If there's one thing that's guaranteed in the world of social media, it's that platforms are going to copy each other's features. However, the newest iteration of this is still surprising, to say the least. Instagram has announced a new music feature that allows you to attach a song to your profile a la Myspace.
Instagram has copied MySpace, a platform that peaked long before Instagram ever existed, and arguably was thrown into decline by the rise of Instagram's parent company.
So, how does this new feature work? You can choose a song by going to edit profile and clicking "Add music to your profile." You can then choose a song or search in the For You section. From there, pick the 30 seconds of the song you want to feature and it will remain on your profile until you pick a new one or decide Myspace features are better left in the past. Don't worry if you're scrolling in public as songs won't start playing now the second you go on someone's profile — click the play button to hear it.
Instagram
Instagram teamed up with singer Sabrina Carpenter to promote the feature, with fans able to hear a clip of her new song "Taste." exclusively on her profile (though the album comes out tomorrow). Earlier this year, Instagram's parent company, Meta, teamed up with another pop star, Taylor Swift. She created a Threads account alongside the release of her new album, The Tortured Poet Society, in April. The first group of people to share her post received a customized badge on their profile.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-copiesmyspace-140049134.html?src=rss
There’s also a “Hot” badge for content with a Verified Audience Score of 60 percent to 90 percent. Finally, the dregs will be slapped with a “Stale” badge, which is for any show or movie that falls beneath 60 percent.
Rotten Tomatoes is trying to get around review bombing here by mandating that user reviews be from people who actually saw the movie in question. There are a couple of little problems with this. It verifies that a consumer saw the movie via the ticketing firm Fandango, and there are plenty of other ticketing firms out there, including, you know, the theater cashier.
Also, Comcast owns both Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango, so this seems more like synergistic advertising than an actual way to beat review bombers. Finally, this whole verification thing is only for movies. There’s no way to verify whether someone watched a TV show or not, so this wouldn’t have helped all of those trolls descending upon the recently-canceled Star Wars show The Acolyte.
From a cynic’s perspective, this move only works to further dilute the utility of the entire site. There will be more uncertainty and plenty of more badges floating around, making the whole thing, well, messy. Will an average user be able to instantly know the difference between Hot and Fresh?
The critic score average was already problematic, as reputable reviewers are weighted the exact same as purveyors of internet garbage. However, Rotten Tomatoes is addressing that by updating the minimum number of critic reviews required before a Tomatometer score will appear. For smaller films, the site mandates at least ten reviews for a score. Blockbusters will require 40 reviews.
The Hot badge has already been issued to current barn-burners Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Fly Me to the Moon and It Ends With Us. The company says it has also retroactively awarded over 200 films.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/rotten-tomatoes-further-dilutes-its-utility-with-verified-hot-badge-163415420.html?src=rss
Secret Level is a gaming-inspired anthology series coming to Prime Video on December 15. The upcoming Amazon title is from the same team behind Netflix's Love, Death and Robots. From the teaser released during Gamescom, this new project will be continuing the Blur Studio specialty for creating masterful animated works for an adult audience. The creative team was looking to inspire "nerd joy" with Love, Death and Robots and from the first glimpse, Secret Level seems like a natural progression of that goal.
Each of the 15 stories in the show are inspired by a different game. The official list of inspirations is: Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, PAC-MAN, various PlayStation Studios games, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament and Warhammer 40,000.
Games feel like a natural inspiration for this type of animation showcase. The cinematics in some contemporary AAA titles have all the polish and emotion of standalone films. Plus, game-inspired television series have been reaching new levels of success in recent years thanks to projects like Fallout, The Last of Us and Arcane.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/animated-video-game-anthology-series-secret-level-is-coming-to-prime-video-202027254.html?src=rss
Tarsier Studios, creators of the first two Little Nightmaresgames, is back with another creepy adventure — and its “partially disemboweled talking pig” teaser video looks like it set the proper tone. Announced at Gamescom Opening Night, Reanimal takes two children on an adventure across land and sea as they work together to rescue their missing friends on an island filled with horrifying creatures.
The developer helmed the first two Little Nightmares installments before Supermassive Games took over for part III. The new game promises to up the ante with “a more terrifying journey than ever before.”
The horror-adventure game stars a brother and sister in an “unsettling tale” who “go through hell to rescue their missing friends.” The protagonists are described as broken but resilient, facing fragments of their troubled past in the guise of gruesome beasts. It will somehow explore themes of hope and redemption as they navigate the chilling environment.
Tarsier Studios / THQ Nordic
The game lets you play single-player or co-op (local and online). In an illustration of the creators’ understanding of the horror genre, it uses a shared, directed camera “to maximize claustrophobia and tension.”
