The chili dog-chompin’ Hedgehog’s second outing comes to streaming this week
Obi-Wan Kenobi is not the show you’re looking for — at least, not the one the trailers advertised
Should you stick around for the credits on the last episode? Sorta
Cal Kestis returns in 2023
Including the most important question: ‘Wait, was that Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers?’
It’s a little too big and it’s very familiar, but it’s still full of flavor
We've less than one week left until the Queen's Platinum Jubilee long weekend, so please do remember to book your pets in to be dyed red, white, and blue before it's too late. All the grooming parlours will be heaving with patriotic pups and pusses. Don't forget to brew a giant pot of coronation chicken (or, like me, coronation tofu) to keep you going during the coming week of endless festivity and forced celebration. If you grow tired and that flag-waving arm starts to sag, you'll be in for it. But first, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
What are your hands doing right now? They’re probably playing some part in how you’re able to read this text in the first place, but you likely weren’t paying a lot of attention to them. Our hands are our most frequent and reliable way of interacting with the world around us, and as a result, we tend not to give them much thought.
And yet, hands are far more than just tools to get a job done. Ever since its discovery, the Cueva de las Manos in Argentina has fascinated people with the stencilled handprints of hundreds of human beings. Some of them reach out to us over a historical distance of nearly 10,000 years. There’s something both mysterious and mundane, distant and intimate about this sight. We can’t know the minds of the humans that left their handprints behind, but we do know that they were people like us, exploring and connected to the world around them through their hands.
The Cave of Hands made its way into several video games, Psychonauts 2 and Genesis Noir among them. They’re far from the only games to show appreciation for hands, and handprints in particular. Just think about how the bloody handprint on the wall has long become the tired cornerstone of environmental storytelling in countless horror and action games.
Calus might appear to be a distant memory aboard the Leviathan in Destiny 2, but the Calus Bobbleheads that you can find will act as a quiet reminder of his opulence. The strange little statues are scattered all around the Derelict Leviathan, and in this guide, we will show you where to find them all. Some of these can actually be pretty difficult to get or are locked away behind some difficult activities, so keep that in mind.
The first week of Season of the Haunted introduced four Calus Bobbleheads for players to track down. One can be found in the Castellum, one in the Royal Pools, one in the Pleasure Gardens, and one in the Sever activity “Shame” mission that ventures deep into the heart of the Leviathan.
SOC Investment Group has written an open letter to Activision Blizzard shareholders, urging voters not to re-elect six board members, including CEO, Bobby Kotick.
As spotted by GI.biz, the letter comes ahead of Activision Blizzard's annual meeting on 21st June and campaigns to remove Bobby Kotick, Brian Kelly, Robert Morgado, Robert Corti, Barry Meyer, and Peter Nolan from their positions.
"Each of these directors failed either to recognise that Activision Blizzard for years maintained unsafe workplaces exhibiting frequent and repeated sexual harassment, sexual assault, and gender discrimination, or to appropriately address the Company’s 'frat house' culture once it was publicly revealed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in its pending lawsuit, which was filed in July 2021," the damning letter states.
Activision Blizzard has released a "launch roadmap" for Diablo Immortal to help players "get ready for Hell", including confirmation that the "mobile version [will start] propagating the morning of 1st June".
The early rollout is reportedly "due to the nature of how mobile games rollout" and will "ensure a smooth launch".
The game is also now available to pre-load on PC via Battle.net.
BD-1 is everywhere these days. He starred in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order alongside Cal Kestis, will be in the just-announced sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and may have even been in an episode of The Book of Boba Fett. This adorable droid is now getting the brick treatment with a Lego set launching this August.
Lego announced this BD-1 set at Star Wars Celebration and showed off what it can do. The set consists of 1,062 pieces and is a part of Lego's recent droid line, which consists of R2-D2, D-O, and a Probe Droid. BD-1's legs move, his head tilts, and you can open a tray that holds healing cannisters. Lego also included a display plaque that comes with a BD-1 minifigure. Now all we need is a smaller set that gives us a Cal Kestis minifigure. The BD-1 set retails for $99.99. You can see it in all of its glory in the images below:
The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is an ambitious full motion video experience from Square Enix and h.a.n.d. inc. This interactive mystery features Japanese live action drama at its finest, with a stellar cast stepping up to fill multiple roles. Creating a full motion video game such as The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story requires a fine balance, one that I think developer h.a.n.d. inc managed to do pretty well. In part one of our interview, Producer Junichi Ehara and Director Koichiro Ito took some time to answer a few questions for Siliconera regarding the game's story and gameplay structure.
Annette Polis: The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story features four murders told over three stories spanning one hundred years for the Shijima family. Is there significance to the particular decades in which each of these stories was told?
Junichi Ehara: If the question is whether it is in line with the story, it definitely is. We also intentionally chose distinctive ages with different looks.
Koichiro Ito: In particular, the case from the Showa Era 50 years ago is important to the story, although it is not directly related to the 100-year history of the Shijima clan.
In each era, one actor will play the role of three detectives. Please pay attention to how each of them might feel in approaching the murder cases, and how they pass the baton to those in detective roles of future generations.
Cal Kestis’ journey is officially continuing in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, set for a PS5, Xbox Series, and PC release in 2023. The sequel is coming nearly four years after Jedi: Fallen Order introduced us to new Jedi, new Inquisitors, and one of the cutest droids in the galaxy. But it’s actually been an even longer stretch of time in between the stories of both games: EA confirmed Survivor is set five years after the events of Fallen Order, and our first look at Survivor shows Cal and BD-1 in some serious trouble.
