Polygon News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Wrestling is a huge part of Mercedes Varnado’s career, having gained notoriety as Sasha Banks for the WWE before crossing over as Mercedes Moné for the AEW. But her fans may not realize she is also a huge Sailor Moon fan. The professional wrestler, who recently jumped to acting for The Mandalorian, has a deep appreciation of the classic magical girl fantasy anime based on Naoko Takeuchi’s 1992 manga. Fans of both wrestling and anime know she donned a Sailor Moon-inspired outfit during the 2022 Royal Rumble. So it’s no surprise that she’s openly campaigned to play Sailor Jupiter in a live-action adaptation of Sailor Moon, if that ever happens.

“Cozy games” are a huge phenomenon right now, because at the end of the day, who doesn’t like being cozy? While some games focus on visceral combat or thrilling narratives, cozy games often focus on creating a comfortable or fulfilling place for players to hang out. Instead of swinging a sword or slaying foes, players can focus on creating the perfect flower bed, or befriending the kind golem next door.

I spent a lot of time contemplating the title of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s new film Evil Does Not Exist. It still echoes in my brain, as I watch and rewatch the film. It’s a puzzle to turn over, a bitter lozenge lodged in my cheek. It’s almost farcical, how banal the movie’s premise is: a talent agency wants to set up a glamping site in a remote Japanese village, and sends two hapless PR reps to sell the community on the plan. Most of us don’t contemplate the nature of evil when considering glamping, you know? But maybe we should.

Spoiler warnings have become a polite way to signal to the internet that you’re about to discuss some aspect of a movie they might prefer not to know before seeing the film. People online have argued endlessly about what constitutes a spoiler and what needs a warning. But the question gets more complicated when a studio’s marketing for a movie is handing out the spoilers.

We’re in the dead middle of May and on the cusp of several huge releases to the usher in the summer season. If you’re looking for a trio of blood-chilling, adrenaline-pumping, and heart-racing thrillers to tide you over until this year’s summer blockbusters, you’ve come to the right place.

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

Warner Bros. Discovery appears to have backed down from its plans to delist more than a dozen games published by its Adult Swim Games label from Steam and digital console stores. WBD now plans to transfer ownership of some of those games back to the indie devs that made them, according to developers who would have been affected by the planned delistings.

One of the biggest draws of the science fiction genre is that it gives us access to big spaceships. There’s other stuff, too, about imagining alternate futures and pasts or thinking about new forms of life, but there’s an awful lot of big spaceships, and if you’re like me you think those big spaceships are cool. Homeworld 3 is fundamentally a strategy game about really, really big spaceships and the cultures that pilot them. You are more than likely in or out based on that premise alone.

The original Marathon games from Bungie are coming to Steam, and will be available to download for free, the developer behind Destiny 2 announced Friday. The first game in the first-person shooter franchise is available now in the form of Classic Marathon. Sequels Classic Marathon 2 and Classic Marathon Infinity are listed as “coming soon” on Steam.

GameStop may begin purchasing graded Pokémon cards at a select number of retail locations soon, according to store associates. If true, the move would make the retailer one of the single largest buyers of graded collectibles with nearly 3,000 potential retail locations in the United States for consumers to sell their cards. Rumors first began circulating Thursday, via PokéBeach. Polygon has reached out to GameStop’s press team for comment.

The last few weeks have seen a rare admission from Team Marvel Studios: Maybe, just maybe, it overloaded the market and the last few movies and shows kinda stunk and even a behemoth, culture-warping, mega-property needs to slow down and take a breath every once in a while. Maybe.

In a week (month? year?) when lots of people are feeling pretty sour over the way some game companies choose to explain their decisions to their audience, here’s a rarity — a game delay statement that shows such humility, honesty, and passion for the medium that it’s gone over extremely well.

Buried in the announcement of the launch of Critical Role’s new subscription service, Beacon, is more good news for fans. The third season of the troupe’s Prime Video animated series,The Legend of Vox Machina, is due out this fall. The release window was confirmed on X by Critical Role CEO Travis Willingham. A release date has not been revealed.

