Sonic the Hedgehog turned out to be one of the biggest movies of 2020, despite serious CG character issues that caused a three-month delay. Now, Paramount has dropped the first trailer for the sequel that gives us our first look at a new character, Knuckles, voiced by none other than Idris Elba.
The trailer shows Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and his new sidekick Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessy). He's once again taking on Dr. Robotnik, aka, Eggman (Jim Carrey) who's seeking a classic Sonic McGuffin, the Chaos Emeralds. However, Robotnik has an Echidna up his sleeve in the form of Knuckles, who shows off his brute strength and weirdly elegant speaking voice. (Elba promised that his Knuckles wouldn't sound sexy, but he is more posh than ever.)
The first Sonic film became one of the most successful video game adaptations ever, so there's a lot riding on the sequel. Luckily, the slick trailer indicates that we won't be seeing any of the CGI issues that plagued the first film. The sequel is set to be released on April 8, 2022.
The 2021 Game Awards kicked off last night, mixing the year’s winners (It Takes Two, Deathloop, Kena and several more) with fresh game trailers and bona fide compelling new releases incoming, including Alan Wake 2. (I’m finally playing through the original at the moment, so this piqued my attention.)
We also got a release date for Final Fantasy VII Remake on PC, new Star Wars, Dune and Star Trek games and several (ten, actually) Lady Gaga hits coming to Beat Saber. There may be something for every gamer.
Oppo has teased its first foldable smartphone nearly three years after it unveiled a prototype device. The Find N looks like a device along the lines of Samsung's Galaxy Fold lineup, created after "four years of intense R&D and six generations of prototypes." Expect to hear more next week at Oppo’s Inno Day on December 15th — which is good because the company hasn’t shared many concrete specs just yet.
He played a key role in the history of game consoles.
Masayuki Uemura, the lead creator of the Famicom and Super Famicom (aka NES and SNES), died on December 6th at the age of 78. Uemura, initially employed by Sharp, first became involved with Nintendo after the company's Gunpei Yokoi asked about using Sharp solar cells to produce light gun games. Uemura joined Nintendo in 1971, and the company released gun games that included a home-friendly game called Duck Hunt (yes, the predecessor of the NES title). By November 1981, Uemura was tasked to build a machine that lets you play arcade games on your TV. The result was 1983's Famicom, known to the rest of the world as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Before Amazon's Alexa became known as the company’s voice assistant, it was the name of its web-ranking site. It was established in 1996 and became famous some time ago for analyzing web traffic and listing the world’s most popular websites.
While Amazon didn't explicitly say why it's shutting down the service, Alexa Internet's traffic has reportedly been on the decline over the past decade. At least the name will live on in Amazon’s smart speakers, displays and the rest.
Paramount+ is adding 18 live channels (just like TV). The initial batch includes one focused entirely on Star Trek, which will stream episodes from new shows like Discovery and Picard and classics such as Enterprise and The Next Generation. (I'm not sure Enterprise is a classic, but you know what I mean.) There are also franchise-specific channels for Survivor, The Challenge and, oh boy, PAW Patrol.
A Halo TV series is heading to Paramount+ after years in development hell, and today we got our first taste of the show. The first trailer for the Halo series is dramatic, seemingly taking a serious, Dune-like approach to the franchise, and showing off Master Chief in his full, dusty glory.
Paramount+ stole the series from Showtime earlier this year, but this thing has been in development for nearly a decade. It was first announced in 2013, and it's now slated to come out in 2022.
After a dearth of games, Star Trek fans have something to look forward to in 2022. Sometime in the spring, ViacomCBS will release Star Trek: Resurgence, a new third-person adventure game from Dramatic Labs, a studio made up of former Telltale Games developers, including individuals who worked on The Wolf Among Usand The Walking Dead.
Set after the events of The Next Generation, Resurgence will feature two playable lead characters: First Officer Jara Rydek and Crewperson Carter Diaz. In a setup that sounds like classic Star Trek in the best possible way, it’s up to them to unravel a mystery involving two alien races that are ready to go to war with another. Dramatic Labs said Resurgence will also feature appearances from “returning” characters. It also noted its building the game in the Unreal Engine, which hopefully means the game won’t have the jank Telltale’s games were known for in the studio’s later years.
