From Halo Infinite and Back 4 Blood to more classics from Bethesda’s backlog and Starfield (now officially an Xbox exclusive), Xbox Game Pass may have been the real winner of E3 this year. Just look at all of the high-profile games coming to the service: Wondering which titles you really need to keep an eye out for, what you should be pre-installing as we speak, and which games are perfect to play with your friends?...

Editor’s Note: Aaron Sagers is the host of Netflix’s 28 Days Haunted and Den of Geek’s paranormal pop culture podcast Talking Strange. The following article is not a review or endorsement of 28 Days Haunted, but rather a distinct point of view from someone involved in the production. Would you spend 28 days in a haunted house? The question sounds like the set up for a horror movie, but it is effectively the question viewers must ask themselves after watching 28 Days Haunted, Netflix’s first unscripted paranormal investigation show....

Today’s New York Times profiled Activision Blizzard’s C.E.O., Bobby Kotick. Kotick is well known in the business of video gaming, and has been wrongfully villainized in years past. Talking to the Times’ interviewer, Kotick discussed some of the real world problems he runs into as a result of his villainization: “Think about what it’s like for my dating life when the first picture that comes up [in an online search] is me as the devil....

This, of course, has been the premise of many movies dealing with survival against the odds, most recently the Robert Redford-starring All is Lost. But while J.C. Chandor’s nearly wordless drama about one man’s quest to survive became a spare, almost unbearably tense metaphor for the inevitability of death, Adrift goes for a more Y/A-friendly approach to its story as it rolls back and forth in time to show us the beginnings of the love affair that brought Tami and Richard — who eventually resurfaces but is gravely injured — on board the boat and into the maw of a vicious hurricane in the first place....

Agents of SHIELD Season 6 Episodes 12 & 13 Besides the welcome familiarity of the unexpected twists we’ve paradoxically come to expect from Agents of SHIELD, the season 6 finale benefits from a healthy dose of fearlessness. At this stage of the game, the show is unafraid to confound its own characters’ beliefs, and even though the defeat of Izel shut down the whole invasion with Night King simplicity (can this trope please die?...

American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 7 On August 28, 1995, the Fox network turned to Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction host Jonathan Frakes, special effects guru Stan Winston, cinematographer Allen Daviau, and forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht as part of a never-before-seen special called Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. The footage, released by UK entrepreneur Ray Santilli, was presented as an authentic autopsy of the body of a gray alien recovered from the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash supplied to Santilli by a military cameraman....

All American Season 3, Episode 2 We’re back with a new episode and, as the premiere teased us, there is something that went down the summer before senior year with some of these characters. In “How to Survive in South Central,” All American does a good job of unraveling more of the melodrama mystery. But, I guess the slowburn of a certain secret is what makes it even juicier? Conflict, conflict, conflict....

American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 5 As the story picks up steam, American Horror Story taps into some pretty classic horror tropes yet again to enrich its story. One of the things that initially caught my eye about the series when it first hit the airwaves ten years ago was the way in which the show was clearly written by horror fans and went out of its way to reward horror fans with little Easter eggs....

If this all sounds a little familiar, that’s likely because Animal Crossing: New Leaf featured a similar promotion that allowed you to add various Sanrio characters to your village. However, it was incredibly difficult to find the cards required to unlock the villagers in that game, which means that many players (especially those in the U.S. where the cards were not previously released) never got the chance to invite them....

Nah. Unlike, say, Teyonah Parris in the much smarter and eerier Candyman—who takes one look down a flight of basement steps and firmly closes the door instead of taking a step down—the character in Antlers probes further into the house, against all reason and sanity. Guess how the scene ends? That one sequence sums up Antlers in a nutshell. Directed and co-written by Scott Cooper from a short story by Nick Antosca, who also contributed to the script, and produced by Guillermo Del Toro (who should know better), Antlers throws some half-baked First Nations lore and modern social commentary at the viewer to make us think it’s smarter than it really is....

Batman ’89 brings together the movie’s original screenwriter, Sam Hamm, with artist Joe Quinones, who has been tied to a revival of the Burtonverse in the comics for quite some time. Quinones previously pitched a similar miniseries to DC, at the time to be written by Kate Leth (Hellcat). While the idea was rejected, Quinones’ designs for a comic book sequel to Batman have received tons of praise from fans in the years since....

Okay, so anime’s presence might not be quite at that level, but the popularity of the once-niche area of the animation industry only continues to blossom and become more mainstream. Not only are there now ample anime series that are available on popular streaming services, but this is even used as a selling point in some cases! There have never been more anime titles readily available to audiences, which is certainly exciting, but it can also be overwhelming....

While there are a few games scheduled for release in 2022 that we’ve been looking forward to for years now, it’s the depth of the year’s lineup that really sets it apart. While we’re still waiting for several of the year’s biggest games to finally get release dates (and delays are obviously always a possibility), there’s a very good chance that every month this year will feature multiple new releases that will end up being in the game of the year conversation....

This list of most-anticipated non-western fantasies has some ongoing series titles, as well as conclusions to fantasy sagas, and brand new series starters. So whether you’ve been following titles inspired by world locations beyond western Europe, or whether you are brand new to this window into where the fantasy genre can go and has gone, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the titles I’m most looking forward to this year....

If there’s one thing that Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever nailed, it was a surprise cameo that no one saw coming. Away from the shock return of Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger, the writers managed to keep a lid on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Alongside nods to Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man and trade agreements with New Asgard, Wakanda Forever has a major tie to the wider MCU that sets up Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts....

When Joyce Carol Oates began writing Blonde, the 2000 novel on which the new Ana de Armas movie is based, she admitted she was less concerned with the facts of Marilyn Monroe’s life than the idea of the quintessential movie star. Oates saw Monroe as an emblem of 20th century America, a pivotal intersection of the nation’s values and fantasies about sex, power, and the role of women during a moment of cultural ascendence....

As revealed in a report filed in The Daily Beast, late in the film Baron Cohen’s Borat and his daughter Tutar, played by Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, attempt to seduce Giuliani. Why? Because Borat dreams of marrying his daughter to someone inside President Donald Trump’s inner circle. “Rudolph was Donald’s best buddy in the whole world,” Borat apparently says over narration. “And also very dignified statesman of the highest order....

When Brandon Sanderson wrote The Way of Kings, the first book in The Stormlight Archive series, he was ready to give up on publishing. Throwing away any ideas of what the market wanted, he decided to write something instead for himself. Now, 18 years later, Rhythm of War, the fourth book of The Stormlight Archive, marks Sanderson’s 25th novel (in addition to assorted novellas, short stories, and graphic novels), and something over seven million words of published fiction....

Marvel Studios released a first teaser for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and there was a lot to unpack! Benedict Cumberbatch is back as Stephen Strange in the sequel, which has now shifted release dates and will finally arrive on May 6, 2022, all things being well. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness takes place in a post-Avengers: Endgame world where the multiverse has been opened up following the game-changing events of Marvel’s Loki TV series....

Some Bridgerton viewers may be wondering why the final two scenes of season 2 feature a time jump in-between Penelope’s voiceover as Lady Whistledown and the last moment which is a reprisal of the Pall Mall game from episode 3. There’s a simple explanation beyond creating hype for future seasons. The answer lies in the book that Bridgerton season 2 is based on called The Viscount Who Loved Me. Julia Quinn, the author of the book series, writes epilogue scenes following each book to show events after the couple is engaged or married....