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Friday, 2 October 2020
The Boys Season 2, Episode 7 Review
The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out This review of The Boys Season 2, Episode 7, titled "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker," contains full spoilers. Amazon recently announced that it's developing a spinoff TV series based on The Boys that's described as "part college show, part Hunger Games." Check out our episode release schedule for The Boys Season 2 to find out when new episodes are debuting on Amazon. [poilib element="accentDivider"] In the penultimate episode of The Boys' second season, titled "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker," director Stefan Schwartz and writer Craig Rosenberg dedicate an ample amount of time to examining the complexities of father-son relationships. In one of the biggest surprises of the season, Lord of the Rings and Fringe alum John Noble makes a powerful cameo as Billy's father, Sam. Noble's appearance was completely unexpected but also expertly executed in terms of the writing and the performances from both actors. Billy's dad needed to be someone who could stand toe-to-toe with him and remain intimidating even in Sam's weakened state. There's also that Lord of the Rings connection the two actors share; Nobel also gave a compelling performance in LOTR as an overbearing and uncompassionate father. Shawn Ashmore's Lamplighter briefly mentions his father before he shockingly sets himself on fire. It was sad to see him go so quickly because the hilariously awkward "porn session" between Lamplighter and Hughie in the episode's opening moments was comedic gold. It would have been nice to see those two on some more adventures together since Jack Quaid and Ashmore had a delightful rapport. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=4a08381f-1d68-4333-984e-d3e20db7c8fe"] More daddy issues abound in the Homelander household as well, with Stormfront and her new superpowered boo convincing young Ryan to leave his mother behind. Homelander and Stormfront's insane relationship has been one of the most entertaining storylines throughout Season 2, and I'm super curious to see how Ryan will handle their toxic influence know that he's flown the coop. Will he follow in his father's footsteps or will Billy find a way to save his stepson? With only one episode left, it feels like we're going to have to wait until Season 3 to find out the answers to those questions. What really tied all of the paternal-themed scenes together was Billy's informative conversation with Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). This pivotal moment brought to light how influential Vought was in transforming Homelander into a monster, along with a solid dose of father abuse. While it's unlikely that Billy feels the slightest bit of sympathy for Homelander, that sinister stare he gave Jonah signified that Butcher understands the power father figures have on their children. It's a difficult issue for any show to tackle, but we're glad Kripke and his team decided to dig deeper into what makes their characters tick. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/02/the-boys-how-much-does-homelander-know-about-homelander"] Some of the other notable highlights in this episode include another heartwarming scene with Frenchie and Kimiko, as the two share a tender moment where she finally teaches him how to properly communicate with her. Sure, he only learns the word gun, and while that's probably not what you would consider a typical first-date scenario, this is The Boys after all. Then there's Black Noir who, after all of his prowess as a warrior and overall badass, is humbled by a tiny Almond Joy during his fight with Starlight. Looking ahead to the finale, there are still so many storylines to wrap up. And while some of them are probably going to get pushed to Season 3 (and beyond?), we're excited to see how Vought and The Boys are going to respond to all of the head-exploding madness that happened in the final minutes of this episode. There's also The Deep and A-Train subplot and their connection to the church. From what Alastair Adana told them at his birthday party, it appears that there's going to be a meeting between Adana and Giancarlo Esposito's Stan Edgar. Perhaps the Church of the Collective and Vought are in cahoots? Whatever happens, next week's finale is shaping up to be a crazy ride if the rest of Season 2 is anything go by. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-boys-season-2-gallery&captions=true"]
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/36tgPgw
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/36tgPgw
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
Lovers Rock Review
The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out IGN serves a global audience, so with Lovers Rock screening at the New York Film Festival, we are publishing our review from Siddhant Adlakha who watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Lovers Rock is the kind of movie that makes you wish we could still gather at theatres and other collective spaces. It seems straightforward on paper, taking place mostly at a house party across a mere hour and six-minute runtime. However, in practice, director Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave) turns this simple story into a spiritual experience, capturing frolic, entrancement and interpersonal tensions through a specific cultural lens — London’s West Indian community in the 1980s — as part of his bold new series of films for Amazon and BBC. The second of five features releasing weekly between November 20th and December 18th, Lovers Rock is part of McQueen’s Small Axe anthology. The saga takes its name from an African proverb later popularized by Bob Marley: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe,” a fitting descriptor of the kind of struggle-against-insurmountable-odds faced by many of the series’ characters. Lovers Rock is one of three films in the series playing at this year’s New York Film Festival (the others are Mangrove and Red, White and Blue), though it stands apart from its Small Axe siblings in the way it captures the struggles of racial inequity. Where the other four films tell true stories of tackling systems of oppression, Lovers Rock — written by McQueen and Courttia Newland — creates an isolated pocket of revelry, where racism exists in the peripheries, but where the focus is entirely on a space