All of a sudden, buzz shifted from whether Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers will beat Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV on Sunday — briefly, anyway — and squarely on the announced return of college football to gaming. Like Boise State’s epic Statue of Liberty play in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, nobody saw this one coming. The EA’s NCAA Football franchise dropped out of college more than seven years ago, a casualty of the debate over whether student-athletes should be compensated for the use of their likeness while those who weren’t battling for school pride on fall Saturdays reaped the financial rewards of a successful annualized sports game....

Except that there have been two previous attempts at a Supernatural spin-off, both getting a pilot episode aired during the show itself, neither of which were picked up by the network. Now, Dean Winchester himself, Jensen Ackles, is producing another attempt, with the first season of The Winchesters due to air on the CW this autumn. So, what does this one need to do to succeed where the two earlier attempts have failed?...

It turns out that Gaiman and the late Pratchett had discussed a possible sequel to their popular collaborative novel, and some elements from that effort, which would have been titled 668: The Neighbor of the Beast, have already been introduced. “The fact that we have Jon Hamm as the impossibly irritating angel Gabriel is something from the sequel we slid back in, [including] the relationship between heaven and hell, where we keep going back and forth between these two appalling places,” Gaiman told Variety back in 2019....

Usually, news like this would be met with overwhelming support from the vast majority of gamers who do not cheat or support the use of cheating software in video games. Only the cheaters are really going to complain about being banned for cheating (which is, hilariously, happening as we speak, particularly on a specific cheat distribution website which we won’t promote here). Yet, there seem to be more than a few Call of Duty players who feel that they’ve been down this road before and that the recent bans likely won’t amount to much in the long-run....

“Most of the lyrics are just computer-generated syllables sung by a Hungarian choir, very few were written, like the song of the bats and originally the final battle song lyrics,” Organi says via a recent Reddit post. “The music producer who wrote the lyrics of Radagon and the Elden Beast told me From Soft ordered him to turn the correct Latin lyrics into gibberish and so the producer turned them into gibberish…” The research itself is absolutely fascinating, and I highly recommend either reading more about it via the post link above or checking out Oragni’s YouTube channel, Antonius Tertius....

Who knows what evils lie at the heart of CBS’s Evil? Shadows know. We consulted a book of shadows (not the one Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) skims, too many spoilers there) to cut into the left ventricle of the darkness feeding the network’s supernatural series, now in production for season 2. The blood of the police procedural pumps through the veins of the paranormal investigation show, but Evil transcends the statutes of those limitations....

The release of these shorts, which have very clearly been defined as separate entities on Disney+ rather than an ongoing show, has indicated that Marvel is willing to get a little riskier when it comes to the formats in which they tell their stories. There’s surely a place for short films within the context of the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. What narrative opportunities could occur thanks to the addition of this platform, and are there any benefits to reviving these mini-movies?...

Ever since Halo: Combat Evolved arrived on Microsoft gaming console Xbox in 2001, the first-person shooter series and multimedia franchise has been represented by one character above all others. John-117 or “Master Chief” is the perfect video game protagonist. Stoic, powerful, and visually iconic, the Spartan super soldier in green MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor is an ideal player avatar. Not only does the guy look cool as hell but he never breaks kayfabe by taking off his bulky helmet with a shiny gold visor....

Netflix’s new Resident Evil series points the franchise in a very unexpected direction, completely changing what we think we know about the villainous Albert Wesker. Played by Lance Reddick (Fringe) in the new streaming show, the Wesker of this series is much more than just a mad scientist hellbent on world domination — he’s also a family man with two daughters with their own teen drama to sort out. Jade (Ella Balinska/Tamara Smart) and Billie (Adeline Rudolph/Siena Agudong) give us an inside look into what it’s like growing up a Wesker, and by the end of the first season, we’ve learned just what it means to be tied to such a dark legacy....

Rarely has a show been more successful in choosing an additional angle to present alongside sci-fi than Prime Video’s Outer Range. This eight-episode series starring Josh Brolin adds a dash of neo Western noir to its heady premise as Brolin’s character, the rancher Royal Abbott, discovers a mysterious time-altering Void on his massive Wyoming property. The first season of Outer Range deftly explored all the questions that arose from this supernatural occurrence and all around out into an enigmatic, yet satisfying ending....