Every new era of Doctor Who begins with a new Doctor. That’s always the most exciting part: As a nigh-immortal alien whose personality shifts with his looks after he regenerates into a new form, meeting a new Doctor is like meeting a best friend all over again. Then comes a few other things: A new companion, a facelift for his spaceship/time machine, the TARDIS, and, finally, a new costume. A signature look that comes to define that version of the Doctor — from a stalk of celery on the lapel of the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) to Eleven’s (Matt Smith) affection for bow ties.

Jane Schoenbrun’s new movie I Saw the TV Glowhas sparked a wave of excited buzz and a sharp spike at the indie box office during its slow rollout in limited release. Like Schoenbrun’s previous movie, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, TV Glow was a sensation at Sundance and a subsequent critical hit. Both movies have won fans with their queasy, dreamy late-night tone, and the way they tap into familiar feelings of dread and alienation, compounded with the relief that can come from finding a fandom and sharing an obsession with other people. In World’s Fair, the protagonist is drawn into an online community sharing creepypasta-type stories. TV Glow, by contrast, centers on a late-night TV show called The Pink Opaque, about two girls using their psychic connection (and their magical, matching, glowing tattoos) to save the world from evil.

Most time travel stories are either stories of intervention or preservation; following protagonists attempting to either alter the past to correct for something in the future, or doing everything in their power to return to their own time period without drastically altering the past. Time Patrol Bon sits squarely in the middle, which is exactly what makes it a beloved cult classic manga — and a surprisingly prescient adaptation from Netflix.

In 2020, director Karyn Kusama was tapped to direct a new version of Dracula for Blumhouse Productions. Like The Invisible Man before it, the Dracula movie was going to be set in the modern day: a chance for Universal to reboot its continually doomed Monsterverse.

Avowed anime afficionado Megan Thee Stallion dropped her new video for “BOA” on Wednesday, delivering a love letter to her nerdiest late-’90s and early aughts influences. That includes no shortage of shout outs to Scott Pilgrim, One Piece, Dance Dance Revolution, and the 3D fighting games of the era.

A sequel to Red, White & Royal Blue is in the works from Prime Video. Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez are both reprising their roles as Prince Henry and Alex Claremont-Diaz, Matthew López, director and writer of the first film, returns to write the script. And for anyone who’s worried that the sequel movie might not capture the book’s spirit, don’t worry — author Casey McQuiston will also be co-writing the script.

When Disney Lorcana launched in July 2023, it was strictly a competitive trading card game. As with any game, there’s a graceful way to play with newcomers or the kids at the local game store. But the thirst for lore (the game’s version of victory points) is real, and few can stand in the way of a parched Illumineer. Now publisher Ravensburger is expanding the format. Its new standalone game, Illumineer’s Quest: Deep Trouble, is coming out soon and Polygon has your first look inside the box. Get ready for cooperative and single-player game modes — both of which make use of the cards and decks you might already own.

Right now, every industry faces discussions about how artificial intelligence might help or hinder work. In movies, creators are concerned that their work might be stolen to train AI replacements, their future jobs might be taken by machines, or even that the entire process of filmmaking could become fully automated, removing the need for everything from directors to actors to everybody behind the scenes.

Ever since watching the Fallout show, I can’t get enough of it. The show was my introduction to its world, and the ending only inspired me to dive deeper in the worlds of the video games that inspired the show. Everything from the evils of Vault-Tec to the eccentric characters fascinated me. Clearly I’m not alone — the game series received an influx of players following the release of the show — but not everyone can commit to playing the games. It can be a massive time investment and even require hundreds of mods to play. Luckily for me, I’ve found a great way to experience the games without actually playing them: Watching clips on TikTok.