Reanimal doesn’t yet have a launch date other than “coming soon,” but we know it will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. You can check out the announcement trailer below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/reanimal-promises-a-more-terrifying-journey-than-little-nightmares-200457474.html?src=rss
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set in 1937, in the space between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, and it’s being developed by MachineGames, the studio behind the most recent Wolfenstein installments. So, of course the game’s main enemies are Nazis, and obviously it has a robust range of Nazi-punching mechanics. What makes The Great Circle intriguing, even after just a 30-minute hands-off preview, is its lighthearted interpretation of classic Indiana Jones tropes, leaning into the series’ humorous tone and adding twists like open-handed Nazi slapping to Indy’s repertoire.
When it comes to combat, Indiana has a whip, a revolver and his fists (or palms). His whip appears to be the most useful tool on his belt, allowing him to swing across gaps, activate levers, and pull in enemies nice and close for a one-two punch. Hitting a Nazi with the whip briefly incapacitates them while they’re reeled in, setting up an advantageous close-quarters melee situation. Hand-to-hand combat requires precise timing in order to land knockout combos or finishing moves, and on top of throwing punches and slaps, Indy is able to block and defensively parry. In fistfights, the game’s first-person perspective crops in extra tight, filling the screen with punchable Nazi surfaces and enhancing the tension behind each blow and dodge. He can also pick up objects and hit enemies with them, and in pre-recorded gameplay footage, it all looks supremely satisfying.
MachineGames
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t just an action game, though. Many of its encounters can be approached with stealth mechanics, where players sneak past guards and perform silent takedowns without fisticuffs or gunfire at all. The revolver is really a last-ditch option in each scenario, game director Jerk Gustafsson and creative director Axel Torvenius said. Otherwise, puzzles are a pivotal component of gameplay.
Indiana is joined on his adventures by Gina, an Italian journalist who’s searching for her sister, and together they encounter a variety of logic and spatial puzzles. Some are quick, like finding an alternative entrance to a sealed room, and others are more involved, requiring a few minutes of focus to fully understand.
The preview focused on Giza, Egypt, showcasing bustling outdoor marketplaces, a depressing Nazi meeting room and a vibrant temple hidden beneath the sands of the Great Sphinx. Here, Indy and Gina had to catch the sunlight with a series of ancient mirrors, lining them up one by one until the beam bounced to the proper place. This particular puzzle room seemed straightforward and slightly clever (though maybe that’s just because The Mummy is one of my favorite childhood movies), but there are apparently more challenging riddles in the game, too. The most complex puzzles are hidden, requiring some light exploration in various regions, and they’re not necessary in order to complete the main storyline. These bonus riddles are just some of the many secrets to find around the game’s world.
MachineGames
“I don’t really like too difficult puzzles myself,” Gustafsson said. “I like to just enjoy the experience and not be so challenged by them. That said, we do have a mix [of puzzle difficulties] because I like a lot of variation. It’s not like we have some unique puzzle mechanic that goes across the entire game. We tried to create every puzzle in a different, unique way.”
There are also difficulty options for the puzzles overall, allowing players to choose how complex they’ll be throughout the entire game.
Indiana has a notebook that fills up with evidence, objectives and photos that he takes while investigating various relics around the globe. The camera is an essential tool in The Great Circle, and each snapped pic can unlock new clues and trails to follow. Indy also carries a lighter, which functions as a flashlight and can set stationary torches ablaze. His play style is customizable, with dozens of upgrades available as the game progresses. One potential upgrade is True Grit, an ability that allows him to recover from a fatal blow by crawling toward and grabbing his fedora within a certain amount of time. You know, classic Indiana Jones stuff.
MachineGames
I’ve seen some angry chatter online from people who don’t like the first-person perspective in The Great Circle, citing a desire to actually see Indiana as he does all this cool stuff, just like in the movies. I don’t think these people have much to worry about — not only are there plenty of cutscenes featuring Troy Baker’s utterly impressive 1980s Harrison Ford impression, but parts of the game are in third-person after all.
“When it comes to a character like Indiana Jones, I want to play the character and I want to be the character, I want to look through and explore the world through his eyes,” Gustafsson said. “To me that’s a very important part of what we do here. For me, it was a very easy choice. But also, we do mix in some third-person elements here. We have very much come back to our own history with games like Riddick and The Darkness where we also did this mix between first-person and third-person perspective. We do that for this game, too. Everything is not first-person, even though the core experience is in first-person.”
Torvenius added, “There’s a great opportunity here as well for us because we do have a large section of the game that is mystery, it’s solving puzzles, being up front and close to ancient relics and ruins and scriptures. So it adds an intimacy to the adventure to some aspect, that you can get really up and close and can really inspect things, which is actually pretty nice how it plays out in the game.”
