Category: News

While it might not officially be summer, it’s hard to not feel like we’re entering the summer months. The weather is starting to approach scorching temperatures, school is finishing up, and it’s about that time to be coming up with some vacation plans. That also means that we’re about to enter a time of the year where the video game release schedule typically eases up a bit. This doesn’t mean there won’t be any major releases at all, but traditionally game studios keep their major releases for the fall/holidays and late winter/early spring.

Because of that, it leaves a lot of us with free time to play older games, and with it being so hot outside we’re gonna want something that can keep us occupied inside for hours on end: something like an RPG. Maybe it’s just me, but the summer was always when I wanted to dive into a lengthy RPG of some kind, and since we don’t have any must play hits on the horizon this feels like a good year to do just that. These are the games that I’ll be spending my time playing throughout the summer.

Final Fantasy XIV

For awhile it started to feel like the MMORPG was a dying breed. Popular constants like World of Warcraft were slowly losing their popularity and the era of everyone trying to make one is a distant memory. While we still aren’t getting a new MMO every year like we used to, we do have a really great option for fans of the genre in Final Fantasy XIV. While the game was first released in 2010, it underwent a massive transformation that completely changed how it played. Multiple expansions since that transformation and it’s become one of the most popular games in the world, largely behind its story.

MMOs historically aren’t well received for their story, but more for how fun they are to play and the ability to let friends experience that fun together. Final Fantasy XIV meanwhile is one of the few MMOs that managed to make its userbase fall in love with, and overwhelmingly praise, its plot. Its most recent expansion, Endwalker, was beloved by fans with many of them saying it paid off plot threads over a decade in the making. If there was ever a time to get into a game that fans and critics have praised endlessly, it’s now. Experiencing everything Final Fantasy XIV has to offer can take hundreds of hours, but the experience will be well worth it.

Elden Ring

Yes, everyone is still talking about Elden Ring and it’s hard to not see why. While it can be a bit of a challenge to get into because of its difficulty, everyone that has managed to break through the difficulty curve has had an experience that is completely their own. What makes Elden Ring so special is that it manages to capture that same level of fun that exists in something like Dungeons and Dragons, where the player experience thrives on how the player responds to everything. Through the open world of Elden Ring, the player is always on their own individual quest where every discovery is their own and only they can decide what direction they go in.

It helps that the world of Elden Ring is also MASSIVE. While players are making a point right now of beating the game in less than 15 minutes, the average Elden Ring playthrough can range well over 100 hours depending on how much the player wants to explore and do. Be warned that this game isn’t for everyone, its challenges are frustrating and can create an early roadblock, but with endless time this summer there might not be a better time than now to fight through it.

Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 was one of the best JRPGs on the PlayStation 4 and one of the best games that came out in 2017. However, it also took something like 80 hours to beat and could go well over 100 for players that wanted to do even more. So when Persona 5 Royal was announced, and it advertised that it had even more stuff to do, this easily felt like it was going to be a 100-hour game at a minimum. With such a time commitment to a game that’s admittedly more of an expansion than a new game, it was hard to justify playing Royal when it was first announced.

It’s that long playtime that makes Persona 5 Royal such an intriguing option for the summer. Back when some of us were children, or in college, and had the summer to ourselves it wasn’t unusual to play a game like this over the summer break. It might even be the only game we played during that break. Persona 5 really is a great game, and Royal is by all accounts an even better version of that game, but we needed the free time to experience it. That free time is right now.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

Some of the best games ever made is the Mass Effect trilogy. Originally released during the Xbox 360/PS3 era of consoles, these games took the player’s own Commander Shepard on an adventure to save the galaxy. While some might argue that it’s not technically an RPG, but instead a third-person shooter with RPG elements, we feel it fits thanks to the franchise’s customization options and dialogue tree. It’s the dialogue tree specifically that made Mass Effect feel so special at the time. It let so many players experience their own personal playthrough with their Commander Shepard where we each got to save the galaxy with our own brand of hero or scumbag.