The Critical Role actual play empire is expanding again. On Thursday, the group of Dungeons & Dragons-playing voice actors announced Beacon, a new membership program that promises to be “the most direct way” to support Critical Role. Beacon will offer “a wide range of exclusive and early access programming” among its member perks and, crucially, let Critical Role bypass third-party video services like YouTube and Twitch, where much of its content is streamed and hosted.

ColourPop Cosmetics’ latest pop culture crossover is Pokémon, and it’ll hard to resist the urge to catch ‘em all. The cosmetic brand previously had Twilight, Sailor Moon, Star Wars, and Disney collections, among others, so a Pokémon collab is a natural evolution.

The news is out: Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings collaborators will executive produce a new movie set in Middle-earth, with Andy Serkis directing and reprising his role as Gollum, and the working title is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Much like the weird creature of the night it is named after, Batman: Caped Crusader has been shrouded in mystery since it was announced, with only a neat teaser poster to go on that was evocative of radio serials and a noir-ish feel. Executive-produced by the powerhouse trio of J.J. Abrams, The Batman directorMatt Reeves, and Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm, Caped Crusader stands to be the splashiest animated take on Batman in some time. The best part is, we won’t have to wait very long for it: Prime Video announced Thursday that Caped Crusader will premiere on Aug. 1.

One of the biggest draws of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, the final campaign in the decade-long run of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, is the fact that you can play as a high-level character. Most D&D campaigns end around level 10. Eve of Ruin starts there, and then proceeds to go up to level 20, the game’s cap. That means players will begin the story with extremely powerful, potentially game-breaking spells and abilities. So how did the designers at Wizards of the Coast manage to keep characters in line, preventing them from blowing up the entire narrative from the jump? The answer is very, very carefully.

Lord of the Rings fans are having a good day: First, there was news of the new Gollum film coming in 2026. Now, fans who want to return to Middle-earth in the interim can pick up special editions of the books for more than 50% off.

Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman will ride (together) again this August, Polygon can exclusively reveal, in Gotham City Sirens, a weekly-publishing miniseries from Leah Williams (X-Factor), Matteo Lolli (Marauders), Daniel Hillyard (Plush), and Brandt & Stein (Crowded).

Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the company would be producing new Lord of the Rings movies, but said very little about what they would be about — riddles in the dark, if you will. It’s been a long 15 months since then, but the latest Middle-earth adventure has finally been revealed: Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by and starring Andy Serkis.

We love movie recommendations here at Polygon. But we also love recommending TV shows. Whether it’s horror, sci-fi, miniseries, comedy, thrillers, or just the best of the year, we’re always trying to introduce readers to new and exciting shows they’ll love. And now — after much movie to-do — we want to find the perfect TV show for you. (We mean you.)

The Strong National Museum of Play has announced the five games joining the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year: Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, Ultima, and SimCity. These five games beat out other classics, like Neopets, Metroid, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, to grab a place in the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s 10th class.

Back in 2007, alert fans of fantasy grand master Peter Beagle had a very short window of time to get excited about the announcement of his latest novel, I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons. The book was abruptly pulled from the release schedule, reportedly because of Beagle’s conflict with publisher Penguin USA over a new edition of his best-known book, The Last Unicorn.

You are an egg person. You wake up in a large turnip.

Pokémon Center has become a leading purveyor of all things round, squishy, and big. First we got the comically large life-sized Spheal. Now the online seller of Pokémon merchandise has released another banger: Pokémon bean bag chairs. As of Wednesday, fans can pre-order from the Pokémon x Yogibo line. Interested buyers have the options to purchase round, plump bean bag versions of Lechonk, Gengar, and Jigglypuff.

There is no end to the X-Men ’97’s nostalgia streak: If simply reviving a Saturday morning favorite from the 1990s wasn’t enough, the creative team behind the Disney Plus series has littered each episode with even more in-jokes, from retro side-scroller references to connections to other Marvel animated properties. This week’s episode, “Tolerance Is Extinction — Part 2” contains a whopper for those around in 2000 for the release of the first-ever X-Men movie – a perfect dig that also works as a pithy callback.