created for Black love and community, despite the tumultuous bigger picture of Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain. The film opens during the day, hours before the aforementioned party begins, but its story is already in motion. It takes us on a tour of a two-story house shared by a group of young twenty-somethings while their preparations are underway, as they create a welcoming space as an alternative to London nightclubs where they may not be welcome. Furniture is relocated to make room for a dance floor. Characters jab winkingly at one another, and curry goat is prepared by the pot-full; its aroma practically radiates off the screen. The camera rarely stops to focus on any one thing or person, but as each element whizzes by, it feels like an embedded fixture of this household, as if McQueen — a Grenadian and Trinidadian West Londoner born in 1969 — were reaching into the recesses of his adolescent memory. Night falls soon after, and we’re introduced to our main character, the mischievous Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, making her screen debut), as she escapes from her bedroom window to head to the party with her best friend Patty (Shaniqua Okwok). While there, she meets an alluring stranger, Franklyn (Micheal Ward), with whom she exchanges verbal spars before letting her guard down. A multitude of characters weaves in and out of each other’s eyelines, while the makeshift DJ plays reggae hits from the ’70s and ’80. [caption id="attachment_2413602" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Micheal Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn in Lovers Rock.[/caption] The film’s title sounds, at first, like a reference to some secret place where young romantics hide away from intrusive eyes — the kind of place Martha might need to escape to since even attending a party means creating a ruse for her family. Although, to those familiar with the cultural zeitgeist at the film’s core, it’s a clear reference to the romantic subgenre of reggae that populates the film’s soundscape from start to finish. That said, in a film about young lovers being drawn into each other’s orbit through the power of music, “Lovers Rock” can’t help but feel like a complete sentence; a statement of truth, and a state of being which the filmmakers intend to paint in brush strokes both broad and specific. Romantic and sexual tension fills the air, as beautiful strangers undress each other with their eyes from across the room. But there’s a secondary tension too, a specific cultural tension which McQueen & co. weave into the film’s fabric with expert subtlety. The film may present its Afro-Caribbean characters as a collective hoping to escape the gaze of white supremacy — white characters appear but a few times, in the distance and as aggressive intrusions — but Lovers Rock doesn’t flatten the West Indian diaspora into a monolith. The film is too short (and too propulsive) to stop and ponder its politics in words, but its use of language and accents tells its own story. In key moments, Martha, an outsider to this household, draws the ire of its host Cynthia (Ellis George). What seems to separate them (an element separating several other characters as well) is the way they speak: Martha code-switches with ease between her seemingly “native” English accent and her family’s Caribbean patois, though for Cynthia and other characters in the household, the latter is their native tongue. It’s a different accent, but it’s functionally its own dialect too — when I asked McQueen about it at the film’s NYFF press conference, he said he treated it as its own language when writing the film (lead actors Ward and St. Aubyn agreed with that summation). Without the need for exploring logistics, this mere difference in verbal approach paints an entire backdrop. It speaks to the varying experiences of these characters; some were British-born, or immigrated while they were young enough to adopt the cadence of their new country; others immigrated later (for them, the West Indies is still the first place they called home), but they all traverse a thin line between two different cultures. The standard English accent is more rigid, more uptight, though the characters’ West Indian accents have a musicality to them that fits the film’s premise; switching from one dialect to the next feels like immersing oneself in a space of freedom, where white cultural expectations of what’s “proper” is no longer a concern. [caption id="attachment_2413623" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Lovers Rock's Alexander James-Blake and Kadeem Ramsay. (Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh/BBC/McQueen Limited)[/caption] These are lived experiences that, even within a collective diaspora, can lead to in-group, out-group tendencies (they rear their head once more even in McQueen’s Mangrove, a courtroom drama), but they are not the central story of Lovers Rock. They are merely what grounds the story in the real and the tangible, for the story itself is ethereal. These interpersonal tensions are necessary window-dressing to a film largely comprising scenes of song and dance. The film is a dream of sorts, and like any dream, the intrusion of real-world anxieties is a given. The songs, for instance, don’t transition smoothly into one another — instead, the DJs speak to the crowd, as a “Selector” lines up the next record — so it’s a dream that feels occasionally disturbed, but in manner that feels authentic to the way these parties really played out. Before long, it draws both the partygoers and the audience back into its trance for extended periods, allowing us to re-orient ourselves before submitting to its embrace. McQueen and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner create a warm, dimly-lit dance floor which they navigate with panache. Wide lenses might seem like the instinctive choice, given how much space they capture at once without the need to really readjust focus as the camera moves. But the lenses employed here are long and voyeuristic, flattening space and creating shallow-focus portraits of each individual as the camera zips between them (and, as the night wears on, as it zips between each couple dancing closely, the sweat practically shimmering off their skin). Tensions often arise during the film, be they cultural or stemming from other jealousies, nut they’re soon diffused through dance. The characters become swept up in a rhythmic ecstasy, and we, the viewers, are allowed to bask in the warm glow of what feels like a deeply spiritual celebration. As the characters slip into a carefree trance — far away from the discomforts we’ve seen right outside their door — the film itself becomes entrancing too. An extended sequence set to Janet Kay’s 1979 single “Silly Games” might just be the single most moving and exciting scene of the year, as the party guest not only get lost in the music, but become one with it, even as it fades out and they continue the song on their own terms for several minutes, as if it were some ritualistic chant. If Gaspar Noé’s Climax from 2018 — programmed at this year’s NYFF by filmmaker John Waters — is a depiction of Hell through dance, then McQueen’s Lovers Rock feels like dancing in Paradise. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=igns-best-reviewed-movies-of-2020&captions=true"]
