— Freedom Games The best tactics RPGs tend to be remembered for their gripping political stories as much as their strategic combat. A hero is caught between warring kingdoms in Final Fantasy Tactics. Classmates become bitter enemies fighting to rule in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. A trio of anime girls fight sentient pillows in Dream Tactics. Okay, that last one might sound out of place, but Dream Tactics’ excellent turn-based combat and sense of humor make it a must for tactics fans anyway. Dream Tactics is set in a world of dreams, which is why its enemies are all cute, animated pillows wield ..read more

— IFC Films On April 18, beloved indie studio A24 made a major unforced error. Hot off the release of Civil War and its biggest box office opening weekend ever, the company shared some new poster art for the movie on Instagram. The problem? The images were seemingly generated by AI, showing scenes that don’t exist in the actual film at all, complete with the telltale mistakes of an AI artist. A24 has yet to confirm or comment on this news (at least as I’m writing this article), but it raises a larger issue about AI and cinema. Is it ever OK for movies to use AI art? And should we boycott the ..read more

— A24 Humanity’s search for meaning isn't inherently wrong. If one takes it too far, though, and tries to find codes and messages hidden in every single thing they see and love, then it becomes less a quest for fulfillment and more a narcissistic attempt to escape the malaise of modern life. More than a few movies have tried to explore that, but only a few have done so successfully. Director David Robert Mitchell's underrated neo-noir, Under the Silver Lake, is one of them. Mitchell's bold, ambitious follow-up to his 2014 horror hit It Follows was deemed by many (including seemingly its distr ..read more

— Paramount+ One of the deadliest alien species in all of Star Trek has never been fully revealed. After an offhand reference in The Next Generation, the Breen appeared in the Deep Space Nine episode “Indiscretion,” encased in suits that felt like they borrowed from Princess Leia’s bounty hunter disguise in Return of the Jedi. The Breen are infamous but seldom seen, a tradition which Star Trek: Discovery is subtly rebooting in Season 5. Amid an episode about time jumps and flashbacks to the beginning of the series, Discovery quietly snuck the Breen in and positioned them as possibly the most ..read more

— Razer A larger display may make mobile gaming better on a tablet as opposed to a smartphone, but you still have to deal with those clunky touchscreen controls. Instead of furiously tapping on a tablet, however, Razer now offers the Kishi Ultra controller that can fit an iPad mini or other tablets with displays up to eight inches. It may feel a little absurd to cram a tablet between a controller, but the Kishi Ultra’s design makes for a more premium handheld gaming experience with better ergonomics. It can still fit iPhone 15 and other smartphones, but since it uses a USB-C connection, those ..read more

— Bethesda Game Studios Amazon’s Fallout TV show has been a huge hit with viewers, but some key moments in the series have fans of the games scratching their heads. The fate of the Brotherhood of Steel airship and the city of Shady Sands in the show are raising so many questions about the canon of Fallout as a whole that Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard has stepped in to clarify the show’s place in series lore. And while his statement might lay to rest fears of one of the most beloved Fallout games being erased from the timeline, the conversation raises a much bigger question — why ..read more

— Square Enix The Rising Tide finally answers one of the biggest burning questions from Final Fantasy XVI: what happened to Leviathan the Lost? The second and final DLC adds on an entirely new area, main quest, and a handful of side quests to boot. As Clive’s final outing, fans will likely want to know exactly what the journey will entail, and The Rising Tide even has a few extra surprises packed in. Here’s everything you need to know about how to start The Rising Tide in FFXVI, and how long the DLC takes to beat. How Long Is FFXVI: The Rising Tide The Rising Tide is quite a bit longer than ..read more

— Microsoft Here’s another terrifying look into the future of AI, courtesy of Microsoft. Microsoft introduced the VASA-1 research project that can take a single image and an audio clip and transform it into a high-quality video of a talking head that looks eerily similar to the real thing. We have to stress that it’s just a research project at the moment, meaning it’s not readily accessible, but that doesn’t make it any less disconcerting. There are innocuous examples with VASA-1, like infusing Mona Lisa with Anne Hathaway’s rap skills but we’re more concerned about the likelihood that this w ..read more

— Disney+ Marvel has used Disney+ to rapidly expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe through live-action television, but animation has been a different story altogether. The first animated Marvel series on Disney+ was technically canon to the MCU, but its multiversal hijinks didn’t affect the main storyline. X-Men ’97 appeared equally ambiguous. While former showrunner Beau DeMayo stated unequivocally that the series exists as its own entity, the situation was a little more complicated. Emi Yonemura, who directed Episodes 3 and 5, tells Inverse that Marvel seriously considered making the series ..read more

— Netflix As Glen Powell’s Gary Johnson tells us in Hit Man’s opening moments, the titular figure doesn’t actually exist outside of our collective imagination. It’s a concept, a character invented by noir and generations of paranoia. But that doesn’t make the idea any less appealing; one can get caught up in the fantasy no matter who you are, as Powell’s mild-mannered leading man soon discovers. The Top Gun: Maverick alum co-wrote and stars in Hit Man alongside a frequent collaborator, director Richard Linklater. Based on an outrageously true story published in Texas Monthly in 2001, Hit Man ..read more