For more than a decade, reports have been circulating about the original version of the upcoming action movie Furiosa— an anime series that director George Miller and writer Mahiro Maeda were working on at the same time they were developing Mad Max: Fury Road. At a Q&A after a recent press screening for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at IMAX Headquarters outside of Los Angeles, Miller revealed that while the anime series eventually evolved into a live-action film, one small element survived from the defunct project, taken from early character sketches by Fury Road concept artist and anime stalwart Maeda.

Carrying on the legacy of its predecessor, X-Men ’97 leaves no stone unturned when it comes to adapting and remixing the great X-Men comics of the 1980s and ’90s. And the final moments of this week’s episode, “Tolerance is Extinction — Part 2,” are no exception.

Sega has been playing a little fast and loose with Sonic the Hedgehog lately, using the blue blur for experimental projects like The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. At the same time, the movies based on the franchise have been surprisingly good. Here’s another treat for the Sonic enjoyers out there: Sega just announced Sonic Rumble, a 32-player PvP mobile game created with Finnish studio Rovio.

A brutal year of gaming industry layoffs has led to the unceremonious closure of studios that many believed to be the definition of successful. There’s a lot of ink worth spilling on each studio, but one closure that stood out to me was Arkane Austin, which Microsoft said on Tuesday would close its doors. (The French side of the business, Arkane Lyon, will continue on.)

There is no end to the X-Men ’97’s nostalgia streak: If simply reviving a Saturday morning favorite from the 1990s wasn’t enough, the creative team behind the Disney Plus series has littered each episode with even more in-jokes, from retro side-scroller references to connections to other Marvel animated properties. This week’s episode, “Tolerance Is Extinction — Part 2” contains a whopper for those around in 2000 for the release of the first-ever X-Men movie – a perfect dig that also works as a pithy callback.

Ten years ago, writer Drew McWeeny posed a question in the headline of his latest column: “Has life in the age of casual magic made moviegoers numb to the amazing?” Frustrated by news of what would be 2016’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, which he considered an unnecessary sequel to a film everyone saw and no one really loved, McWeeny revisited the film’s predecessor, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. He concluded that it was both a terrible movie and a technical marvel. McWeeny’s column articulated an existential crisis in both moviemaking and moviegoing: In a cinematic world without limits, the combination of extraordinary technical innovation and the lack of narrative ambition to match was making moviegoers numb.

Star Trek’s future is a secular one. Franchise creator Gene Roddenberry was an avowed atheist, and the series and its spin-offs have routinely criticized organized religion as manipulative, illogical, and detrimental to the evolution of a society. Individual members of the human race may have an undefined spirituality, a curiosity about the afterlife, or a sense of wonder at the unknown or unknowable, but specific religious beliefs are typically reserved for alien cultures.

Independent studios continue to create innovative, expressive video games across all genres. You may not have missed the surprise, breakout hits from independent studioPalworld from Japanese studio Pocketpair, but there are plenty of games that may have slipped through the cracks. That’s what we’re here for.

It’s been almost two years since Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the anime miniseries set in the universe of Mike Pondsmith’s sci-fi tabletop RPG franchise, premiered on Netflix and hacked its way into the hearts of fans worldwide. If you’re still bummed there’s still no plans for a second season, cheer up: R. Talsorian Games, the publisher behind the Cyberpunk TTRPG, announced a new box set for the game inspired by both the anime on Tuesday.

Whether you’re a new Game Pass subscriber or just looking to renew your membership, you’ll want to check out this deal at Woot. Through May 10, the Amazon subsidiary is offering three-month Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions for just $36.99 (was $49.99), saving you a grand total of $56 if you purchase a whole year. With three-month subscriptions of Game Pass Ultimate regularly discounted to around $45 at places like Target and Amazon, this deal is the best price we’ve seen in some time.