Described by developer Iron Gate AB as “A brutal exploration and survival game for 1-10 players, set in a procedurally-generated purgatory inspired by Viking culture,” Valheim has quickly become one of the talked about (and played) PC games in the world. Elements of the survival title will instantly be familiar to fans of games like Rust and 7 Days to Die, but merely comparing Valheim to other popular PC survival titles doesn’t exactly capture what has helped Valheim sell over 2 million copies before it’s even left Early Access....

Shadowlands introduces a crafted legendries system that allows players to forge legendary items. While that means that you will no longer be entirely reliant on luck to get the legendary item you want most, actually crafting a legendary item will demand a lot of work, a lot of time, and…well…a little luck. Here’s what you need to know about how to craft legendaries in Shadowlands. What Do I Need To Craft Legendary Items in Shadowlands?...

Recently, Sony kicked off what is shaping up to be a month of major gaming reveals with its PlayStation State of Play presentation. Well, Xbox is following suit with their own digital presentation showcase designed to essentially replace what many assume would have been their E3 2022 event. The company is preparing a huge presentation that will tease upcoming offerings from Microsoft’s video game division. Since Bethesda has now officially joined the Xbox family of developers since their parent company was acquired by Microsoft two years ago, that studio will be joining forces with Xbox this year as part of this historic joint event....

Paramount+ has ordered a Yellowstone prequel series from creator Taylor Sheridan called Y: 1883. As the date in the title suggests, the show will follow the Dutton family during the pioneer era as “they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America.” The show will be executive produced by Sheridan, John Linson, Art Linson, David Glasser, David Hutkin, and Bob Yari. “I am excited to continue the story of Yellowstone and thank you to Chris, Keith and David for allowing me to keep on expanding the family for the fans,” Sheridan said in a statement....

Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 5 It has been a little harder to decipher exactly what Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan is going for this season. Usually, Sheridan wears his subtext as proudly as the cowboy hat he’s often seen wearing. Part of the massive popularity of his shows is that almost all of his characters tell the audience how they feel, (some even prognosticate their own death in the form of a voiceover), and that plainspoken sincerity and clarity is what fans have come to love....

Young Justice Season 4 Episode 18 When we asked Greg Weisman, Executive Producer of Young Justice: Phantoms, if we could expect arcs focusing on Rocket and Nightwing (the last two original cast members of the show yet to have their own arcs), he was coy. “I think we’ll refer you to the main title,” he told us. I didn’t expect the response to both to come immediately. “Beyond the Grip of the Gods” has three main plot strands....

Present-day Malmo isn’t a safe place to be. At least, not for the residents of the Rosengard estate, a place ruled over by drug dealers and gang violence. When we meet Wallander (Adam Pålsson), he’s living a solitary life there in a small apartment and keeping his job quiet from the locals who don’t exactly hold the police in esteem. His pre-Ystad career’s still in his infancy, revolving more around noise violations than solving murders....

While hardly the “last great console” so far as hard games go, the N64 is one of the last consoles that consistently featured the kind of games that were so hard that you honestly wondered if they were broken. Well, some of them were actually broken (you know which one we’re going to talk about), but in most cases, they really were just that difficult. Thanks largely to the contributions of developer Rare, these are the hardest N64 games ever made ....

“Season 2 promises to showcase less COVID and more vintage toys, while preserving the same Nacelle Company style of documentary filmmaking that made The Toys That Made Us and The Movies That Made Us such an enjoyable ride into the deepest crevices of our nostalgic memories,” show creator Brian Volk-Weiss said in a statement. The first season included episodes from stores all across the world, including Bill Galaxy Toys and Collectibles in Portland, Oregon, Spiral Toys in Shibuya City, Japan, Leicester Vintage and Old Toy Shop, in Leicester, England, 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Lawrence, Kansas, and Cherry Bomb Toys in Victoria, British Columbia....

What’s next for Alien now that 20th Century Studios is under the ownership of Disney? This year’s D23 convention told us nothing about the studio’s plans for our favorite sci-fi horror series, keeping fans in limbo for yet another year. Fortunately, two previously announced projects are poised to carry on the Alien legacy, with some looking more promising at this point than others… But First, Will Prometheus 3 or Alien: Covenant 2 Ever Happen?...