Now that the trilogy is available in a package with the Mass Effect: Legendary Collection we can’t recommend the franchise enough. While the first game’s story is very good and can stand on its own, the series is best experienced as a trilogy. That’s what makes it a perfect summer game. Spend a month, or two, blasting through the franchise at your own pace. Maybe replay them if you fall in love the way many others did and experience one of the best RPG experiences out there.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Few games are as openly weird the way Yakuza: Like a Dragon is. On the surface, it’s an emotionally gripping crime drama featuring ex-Yakuza Ichiban Kasuga and his friends who all reside in the gray area of Japan’s laws going on the adventure of a lifetime. In this adventure, they’ll face off against the Yakuza, rival organized crime gangs, and the government itself as they try to solve the many issues of Japan’s underworld. When you dive into the game though, what you find is maybe the only game in the world where the player can simultaneously run a sweets shop while collecting different types of criminals for a digital encyclopedia. This is most likely the only game where a player can summon a crawfish for help in battle through an app called Poundmates and later on be on the brink of actual tears because the game’s plot can be that gut punching.

Like a Dragon is simultaneously a one of a kind game, but perfectly fitting for the franchise its set in, and that also makes it one of the best entry points into it. Like a Dragon is the first, and so far only Yakuza game, to be a JRPG and while it isn’t perfect it manages to merge into that setting exceptionally well. The main plot takes a little over 40 hours to beat on average, but it can take longer for players that really dive into its world it will likely take 60 hours. We strongly suggest diving into the world. It’s ridiculous, fun, and there’s something really neat around every corner. It’s a fantastic crime drama in a fantastic series of them and it’s a great way to spend the summer.

The impending GOP Senate primary is turning out to be quite a beast, and that’s a surprise to everyone, including Dr. Oz. The former daytime TV host (who’s not hanging in Switzerland, despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene believes) must be sweating bullets after spending at least $12.4 million on his campaign and even pulling in the far-right-coveted endorsement of ex-President Trump. He’s freaking out, too, because “Ultra-MAGA” rival Kathy Barnette is surging in the polls and almost neck-and-neck with Mehmet Oz, mere days before the election.

In response, Sean Hannity spent the entirety of his Thursday night show melting down over Barnette’s “rise.” He trashed her far-right positions, which to be fair (according to summations from the Daily Beast and CNN) are incredibly unsavory. To be clear, though, Hannity has been a ride-or-die for Trump, despite all of his controversies, and the self-declared “talk show host” really seems like he’s mostly rattled about his guy (Oz) facing a last-minute upset due to Barnette’s “surge,” for which Hannity expressed disbelief.

Well, Laura Ingraham is in a different camp, possibly as part of the hilarious MAGA mutiny inspired by Trump’s Dr. Oz endorsement. She spent her Fox News hour describing how “doctored videos” have been used to smear Barnette.

And then Ingraham trashed Oz himself. “But the more salient question is this,” she rhetorically asked. “With all his fame and all his celebrity and all his big endorsements, why hasn’t Dr. Oz been able to seal the deal with the Pennsylvania voters?”

It’s a valid question from Ingraham, but as with Hannity, I have to wonder if Ingraham’s defending Barnette (who does, in fact, have a history of anti-Muslim and anti-gay remarks) simply because the white males are piling onto her while defending their white-male candidate. In other words, there are no winners here, at least until May 18 when voters do their thing.

Deep into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda Maximoff (also known as Scarlet Witch) is on a murderous rampage across the multiverse. Driven by rage, grief, and love, Wanda invades the home base of The Illuminati, a group of superheroes in an alternate reality who protect Earth. This particular version of The Illuminati exists purely as fan service, with cameos from Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter, John Krasinski as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, and Patrick Stewart as Professor X from the X-Men films. One by one, a bloodied Wanda easily kills every single member. Using her mind, the Scarlet Witch easily shreds Reed Richards like a paper shredder and explodes the mouth of some guy called Black Bolt. I don’t know who Black Bolt is, but I enjoyed seeing his head explode.

