new character, two new “social links,” added voice actors, and several quality of life changes. It’s also thanks to Golden that the Persona series gained a ton more traction in the United States, directly contributing to how well Persona 5 performed over here. For those who’ve yet to dabble into the Japanese RPG series, if you like turn-based combat, time management sims, fantastic murder mystery stories, making life-altering choices, romance, and anime, this is me urging you to get on it.
Long before kids were doing Fortnite dances and accusing each other of being “sus” in Among Us, there was Minecraft. A cultural behemoth, the blocky survival-adventure game is the best-selling video game of all time and is somehow still incredibly popular and relevant. Don’t believe me? Check YouTube. Or Twitch. Or walk into just about any store selling children’s toys. I mean hell, as recently as last year, Microsoft reported the game hit 126 million active users in a month, which, just to put it into perspective, is about 123 million more than even the most popular MMOs. The game is actually so popular, it is now utilized in schools to teach chemistry and computer science. If there is one game on this list that has to go down and perhaps the most culturally significant, it’s gotta be Minecraft.
Time to crack open the spreadsheets folders because we’re going to talk about Starcraft for a second. A science-fiction, real-time strategy game famous for, well, being complicated as hell, Starcraft has earned itself a cult following with Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty being particularly loved by its fans. While the game was criticized for not having some of the features the first game had, overall it marked a massive improvement in terms of storytelling and overall gameplay in the series. If you love tactical thinking and a good space setting abundant in its own history and lore, Starcraft is definitely worth trying — though don’t blame me if it turns your hair grey.
Of course, what would any gaming list be without the inclusion of the one-and-only Mario? While a remaster of this game was just released earlier this year on Nintendo Switch, it’s definitely worth noting just how great the original game was when it hit the WiiU back in 2013. The first multiplayer 3D Mario title, Super Mario 3D Land was a brilliant and chaotic new direction for the series that — while not as revolutionary as some of the later Mario games on this list — offered fans a unique experience and a really enjoyable time.
If you’re a pen-and-paper RPG fan, Divinity: Original Sin II was made for you. The tactical, action RPG that allows you to play with up to three other people as you traverse a fantasy land has been praised for just how well it gets fantasy and what makes a good session of a game like Dungeons and Dragons so compelling. If you’re a fan of games like Diablo and are looking for something somewhat similar to play with friends, you’ll find Divinity: Original Sin II is a similar-yet-different take on the concept that you might love just as much as all the folks who gave it so much praise it wound up on this list.
You really can’t beat a classic, huh? While you might not have expected to see a Pac-Man game grace the “best games of the 2010s” list, it just goes to show you that some games are simply timeless. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen it recently with the revival of Tetris in Tetris Effect, and it honestly makes perfect sense. While there are a plethora of massive, open-world, and story-heavy games pouring onto the scene (see this whole list, really), sometimes you need something mindless, easy to understand, and, simply put, fun. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX offered just that, as well as added several modes that shake up the series classic formula to add a more competitive feel.
The third title in the Bioshock series, Bioshock Infinite completely shifts away from the sunken city of Rapture and takes us up to the stunning, sky-high city of Columbia. However, despite this change in scenery, the game still maintains its predecessor’s efforts to question everything — most of all our morality and free will. Bioshock Infinite seeks to be an examination of American exceptionalism and its dangers, and while it sometimes stumbles in its studies, the overall experience is interesting and undeniably fun to play.
13. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (2011, 94%)
While it does feel a bit odd to include a game from 1998 on this list, it ranks too high and is far enough apart from the original to where it still feels right to include it. Plus, it’s honestly just a really fantastic game. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is widely regarded as theLegend of Zelda game all fans of the series should — and probably already have — played. The first 3D title in the series, the game revolutionized what The Legend of Zelda was at the time, and also went on to inspire the entire genre of action-adventure games, including creating the target-lock system. In 2011, Nintendo re-released the game on the Nintendo 3DS, allowing a whole new generation to get a chance to play the series which, on top of being groundbreaking at the time, has some incredibly fun bosses, level designs, and a really fun time travel mechanic that just doesn’t get old.
While superhero games weren’t always known for being the best in terms of quality, quite a few in the past decade have turned that reputation around a bit, most notably Batman’s Arkham series. Arkham City is the second title in the series, and follows a dying Batman as he takes on the Joker one last time, which, yes, they do say a lot but is actually true in this case. What makes this game so impressive is the number of twists and genuinely great story beats it has, along with its list of cameos that will leave DC fans more than satisfied with the amount of time they can and presumably will sink into it. Furthermore, the freedom to fly around a stylish Gotham, taking down baddies, picking up collectibles, solving puzzles, and listening to a fantastic soundtrack as you do so, is both incredibly liberating and immersive. Oh, and another plus, while the map size and side quests make Arkham City an open-world game that offers a lot, it doesn’t feel wildly overwhelming — which is a huge bonus for people desperate to completely clear their map, such as myself.