Now, one big component of Cal’s life, as far as players know, is his found family and crew of the Stinger Mantis, Cal’s starbound home throughout the events of Fallen Order. We don’t really see the crew - Cere, Greez, and Merrin - in the Survivor reveal, but we can surmise things haven’t gone all that well for them. The trailer shows the Mantis downed on a desert planet, with a slow pan through its main hull spelling nothing but trouble. Looking out the cockpit window, you can see a singular set of footprints trailing off into the distance, suggesting either Cal or another member of the crew escaped this crash alone. But the rest of the team’s fate remains a mystery.
Destiny 2’s Season of the Haunted introduced a new Dungeon to the game. The Duality Dungeon sends players on a trip deep into the mind of Calus, the opulent emperor who owns the sprawling Leviathan. To begin the Duality Dungeon, players will need to start the A Single Thread quest, and this can be a little bit confusing. In this guide, we will show you how to do it so you can begin the Duality Dungeon.
The good news is that this is not a complicated process. All you need to do is go and visit Hawthorne in the Tower and speak with her. New players may not be too sure of where to find her, but she is located near Ikora in the Bazaar area.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords is coming to Switch on June 8. This role-playing game was originally released on Xbox in 2004 and later found its way to PC. You'll now have the chance to play it again on your TV or take it on the go on Switch for just $15.
The Sith Lords is set during a dark period for the Republic. As a Jedi in exile, you could bring stability to the Jedi Order and help the Republic, or embrace the dark side of the Force and help a new order take command. This sequel embraces player choice in meaningful and fun ways, allowing you to form tight bonds with your teammates and pick how you wield the Force.
We recently ranked The Sith Lords as the fifth best Star Wars game in our Top 30 Star Wars Games list, saying "Although development switched studios from BioWare to Obsidian Entertainment, the choice-driven bliss of the original Knights of the Old Republic RPG is alive and well in Sith Lords. Picking up five years after the fall of Lord Malak, the Sith Lords is another finely penned tale that offers deeper dialogue options, another great cast of characters, and plenty of alignment-specific variables."
Video Gameography is on hiatus this week, but in the interim, we'd like to announce the next season officially.
Season six of Video Gameography will chronicle one of the most stylish franchises around: Devil May Cry. Its 20+ year history began after series creator Hideki Kaimya attempted to create an installment of another legendary Capcom series, and instead birthed the prototype of the modern character action game (or "Stylish Action"). In this new season, we'll be covering the development and devilish narratives of all of the DMC titles, including Ninja Theory's reboot. Dante, black-haired Dante, Virgil, Sparda, Trish, Nero, Lady, V; all of your favorite characters are going to be there! Here's the complete list of games we'll be talking about in the coming weeks:
Video Gameography is a podcast hosted by Game Informer Associate Editors Marcus Stewart and John Carson. Each season is a deep dive into a specific video game series, with each episode exploring the year of release, development, and narrative for a single game in that storied franchise. We're joined by a special guest every episode to help break down our thoughts on the topic that week and have a few laughs along the way.
With Advance Wars Re-Boot Camp indefinitely delayed and a new Fire Emblem tactical game nowhere in sight for now, lovers of cartoonish tactics games would do well to pay some attention to Floppy Knights. It’s inspired heavily by both aforementioned tactics franchises, but is still wholly itself thanks to a whimsical aesthetic and the addition of a deck-building mechanic that throws in an element of strategic randomness to reckon with on top of the usual unit moving and attacking and objective completion.
Floppy Knights takes place in a mish-mash world of fantasy and 90s-era technology, and follows a teenager named Phoebe and her sentient robot arm Carlton. Phoebe’s ready to move out from her parents’ house and build a life of her own, but she’s also uninterested in most jobs and would rather spend her time doing cool science. So she creates a digital army of “Floppy Knights” named for the floppy discs they’re stored on, intending to use them for typical odd jobs. But she quickly winds up commanding them to fight off little armies of goblins and slimes causing problems for her neighbors instead.
On its face, Floppy Knights is a perfectly competent tactics game with an interesting spread of units, some challenging maps and enemies, and plenty of additional objectives for those whose strategic brains want a bit more. But what really elevates it is the way the deck building element interfaces with all the rest. Unlike Fire Emblem, there’s no dumping a pile of units on the field with built-in movement from the start. You need to make sure your deck is equipped with enough units to draw what you need when you need it, and you’ll have to stock it with movement cards too if you ever want them to get anywhere.
We now know when the Spriggan anime will make its Netflix debut. People can start watching the show on June 18, 2022. To go along with the reveal, there’s a new extended trailer showing off this adaptation. It spends most of its time introducing characters and the out-of-place artifacts central to its plot.
The video begins with introducing the ARCAM Corporation and its agents who protect OOPArts. Spriggan like Yu Ominae try to stop people from getting and misusing these items. After introducing him, the trailer shows off folks like Bo Brantz, Jean Jacquemonde, Rie Yamabishi, and Yoshino Somei show up. It also brings up the idea of whether to destroy relics for the safety or all or protecting them and letting people die as a result.
Here's the full Spriggan anime trailer. The release date comes up at the very end.
Prior to this latest reveal, the show appeared at the March 2022 Netflix Japan anime event.
In the meantime, a Spriggan movie appeared in 1998 in Japan. It isn’t streaming anywhere, but it did get released worldwide in the years after its Japanese debut.