In order to spend her life with the children she created with her magic in WandaVision, Wanda intends to steal the power of traveling through the multiverse from America Chavez. The process will kill America, but Wanda sees her as collateral damage; a means to her happy end. Within the MCU, Wanda has experienced a tremendous amount of pain. She lost her parents in a bombing when she was a child, she lost her brother in a battle against Ultron, she accidentally killed civilians when she lost control of her powers and as a result, was put on house arrest by her friends, and she had to remove the life source from Vision, the love of her life, in order to save the universe from Thanos. The 2021 limited series WandaVision was about Wanda’s grief, and her journey in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a continuation — or, more so the consequence of her actions in WandaVision.

The Illuminati massacre is Elizabeth Olsen, who has played Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch since 2014’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, at her most terrifying and most vulnerable. Wanda is seduced by dark magic but motivated by good intentions. She’s goal-oriented, which explains the murder spree, but deep down the hero buried deep inside of her is conflicted about the damage she’s causing and the many lives she’s responsible for taking. Olsen conveys all this with her face. A glance, a widened eye or mouth quiver behind a face covered in blood. In this moment, and several other moments throughout the film, I found myself rooting for Wanda. In both WandaVision — which earned Olsen an Emmy nomination last year— and Doctor Strange Into the Multiverse of Madness, Olsen delivers a performance undeserving of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Olsen’s striking, impassioned performance, a perfect balance to co-star Benedict Cumberbatch’s quiet one, anchors the film. Likely aided and influenced by (real) visionary director Sam Raimi, Olsen believably captures the grief of a mother longing for the children she cannot have with elements of horror and manages to deliver iconic villain moments and, ultimately, an earned return to heroism. Elizabeth Olsen is one of the few actors in MCU history who can tell a story with their face while moving their hands and body to unintelligible visual effects, and who can perform expositional dialogue effectively. Olsen does more than deliver quippy one-liners in a tight costume. The MCU isn’t completely lacking in good performances. But that’s just it: they’re good at best, with a few exceptions including Tom Hiddleston as Loki (a performance so powerful that the character was brought back from the dead several times), Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther, who together brought a necessary human element to the franchise.

While Olsen is most known for playing Wanda Maximoff, her other, lesser-known performances prove she’s a force and one of the best actors of her generation, including 2011’s Martha Macy May Marlene, her mesmerizing feature film debut, the Facebook Watch original Sorry For Your Loss, Ingrid Goes West, and Wind River opposite fellow Avenger Jeremy Renner. Olsen is also a fun, brutally honest celebrity, between a Harper’s Bazaar skincare video in which she notes that she is from Los Angeles but does not own crystals, and criticizing the criticism of Marvel movies in a good way: by celebrating the crew members who make these movies happen. “I’m not saying we’re making indie art films, but I just think it takes away from our crew, which bugs me. “These are some of the most amazing set designers, costume designers, camera operators ― I feel diminishing them with that kind of criticism takes away from all the people who do award-winning films, who also work on these projects,” she told The Independent.

Anything can happen in the MCU – especially when your character is as popular as Wanda/Scarlet Witch has become – but Wanda’s fate in Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness suggests, for now, that Elizabeth Olsen is up for grabs. While she’s free from the IP monolith, it’s time for Olsen to be in conversation with her Oscar-favorite peers including Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.

The turnover from autumn to winter last year saw Drake and Kanye West apparently set aside their longstanding differences. It was a surprising time for many who had been paying attention to the many chapters of their relationship, as it all seemed to happen so fast. The two hip-hop heavyweights quickly agreed to perform at the LA Coliseum in a concert dedicated to Larry Hoover and appeared like the best of friends on stage, sharing high fives, side hugs, and covers of each other’s songs. Among the many confused was Grammy-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, though it was more personal for him.

On the new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, K Dot’s first solo LP since 2017’s Damn, he addresses the reunion and what it reveals about his own maturity as a man. “When Kanye got back with Drake, I was slightly confused / Guess I’m not as mature as I think, got some healin’ to do,” he says on “Father Time,” which features Sampha.