While there are a lot of games on this list that are a part of a larger series, none of them completely reshaped their franchise the way 2018’s God of War did. The first God of War games, released from 2005 to 2010, were hack-and-slash adventures that followed the story of the vengeful demigod Kratos as he slaughtered the Greek pantheon, and were honestly pretty vulgar and brutish. God of War 2018, however, ditched those qualities in favor of creating a more traditional and refined AAA experience similar to Red Dead Redemption or The Last of Us. While still brutal and centered around the idea of vengeance, the latest God of War follows an older Kratos and his son, Atreus, shortly after the death of his second wife. As they make their way to spread her ashes from the highest peak in the nine realms, Kratos is dragged once again into godly conflict — though this time, the Gods are Norse and his son is involved.
If you think Monopoly or Mario Kart are the best games for testing your relationship, clearly you haven’t played Portal 2 — and you should fix that, because it’s fantastic. A lesson in physics, logic, and, if you’re playing cooperatively, teamwork, Portal 2 is a puzzle-platformer heralded for its cleverness. However, while the game is pretty straight-forward, self-contained, and quite frankly small in scope compared to the vast majority of this list, it doesn’t stop it from also having memorable characters, moments, quotes (“The cake is a lie?” Yeah, it’s from Portal), songs, and an interesting story drenched in dark humor. If you want a game that’ll frustrate you, make you laugh, and make you feel like an absolute genius all within the span of fifteen minutes, you gotta try Portal 2. 9.Red Dead Redemption (2010, 95%)
Created by Rockstar, the powerhouse studio behind the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Redemption is a big-budget, action-adventure game that quickly rose to fame for both its beauty on screen as well as on paper, and defied fans’ expectations for the company in a pretty major way. Set in America’s “wild west,” Red Dead Redemption tells the tragic tale of John Marston and the gang of cowboys he calls family, and is widely-regarded as one of the best stories in games. However, that’s not all it has going for it. Despite the game’s hyper-focus on its narrative, it also offers players an open-world experience that is populated by random events they can take part in, with their actions ultimately dictating their overall morality as well as how big of a bounty they have on their head. For those looking for a title that captures the feeling of a movie but still has an appreciation for fun gameplay, Red Dead Redemption is pretty high on the “must-play” list.
And speaking of games with extremely tragic stories, this list wouldn’t be complete without The Last of Us. The game follows a father named Joel and a young girl named Ellie as they traverse the end of times in search of a cure for the disease that destroyed humanity. It’s a heartbreaking, brutal, and sometimes frustrating story about the best and worst things we do for love that takes inspiration from some of the bleakest post-apocalyptic science-fiction and is sure to make you shed a few tears. And hey, the good news is, if you’re not planning on getting around to this one anytime soon, a television series based on the game is currently in the works over on HBO.
Ah, Skyrim. The game so nice, they ported it, well, on just about everything. Largely considered one of the greatest open-world games of all time, the high-fantasy RPG is renowned for the amount of freedom it gives players to exist and be whomever they’d like to be in a world full of magic, secrets, and, of course, dragons. While it feels extremely safe to say the main quest-line in Skyrim doesn’t hold close to the same amount of reverence as a lot of the titles on this list, Skyrim just isn’t really about that and that’s become something fans embrace. Whereas games as a whole have grown more “cinematic,” polished, and fairly linear as time goes on, Skyrim is a wide-open and sometimes-buggy sandbox folks simply love playing in — and what’s wrong with that?
As a studio, BioWare has become known for creating immersive RPGs set in brilliantly thought-out worlds, inhabited by compelling characters, and completely driven by player choice — and arguably none of their titles does any of this better than Mass Effect 2. In Mass Effect, you play as Commander Shephard, a tiny human in a vast universe who, with the help of a team of misfit allies, must save it. While each game in the series has an incredible story that runs throughout them all, what sets Mass Effect 2 apart from the other two entries in the series, is just how important that team of misfit allies becomes to you in it. While it boasts the largest party of all the games, it also feels the most intimate — allowing you to take on “loyalty missions” to better understand your team’s motivations, fears, and struggles as you grow closer to them. Relationships are key in this game, and if you don’t nurture them or make choices they agree with, it’ll cost you.