MachineGames
Even in first-person scenes, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks, sounds and feels right so far. Baker’s Indiana Jones is nearly indistinguishable from the early film versions, his voice drawling and gravelly with a sarcastic bite. There’s a dry humor built into his interactions, as is fitting. In one scene, he’s introducing himself to a woman who has an intricately designed eye patch; she seems to be indigenous to the jungle they’re sitting in.
“I’m an archaeologist,” Indiana says.
“Another one,” she replies, clearly unimpressed.
It’s a quick moment from a short preview, but it sets a solid tone for the game as a whole: dry, lighthearted, and a little punch-drunk in between all the actual punching. Or you could say, a bit slap-happy amid all the slapping. Either way, these Nazis won't know what hit them.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC on December 9. It'll be available on Game Pass Ultimate, and it's also coming to PlayStation 5 in spring 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-has-a-nazi-slapping-mechanic-200052110.html?src=rss
We've got our first big announcement of Gamescom: Borderlands is back. Borderlands 4 is the next entry in the franchise from Gearbox Software and 2K Games. It's due to arrive in 2025.
There's no gameplay in the announcement video released today. While that's a touch disappointing, it isn't much of a surprise for a teaser trailer or for a release that is still likely at least a year away. (And that's assuming no delays.) But the Borderlands games are known for their polished first-person shooter experience, particularly in co-op, and for their sharp sense of humor. Hopefully both of those traits will be returning in full force with the new game.
What doesn't seem to be returning is the cartoony art style that was a hallmark of the previous three titles. The teaser looks more like it's advertising a prestige television science fiction series rather than the zany Borderlands world. But it's early days yet and the studio will surely be sharing more updates as the game progresses through development.
Gearbox was likely hoping to springboard this announcement off a wave of renewed interest in the series after the blockbuster movie adaptation this summer. But since that project was a disastrousdisappointment, hopefully a new game will give fans of the series something fresh to be excited about.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/borderlands-4-is-coming-in-2025-194227938.html?src=rss
Streaming prices love to go up, but here’s a rare instance in which one is going down — for a limited time. Paramount+ is running a sale that knocks half off its plans, bringing the cheapest option down to $30 for the year. That's the Essential plan, which provides access to Paramount+ programming with ads. While this isn't explicitly a Labor Day sale, it runs through September 6, so it's joining the bevy of other Labor Day deals you can snag this holiday weekend.
The Essentials plan, however, doesn't offer access to Showtime. For that, the cost doubles to $60 per year, but that's still 50 percent off the usual going rate. In addition to the secondary streaming service, this plan offers live CBS streaming and the ability to download shows to a mobile device. This is also an ad-free plan, though live TV still has ads (for obvious reasons).
For the uninitiated, Paramount+ is home to most, but not all, new Star Trek shows. It also hosts the dad-friendly Tulsa King and the Jeremy Renner vehicle Mayor of Kingstown. As for genre fare, there’s the Sonic the Hedgehog spinoffKnuckles, the recently-canceled Halo show and a remake of Stephen King’s The Stand.
Showtime, on the other hand, is a long-standing cable institution that’s seen as “HBO’s younger sibling.” The platform offers access to hit shows like Yellowjackets, Billions and The Chi. The network also has a stable of older properties, including Dexter, Ray Donovan, Shameless and many more. Finally, it’s the best way to watch Twin Peaks: The Return, which is so dang good.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/paramount-annual-subscriptions-are-half-off-through-labor-day-weekend-190017464.html?src=rss
Black Myth: Wukong, considered China’s first true AAA game, has broken Steam’s concurrent players record for a single-player title, passing Cyberpunk 2077 for the single-player record. In addition, it’s now the game with the second-most all-time concurrent players to date (including multiplayer), moving past Palworld. Based on the 16th-century novel Journey to the West, the souls-like action-adventure epic peaked at 2,223,179 players.
Industry analyst Simon Carless of GameDiscoverCo posted on X (Twitter) early on Tuesday an estimate that Black Myth: Wukong’s regional breakdown heavily favored its home country. The agency’s pie graph showed China claiming 88 percent of the game’s players. (In second place was the US at a mere three percent.) Although some interpreted that as potentially showing inflated numbers, the game launched in the middle of the night in the western hemisphere, and Carless’ stats were posted around 5AM ET.
The title’s records come against a backdrop of misogyny and censorship accusations aimed at developer Game Science. Streamers who were granted early access keys were given a (non-legally-binding) document that raised some eyebrows.