Drake and West threw jabs at one another for years but their bubbling tension reached its peak in 2018, when Ye produced Pusha T’s Daytona album, which included “Infrared,” a shot at the 6 God for his ghostwriting allegations, among other things. Drake replied on the very same day with “Duppy Freestyle,” a two-birds kind of approach that fired back at both of them. What would ensue from there is Pusha responding with “The Story Of Adidon,” revealing to the world that Drake has a son, and a lot more subtle shots over the years between the three until this past year.

Listen to “Father Time” above.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. Get it here.

Post Malone is an “ugly-ass motherf*cker,” according to himself in a 2020 GQ interview. While he’s currently admired by millions of fans, he may still feel some insecurity about his appearance: Malone was a guest on The Tonight Show yesterday and noted during his conversation with Jimmy Fallon that it is only in certain moments that he remembers how “strange-looking” (his words) he is.

While talking about Malone’s upcoming album Twelve Carat Toothache, Fallon asked Malone if he literally has twelve carats of metal and jewelry in his mouth. Malone didn’t have a definitive answer to that question but he did note after Fallon asked if he just stares at his mouth: “I’m such a strange-looking individual. Every time I look in the mirror, I don’t notice anything, but then I’ll have a couple Jägers or we’ll play [a drinking game] and I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll be like, ‘Dude, you’re such a weird guy!’”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Malone noted he has been corresponding with Bob Dylan. Fallon asked if they’ve met and Malone answered, “I have not met Bob Dylan but we have been… hmm, I don’t how much I’m at liberty to discuss. We’ve been chatting.” He added, “He’s always just been a voice in my head. Always just appreciated the music and appreciated the songwriting.

Check out the interview above. Malone, as he tends to do on The Tonight Show, played a drinking game with Fallon, so watch that below.

“My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose,” Donald Trump once said. This was before he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, but if you still found that quote inspiring, the former-president has an expensive new grift for you. Trump is haunting the country with the American Freedom Tour as “a new way to milk his ex-presidency — and test another — [by] hitting the lucrative motivational speaking circuit with more fervor than any other active U.S. politician in history,” Axios reports.

Trump will make his next stop on the tour in Austin on Saturday. According to the AFT website, there are a dozen different price options to attend, each with its own level of access. Ticket prices start at $9, for the Satellite tier. That includes a spot in an overflow room at the venue to watch the program on a TV screen. Presidential tier tickets cost $4,995. That includes early access to the event site, admission to a reception and a photo-op with Trump’s son Don Jr., as well as premium seating to watch Trump.

There’s also a vague-sounding “Patriot” tier, which includes roundtables with Mike Pompeo and Trump, and a “photo op” with the former-president. No price is listed, but it’s probably however much it costs to fix a private plane.

American Freedom Tour founder Chris Widener wouldn’t say how much Trump is getting paid to share his motivational wisdom (like, “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich”), but he did say that “most all of our speakers get paid an honorarium for the event.” Plus, free Diet Cokes. Widener added that the tour is not “a Trump-aligned operation,” and the message is “Faith, Family, Finances, and Freedom.” But there’s one “F” that’s missing.

Here’s the kind of speech you can expect:

(Via Axios)

What a difference a year—and a new book—makes. On January 6, 2021, Lindsey Graham spoke with Jonathan Martin, a reporter for The New York Times, about the calamitous events of that day and placed the blame squarely on outgoing president Donald Trump’s shoulders. Now, as Mediaite reports, Graham is changing his tune.

On Tuesday, Martin and his fellow Times writers Alexander Burns chatted with Anderson Cooper on CNN about their new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, and shared audio of their chat with Graham, who trashed Trump for the role he played in the Capitol insurrection while praising Joe Biden and expressing hope that he could right the ship:

We’ll actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. It’ll take a while. People will calm down. People will [say] “I don’t want to be associated with that.” This is a group within a group. What this does, it’ll be a rallying effect for a while, where the country says, “We’re better than this.”