During the first few minutes of playing as Hades 2’s Melinoë, players encounter sights like a bubbling cauldron, the silhouette of a pointed witch’s hat, and the glowing lines of a summoning circle. Between the new gameplay and the story, Hades 2 goes all in on the dark magic — and that’s one of the biggest differences between it and its predecessor, Hades.

Amazon is currently discounting a handsome collection of core curriculum and supplementary adventures for Dungeons & Dragons. Whether you’re trying to rope your friends into your next tabletop session or need an ample supply of one-shot adventures to kill time while we all wait for D&D’s revised fifth edition, you’ll want to check out this modest selection of discounted tomes.

For a game of Dungeons & Dragons you really only need a few things: some dice, the barest idea of a possible encounter, and a few other people with characters in-hand. So when I’m coming to the game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, for one of their campaigns I’m expecting quite a lot for my dollar — an excellent hook, for starters, but also a lengthy experience with lots of extras to pull my players in.

SyFy’s Chuckyseries is a lot of things: A bold continuation for a franchise with a high hit rate, one of the funniest shows on TV, and a series that consistently takes big, outrageous swings. A place where one of the most talented father-daughter duos in Hollywood can work together like they never have before.

Microsoft is closing four Bethesda studios: Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Mighty Doom developer Alpha Dog Studios, Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, and support studio Roundhouse Games. Xbox Game Studios leader Matt Booty announced the news to staff in an email Tuesday citing a reprioritization of “high-impact titles,” according to IGN. Arkane, Alpha Dog, and Tango Gameworks confirmed the closures on their respective X accounts.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa officially acknowledged Nintendo is making a Switch successor — called Switch 2 by many, albeit not by Nintendo — in a message coinciding with the company’s yearly financial results. Yes, we all knew the Nintendo Switch successor was coming, but Nintendo had said nothing about the console ahead of Furukawa’s message.

Movie stars at the top of their game can often feel invincible, but there was something about Dwayne Johnson’s 2000s climb from wrestler to bankable Hollywood star that seemed uniquely bulletproof. Possessing an endless supply of charm and an aggressive careerist streak, “The Rock” seemed to will his way to the top of the wrestling world and then the box office, managing the tricky maneuver of being ever-present — on the big screen, in random TV appearances, on Instagram — yet not suffocating.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin is unlike anything yet published for the modern incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons. The final campaign for the original 5th edition rule set begins at level 10, far higher than some other published adventures reach over the course of their entire run. It then proceeds to top out at the system’s hard level cap of 20. That much experience will convert you and your party into magically infused, professionally trained killing machines. Trust me when I say that there will be plenty of opportunities to put those skills to work.

The barrage of TV — and great TV — continues apace in 2024, with plenty of intriguing new and returning shows launching their seasons this week.

Helldivers 2 players have spent their time in the galaxy since launch learning how to work together for a common cause. When the Automatons mysteriously returned to menace the galaxy, tacticians would take to X and Discord to encourage fans to hit the right planets. Super Earth asked Helldivers to kill two billion bugs, and the player base pulled it off within hours. But the biggest coordinated effort that players have pulled off is not against the bugs or bots, but against the game’s publisher, Sony — and after a weekend of protest, the Helldivers scored a massive triumph.

With only 14 months left before the inaugural film of Warner Bros.’ reimagined DC Comics film slate, director James Gunn shared a first look at at his Superman movie in the traditional way, by showing off a new take on the hero’s costume. But that’s not the only traditional thing about it.

Hulu’s new documentary The Contestantis a lively watch, but also a deeply unnerving one. In 1998,Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” a personal nickname turned stage name) agreed to live in a tiny one-room apartment, completely isolated from the world, for a segment on Japan’s extreme game show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen. He was allowed no food, clothing, or other personal possessions, except whatever he could win through magazine sweepstakes. Told to stay in the room until he’d won 1 million yen worth of prizes, he slowly starved, naked and alone, with his physical and mental health deteriorating. Then, when he finally reached his goal, the show’s producer, Toshio Tsuchiya, told him he had to do it all again, this time in Korea.