We’ll have to see how Resurgence turns out, but based on the talent involved, Star Trek fans can at least be cautiously optimistic. That’s not something that’s been true in recent years. Outside of Bridge Crew, there haven’t been many great Star Trek games since the early 2000s when titles like Bridge Commander and Elite Force did the universe justice.
Star Trek: Resurgence will arrive in spring 2022 on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Windows. On PC, it will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Studio MDHR has finally announced a release date for the long-awaited Cupheadexpansion. After a string of delays, The Delicious Last Course will arrive on June 30th, nearly five years after the run-and-gun platformer debuted.
A trailer that emerged at The Game Awards shows more of that gorgeous 1930s-style art that helped make Cuphead so compelling in the first place. The Delicious Last Course takes place on a new island, Inkwell Isle. Along with new weapons and charms, you'll have even more fiendish bossies to battle.
Ms. Chalice, who has unique abilities, will join Cuphead and Mugman on their new adventure. She'll be a playable character in the original game too.
The DLC was announced all the way back in 2018, with a planned release window of sometime the following year, so it's been a long time coming. Even though this is billed as Cuphead's "final challenging quest," this won't be the last we see of the character. An animated Netflix series called The Cuphead Show is in the works.
We finally know what Keiichiro Toyamahas been up to since leaving Sony. At The Game Awards, Toyama's Bokeh Game Studio revealed Slitterhead. It's a horror-action game that will see you fighting grotesque skeletal monsters. Beyond that, the first trailer the studio shared didn't reveal much about the game's plot. Toyama is best known for his work on Silent Hill and more recently the Gravity Rush series. Also working on the project is Devil May Cry character designer Tatsuya Yoshikawa.
Slitterhead does not have a release date currently.
Gollum promises to be a journey through Middle Earth through the eyes of one of its least heroic inhabitants. Now we're getting to lay eyes on how it'll look in action, thanks to a new trailer released during the Game Awards.
We've been teased with some idea of its locales already, like the fire and brimstone of Mordor, and the lush forest of Mirkwood. It's also been revealed that dialog options will allow players to carve a narrative path based on the choices of either the bitter and debauched Gollum, or his timid but moral alter-ego Smeagol.
Initially scheduled for release in 2021, Daedalic Entertainments Gollum is set to come out at some point next year, and will be available for PC, Playstation, Xbox, and Switch. The company has also claimed it will be the first in a series of games set in Tolkien's worlds.
No, Meta and Beat Games still aren't done adding big-name musicians to Beat Saber. They're releasing a 10-song Lady Gaga Music Pack that, as you'd imagine, brings some of the pop superstar's best-known songs to the VR rhythm game on Quest and Rift headsets. There aren't any surprise picks here — the collection ranges from early hits like "Poker Face" to the Ariana Grande collaboration "Rain on Me." Still, you might appreciate slicing to Gaga's beats with a Chromatica-inspired backdrop.
The pack should be available tonight (December 9th) at $13 for the whole bundle, or $2 per song. Completists could undoubtedly poke holes in the selection (you won't get singles like "Applause"), but it's hard to object loudly when Gaga's dance pop should lend itself well to Beat Saber's gameplay.
Quantic Dream, the developer ofDetroit: Become Human andBeyond: Two Souls, is working on a Star Wars game set in the franchise's High Republic era. That's a sentence we never thought we would ever write, but here we are. Lucasfilm Games announced the title at The Game Awards. Host Geoff Keighley said the game is in "early development." The publisher also shared a cinematic trailer, showing off locations that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the prequel trilogy. Spoiler warning: Jar Jar Binks sadly does not make an appearance in the trailer.
Star Wars: Eclipse does not currently have a release date.
More than two years after its initial announcement, Homeworld 3 has a release date. Gearbox and developer Blackbird Interactive announced on Thursday during The Game Awards the next entry in the classic real-time strategy series will debut before the end of 2022. They also shared a first look at gameplay.
The trailer opens with a shot of the Khar-Toba, the ship that set the Kushan, the protagonists of the Homeworld series, on their journey to return to their home of Hiigara. The clip is narrated by Karan S'jet, who fans will remember as one of the main characters of the first two games. S'jet recounts some of the pivotal moments of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 before the footage turns to the space battles players can expect to experience once the game comes out.
Blackbird Interactive, a studio made up of former Relic Entertainment employees — including Rob Cunningham, the original art director on the first two games — is developing Homeworld 3. The studio previously worked on the excellent Deserts of Kharak, which is a prequel to the first game.