When Martin asked whether Graham thought that Biden could help in lifting the country back up, his response was forthright: “Totally. He’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”

When confronted with his own words on Thursday night by Fox News host Jesse Watters, however, Graham cried mea culpa. “I was wrong,” said the South Carolina senator. “I’ve known Joe for 30 years. He’s a nice guy, but he’s been a disaster as president. This was literally happening on the day of January the 6th and I was hoping that President Biden could bring us together. Common sense tells you you want the president to be successful. But not only has he failed to bring us together, he has made us less safe.”

You can watch Graham’s interview with Watters at Mediaite here.

(Via Mediaite)

Elon Musk‘s purchase of Twitter just took a major hit, which is reigniting speculation that the whole thing was just a giant troll. Early Friday morning, Musk announced that the deal is on hold because he now doesn’t believe the social media’s numbers on the amount of fake accounts.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” Musk tweeted. “Still committed to acquisition.”

Musk’s announcement arrives on the heels of both a cryptocurrency crash and news that Twitter shares have dropped significantly below Musk’s purchase price. Musk’s announcement that the deal is on hold caused Twitter shares to drop even further, and analysts now believe Musk is using Twitter’s disclosure on fake accounts to weasel out of the deal. His leveraging of Tesla never quite made sense, and now, that calculus is proving to be even more precarious. Via The Wall Street Journal:

The tweets come as many big tech stocks have been falling on Wall Street, including shares of Tesla, which are down 29% over the past month. Mr. Musk is using his Tesla holdings to help fund the Twitter deal. Meanwhile, Twitter’s stock price had traded below Mr. Musk’s offer price as investors wondered if the deal might get reworked or not get done.

Mr. Musk might be using Twitter’s recent disclosure as a means to get out of or renegotiate the deal, said Daniel Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities. One reason is the impact on Tesla shares since the deal was announced.

While analysts hedge their bets on Musk’s next move, actual Twitter users are being a bit more blunt. Musk is currently being roasted for announcing that the purchase is hold (#ElonsProblems started trending shortly thereafter) and a significant amount of people are convinced Musk was never really going to buy the site in the first place.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Wall Street Journal)

On the new Kendrick Lamar album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, the rapper addresses a lot of topics. One track in particular that’s starting a lot of conversations among fans online is “Auntie Diaries,” on which Lamar raps about a couple of transsexual characters.

Twitter users were quick to praise the song, with one writing, “Auntie Diaries is the first song in major support of the trans community from a rap artist as big as Kendrick and I can’t voice how happy I am for it.” Another, journalist Khari Thompson, also wrote, “Yo ‘Auntie Diaries’ could be some REAL barrier-breaking stuff in hip-hop. Kendrick talking openly about his aunt and cousin transitioning and ‘choosing humanity over religion.’” Another user added, “Kendrick Lamar dropped Auntie Diaries, a song about trans acceptance & intersectionality, while conservatives across the country are pushing a full on assault on all LGBTQIA+ people & their allies. He didn’t have to do this – he’ll probably get sh*t for it – but he did. Powerful.”

Others addressed Lamar’s use of a homosexual slur with a line referencing how commonplace saying it used to be: “Back when it was comedic relief to say ‘f*****’ / f*****, f***** f*****, we ain’t know no better / Elementary kids with no filter however.” In response to those who apparently took exception to the lyrics, fans insist detractors are missing the point.

Listen to “Auntie Diaries” above and check out some more reactions to the song below.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. Get it here.

Chris Rock wasn’t kidding when he said he wouldn’t talk about The Slap until he gets paid.

During a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday, the comedian immediately addressed the elephant in the room… kind of. “I’m OK, if anybody was wondering. I got most of my hearing back,” he joked. But anyone expecting Rock to go further than that was about to be disappointed. “People expect me to talk about the bullsh*t, I’m not going to talk about it right now, I’ll get to it eventually, on Netflix,” he said.

The first time that Rock acknowledged the time that Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars (which seems like it happened 500 years ago) was in late March during a standup show in Boston. “How was your weekend?” he said to kick off his set. “I don’t have a bunch of s*it about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that sh*t. And it will be serious and funny.” And profitable.

Meanwhile, Dave Chappelle’s Hollywood Bowl set, in which he was attacked by a man brandishing a replica handgun, will not be coming to Netflix.

(Via the Times)