Game Science / Sony
The document included a list of banned topics the streamers were to avoid discussing while broadcasting gameplay. The New York Timesreported that the off-limits subjects included politics, “feminist propaganda,” COVID-19, China’s gaming industry, and anything else that “instigates negative discourse.” (While streamers were given the list, reviewers weren’t.)
As for the “feminist propaganda” restriction for Black Myth: Wukong’s streamers, you can easily draw a straight line from widespread accusations of misogyny from developer Game Science and individuals working there, including some of its cofounders. Among the many instances (summarized in a 2023 IGN story) were Game Science recruitment posters from 2015, one of which implied friends with benefits were an office perk and another featuring a dumbbell with the text (translated) “fatties should fuck off.” (Yikes.) The accusations go on from there.
Game Science / Valve
Game Science has ties to the Chinese government, which is no stranger to accusations of misogyny and censorship. To cite only a few examples, the #MeToo hashtag was censored or blocked on Chinese social platforms during the height of the movement, posts from feminist and LGBTQ+ groups and voices are routinely blocked or deleted on the country’s social media, feminist perspectives are frequently restricted or censored in China’s academic institutions and activists are no strangers to harassment, surveillance or arrests.
Tencent Holdings, a five-percent stakeholder according to The NY Times, has direct ties to Xi’s government. Meanwhile, the game’s publisher, Zhejiang Publishing & Media, is majority-owned by the Zhejiang provincial government. Finally, Hero Games, the company that sent out the streamer keys on Game Science’s behalf, has financial ties to “several state-owned enterprises,” according to The NYT. Hero Games owns around 20 percent of Game Science.
Some streamers supplied with keys (and the attached red tape) decided not to cover the game. “I have never seen anything that shameful in my 15 years doing this job. This is very clearly a document which explains that we must censor ourselves,” the prominent French streamer Benoit Reinier said (translated) in a YouTube video.
In Engadget’s preview of Black Myth: Wukong from earlier this summer (which didn’t include provisions about censored topics like streamers received), Mat Smith found the game visually stunning. We found the demo “elevated by how good the environment looks, the bizarre monster design and the quiet, unsettling soundtrack.” The game is available now on PC and PS5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/black-myth-wukong-breaks-steams-concurrent-single-player-record-within-hours-of-launch-184559634.html?src=rss
Once upon a time in the tail-end of the last century, there was something called the Y2K bug. This bit of computer code was supposed to herald a global robot apocalypse at the stroke of midnight when 1999 became the year 2000 because of, uh, clock dates or something. Anyways, nothing happened. Or did it?
That’s the premise behind A24’s new horror comedy, the appropriately-named Y2K. The film imagines a New Year’s Eve of 1999 in which the computers really did turn on humanity. It’s written and directed by SNL alum Kyle Mooney, who made the fantastic and underrated Brigsby Bear.
As you can see from the trailer, it’s a 1990s teen party comedy, like Can’t Hardly Wait, but also an apocalyptic horror film. This particular hodgepodge brings to mind This is the End, in which Seth Rogen and other celebrities fight off a demonic horde.
However, instead of a demonic horde, these teens will be fighting for their lives against VCRs, old-school computers and, of course, murderous Tamagotchis. Also, Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst is somehow involved. The cast is composed primarily of unknown teenagers, but the adults are played by Tim Heidecker, Alicia Silverstone and Mooney himself. The movie hits theaters on December 6.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a24s-y2k-has-teens-battling-old-school-computers-and-bloodthirsty-tamagotchis-164537560.html?src=rss
Lucasfilm has decided not to renew The Acolyte for a second season, according to Deadline and Variety. Fans won't get to see how the show was supposed to end and won't get to know how the plotlines its creator, Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), teased at the end of the first season would unravel. Engadget Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar called The Acolyte "Star Wars at its best" in his review, discussed how unique its premise was, and drew parallels between the series and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Deadline says the show had a strong start and garnered 4.8 million views in the first day it became available for streaming, reaching 11.1 million views after five days. However, viewership fell in the coming weeks, and its finale was reportedly the poorest performing finale for a Star Wars series.
The Acolyte was a mystery-thriller story featuring a former Jedi trainee played by Amandla Stenberg, who's suspected of committing a series of crimes. Her former Jedi Master played by Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game) now has to find her to get to the bottom of things. Manny Jacinto, who played the smuggler Qimir, gained a lot of attention online due to this shirtless scenes. It was revealed in the later episodes that he plays a bigger role in the story, and viewers were even supposed to learn his real name in the next season.
The show is still available to watch on Disney+ for those who don't mind not getting closure for its story.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/star-wars-the-acolyte-isnt-getting-a-second-season-120033350.html?src=rss