It’s time to slash through baddies and wield the power of some very sexy gods. Developer Supergiant Games released Hades 2 in early access on Monday. The game might be a pre-release version, but it’s certainly not a completely unpolished work-in-progress. A select number of players tried the game as part of a technical test in April, and its characters have already piqued the interest of fans. Now, Windows PC users can download the early version of the game on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Gen V’s second season is changing significantly after the tragic death of star Chance Perdomo.

Buckshot Roulette is an ugly, mean little game that pits players in a no-win scenario against a sinister, shotgun wielding dealer. The game is a solo effort from developer Mike Klubnika, and it blew up after its launch on itch.io, in part because it found popularity on short-form video platforms. The game has since launched on Steam and has now sold over a million copies. In a world where big-budget, wonderfully crafted games can – and often do – fall off the radar without making a splash, it’s interesting to interrogate the unexpected success of a small game, especially one that’s designed to be so viscerally unpleasant.

There are a few constants in this chaotic life: death, taxes, and Magic The Gathering’s Black Lotus card selling for increasingly absurd sums of money.

I have a Dungeons & Dragons curse. You won’t find it in the Player’s Handbook or on any list of spells, and yet it’s demonstrably real. Gather round, listeners, and hear my woeful tale. (I have a lute now. I’m plucking it. It’s too late; the tavern door is locked behind you.)

In the days since Sony Interactive Entertainment announced an unpopular Helldivers 2 and PlayStation linking policy, players have been flooding the game’s Steam page wil negative reviews. By Sunday, more than 200,000 of Helldivers 2’s 266,126 reviews on Steam were negative, filed in the aftermath of the disastrous announcement. But the review-bombing worked: Sony heard Helldivers 2 players and announced Monday that it’s no longer requiring Steam players to link a PlayStation Network account.

It can be nice to have a TV show in your rotation that you know isn’t ending any time soon. But sometimes, you want something with an end point in mind from its creators. Freed from the pressures of renewal and cancellation, limited series can give us some of the best storytelling the medium of television has to offer.

Twenty years ago, Park Chan-wook’s revenge thriller Oldboy turned him into a worldwide star, setting off a new wave of Korean neo-noirs and helping break down barriers for international cinema. The movie’s memorable, irresistible hook: After a drunken bender, Korean businessman Oh Dae-su wakes up in a small, dilapidated hotel room, where he’s been imprisoned by unknown parties. As months pass with no contact from the outside apart from anonymous food deliveries, he begins to unravel, numbed by isolation and helplessness.

If you’ve been to movie theaters much in the post-quarantine years, you’ve surely seen a certain kind of pre-show message where a stars appears on screen to thank the audience for seeing their film the way they wanted it to be seen: on the big screen. (The funniest case for me was when a pre-recorded Margot Robbie thanked me for seeing her new film Babylon with an audience in a crowded theater. There were three other people there.) The new action-comedy The Fall Guy opens with one of those bumpers, with star Ryan Gosling and director David Leitch bantering about how they had you — yes you — in mind when they made the movie, and that they hope you enjoy it. It’s cute, it’s earnest, and it’s meant to get you excited about the blockbuster you’re about to see.

May the 4th may not be an important date on Star Wars’ in-fiction calendar, but it has turned an otherwise entirely arbitrary date in spring into the best day of the year to find discounts on movies, games, and other merch from a galaxy far, far away. We’ve looked at different retailers to find the best deals on Star Wars Lego sets, games, 4K Blu-rays, and other cool stuff to celebrate this massive contribution to pop culture.

May is finally here, and with it comes a slate of some of the year’s most anticipated movie premieres. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, I Saw The TV Glow, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are this month’s must-see theatrical releases, but if you’re looking for the best movies new to streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Max, and more this May, you’ve come to the right place.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is 25 years old and back in theaters for Star Wars Day (“May the 4th be with you”), inevitably setting off a new round of debate about the movie, the prequel trilogy as a whole, and the current, sometimes frustrating, state of Star Wars media. Though The Phantom Menace has been heavily criticized, it’s also been re-examined and even embraced over the past few decades. There are memes that celebrate the highly dramatic dialogue and direct references in tentpoles like Solo. The kids who grew up with the prequels as their main Star Wars movies have spoken up to defend them.