For whatever reason, I have unfortunately only sunk a few hours into Super Mario Odyssey, and I say this only to emphasize how much it stuck with me regardless of how long I spent with it. Despite only playing for a brief period of time, I still get songs from Odyssey stuck in my head, recall fun mechanics, or think of how lush one of the game’s many locations looked. Everything about it is simply infectious, but like, in a sugary, dazzling way. Super Mario Odyssey is a game brimming with life and Nintendo charm and has so many different concepts and mechanical gimmicks it’s a ton of fun to play regardless of if you’re generally more of a 2D Mario fan. Now, the last thing I’ll say is that those of you Nintendo fans who are bummed Mario didn’t make it even higher on this list… I wouldn’t be sweating it.
Grand Theft Auto feels like a series that needs no introduction because chances are you’ve either played it or have heard some of the constant controversy that surrounds the mature series. However, GTAVdoes deserve to be talked about because it’s one of the beloved games of the last decade, and for good reason. Grand Theft Auto V is what happens when a developer takes all the best pieces from their catalog of games and crafts them into exactly what their demographic is looking for. It has the realism and social commentary of previous entries in the series, the absurd nature of titles like The Bully, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas, and, best of all, places them all in an engaging, story-filled sandbox that they clearly learned how to make when working on Red Dead Redemption. It’s a game for Rockstar fans, and Rockstar shows them even more love with the frequent updates the game is still getting.
If you read that previous excerpt on the first Red Dead and are pretty shocked its sequel somehow topped it, you have to understand that most fans find 2 did all the same things one did, but better. Set before the events of Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead 2 is an emotional slow-burn set in a hyper-realistic world with unparalleled — and at times straight-up baffling — attention to detail. In the game, you play primarily as Arthur Morgan, and get the unique opportunity to watch how his story directly leads to the downfall of John Marston. Much like any good Western, Red Dead Redemption 2 examines the themes of loyalty and honor — and raises the question of just when a person should stick to their guns, both literally and metaphorically.
Nintendo
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017, 97%)
When you decide to completely revamp a beloved series with over 30 years of history, there’s a whole lot of pressure to get it right. Luckily for Nintendo, they nailed it. In the few years since its release, Breath of the Wild has become heralded as one of the greatest Legend of Zelda games of all time — which is no easy feat when you think of just how many titles in the series weigh in with nearly perfect scores. In Breath of the Wild, Nintendo shook off the series’ more linear formula in favor of creating a vast, open-world adventure, and while it was a major departure from what we had come to expect, it still feels like home sweet Hyrule and captures a similar feeling to what the earliest titles in the series inspired.
When it comes to who reigns supreme in gaming, does anyone really beat out the man in the little red hat? In typical Mario fashion, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is vibrant, fun, and full of cool ideas that push the series forward. However, in Galaxy 2, that “push forward” is actually more of a cosmic leap, and helped elevate the franchise to new heights, literally! While the game is decidedly more streamlined than Galaxy was, the physics-based 3D platformer is packed with all the “aha” moments its predecessor was missing when exploring space and its various planets. In addition, new power-ups, lush and dynamic environments, and even Yoshi were added into the second entry of the space-filled series and made it overall a ton more fun to play. Despite their differences, you can truly start to see where Odyssey started from when playing Galaxy 2, and considering they’re both on this list, that’s definitely a good thing.
An incredible woman has the perfect response for someone who says, “You speak so well … for a black girl.”
But that’s not all. Ernestine Johnson is just getting warmed up.
She has plenty more to say about what speaking, looking, and acting like an average black girl really means.
And nope, this isn’t another lesson in political correctness; it’s more about common sense.
She clearly explains it all 42 seconds in.
Oh, and my favorite quote that I’m taking and framing?
This one.
“See, the average black girl that I know, the average black girl that I know were Egyptian queens like Hatshepsut and Nitocris who were ruling dynasties and whole armies of men, excuse me while I set fire to this poem on my pen because I am tired. Tired of the stereotypes black girls have fallen into because of American mentality. Oh, but not half as tired as Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Septima Poinsette-Clark. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, Miss Fannie Lou Hamer, Daisy Bates, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Dorothy Height are far more tired than I am.” — Ernestine Johnson
And then the reporter takes a slight but somewhat harmless turn.
“When did you get up this morning to get ready?”
“Who did your hair?”
Now this is when Kevin starts to realize something is up.
“What about mani-pedi? Show us your mani-pedi.”
“Have you been dieting for months getting ready for this?”
“What about Spanx? Do you have any Spanx on tonight?”
You’re right, Kevin! It is f**ked up. Fashion is cool, but let’s give leading ladies a bit more credit, shall we? Why do actors get to answer all the interesting questions about their favorite movies and TV shows while actresses usually just get asked about their bodies? While this video is pretty funny, these types of superficial and sometimes invasive questions that actresses regularly deal with on the red carpet aren’t very funny at all. Check out the full video below.
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