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

Science fiction has always been a fertile genre for telling stories that revolve around mysteries. From Ridley Scott’s classic Blade Runner to Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell, sci-fi and mystery go together as perfectly as a culprit’s hand in a blood-stained glove. Mars Express, the debut feature from French animator-director Jérémie Périn, is further proof of the connection, by taking the basic elements of a Chinatown-esque story about a missing person and a deadly conspiracy, and iterating on them in the far-flung world of colonized space filled with sentient machines and bleeding-edge technology.

Apex Legends’ new character is ready to send herself — and everyone around her — into an apocalyptic spiral. Respawn Entertainment introduced its newest fighter to join the roster of playable characters to its popular online shooter on Friday. Her name is Alter, and the Harley Quinn-esque legend will bring a set of void-based powers to the the popular online shooter, as shown in her trailer.

Hades, the supremely successful Roguelike from the team at Supergiant Games, is discounted to its lowest price ever on Steam through May 13. Available for $24.99 at launch, you can currently pick up a copy for just $8.49, which coincidentally, is just about 66.6% off. Following a brief technical test, the Early Access launch for Hades 2 is likely right around the corner, which makes this an ideal opportunity to get acquainted with the underworld.

The Dropout streaming service will expand its library this month with Thousandaires, a “wish fulfillment panel comedy series,” according to the company’s news release.

I should have been enjoying the beach. I was on vacation, far from my gaming PC, and close to soothing, rolling waves. But instead, my mind kept drifting to a landlocked chunk of 14th century Germany. Few games have wormed their way into my brain like Manor Lords.

At the height of John Green’s popularity, most people knew the YA author for a very specific genre: sad teen books, usually about shy-yet-pretentious boys in love with spirited yet emotionally available girls. That was always a derogatory oversimplification of Green’s novels, which often deconstruct common YA tropes more than they give into them. But years of warped online perspectives on Green’s work, heightened by aesthetic Tumblr posts and Pinterest mood boards, meant that when the 2014 movie adaptation of Green’s tragic teen romance The Fault in Our Stars came out, the were calcified, preconceived notions of what a John Green Book™ was. (Never mind thatThe Fault in Our Stars flipped the gender roles, with a reserved girl and a vivacious boy.)

On May 7, author Chelsea Monroe-Cassel’s The Official Game of Thrones Cookbook arrives to bookstores, offering 80 recipes culled from across the Seven Kingdoms. In his foreword for the book, A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin heartily endorses Monroe-Cassel’s documentation of the delicacies that range from Dothraki to Dornishmen, and goes a step further, making the case for why he’s a fan of indulging in the “gratuitous.” Read on for Martin’s words, debuting exclusively on Polygon, and a recipe for a roast worthy of the writer’s filling tomes.

There has been so much time committed to yelling online about sex scenes in movies and TV — whether they’re gratuitous, whether they’re fundamental to a realistic portrayal of life, whether they’re titillating fun, and whether they offend Penn Badgley’s wife — that the discourse has now entered meme territory. But passionate defenders of hot-and-heavy drama might be right to make a ruckus over what they deem culturally valuable: According to a new study, the depiction of doin’ it in mainstream Hollywood movies has fallen dramatically over the last 20 years.

My Hero Academia returns this Saturday with the highly anticipated premiere of its seventh season. The latest season of the mega-popular superhero action anime is set to adapt the “Star and Stripe” arc of Kōhei Horikoshi’s original manga. That means the arrival of America’s No. 1 Hero, Star and Stripe, in Japan to aid Izuku Midoriya and his classmates in their battle against Tomura Shigaraki and the Paranormal Liberation Front.