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/33mhHBI
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
Micheal Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn in Lovers Rock.[/caption] The film’s title sounds, at first, like a reference to some secret place where young romantics hide away from intrusive eyes — the kind of place Martha might need to escape to since even attending a party means creating a ruse for her family. Although, to those familiar with the cultural zeitgeist at the film’s core, it’s a clear reference to the romantic subgenre of reggae that populates the film’s soundscape from start to finish. That said, in a film about young lovers being drawn into each other’s orbit through the power of music, “Lovers Rock” can’t help but feel like a complete sentence; a statement of truth, and a state of being which the filmmakers intend to paint in brush strokes both broad and specific. Romantic and sexual tension fills the air, as beautiful strangers undress each other with their eyes from across the room. But there’s a secondary tension too, a specific cultural tension which McQueen & co. weave into the film’s fabric with expert subtlety. The film may present its Afro-Caribbean characters as a collective hoping to escape the gaze of white supremacy — white characters appear but a few times, in the distance and as aggressive intrusions — but Lovers Rock doesn’t flatten the West Indian diaspora into a monolith. The film is too short (and too propulsive) to stop and ponder its politics in words, but its use of language and accents tells its own story. In key moments, Martha, an outsider to this household, draws the ire of its host Cynthia (Ellis George). What seems to separate them (an element separating several other characters as well) is the way they speak: Martha code-switches with ease between her seemingly “native” English accent and her family’s Caribbean patois, though for Cynthia and other characters in the household, the latter is their native tongue. It’s a different accent, but it’s functionally its own dialect too — when I asked McQueen about it at the film’s NYFF press conference, he said he treated it as its own language when writing the film (lead actors Ward and St. Aubyn agreed with that summation). Without the need for exploring logistics, this mere difference in verbal approach paints an entire backdrop. It speaks to the varying experiences of these characters; some were British-born, or immigrated while they were young enough to adopt the cadence of their new country; others immigrated later (for them, the West Indies is still the first place they called home), but they all traverse a thin line between two different cultures. The standard English accent is more rigid, more uptight, though the characters’ West Indian accents have a musicality to them that fits the film’s premise; switching from one dialect to the next feels like immersing oneself in a space of freedom, where white cultural expectations of what’s “proper” is no longer a concern. [caption id="attachment_2413623" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Lovers Rock's Alexander James-Blake and Kadeem Ramsay. (Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh/BBC/McQueen Limited)[/caption] These are lived experiences that, even within a collective diaspora, can lead to in-group, out-group tendencies (they rear their head once more even in McQueen’s Mangrove, a courtroom drama), but they are not the central story of Lovers Rock. They are merely what grounds the story in the real and the tangible, for the story itself is ethereal. These interpersonal tensions are necessary window-dressing to a film largely comprising scenes of song and dance. The film is a dream of sorts, and like any dream, the intrusion of real-world anxieties is a given. The songs, for instance, don’t transition smoothly into one another — instead, the DJs speak to the crowd, as a “Selector” lines up the next record — so it’s a dream that feels occasionally disturbed, but in manner that feels authentic to the way these parties really played out. Before long, it draws both the partygoers and the audience back into its trance for extended periods, allowing us to re-orient ourselves before submitting to its embrace. McQueen and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner create a warm, dimly-lit dance floor which they navigate with panache. Wide lenses might seem like the instinctive choice, given how much space they capture at once without the need to really readjust focus as the camera moves. But the lenses employed here are long and voyeuristic, flattening space and creating shallow-focus portraits of each individual as the camera zips between them (and, as the night wears on, as it zips between each couple dancing closely, the sweat practically shimmering off their skin). Tensions often arise during the film, be they cultural or stemming from other jealousies, nut they’re soon diffused through dance. The characters become swept up in a rhythmic ecstasy, and we, the viewers, are allowed to bask in the warm glow of what feels like a deeply spiritual celebration. As the characters slip into a carefree trance — far away from the discomforts we’ve seen right outside their door — the film itself becomes entrancing too. An extended sequence set to Janet Kay’s 1979 single “Silly Games” might just be the single most moving and exciting scene of the year, as the party guest not only get lost in the music, but become one with it, even as it fades out and they continue the song on their own terms for several minutes, as if it were some ritualistic chant. If Gaspar Noé’s Climax from 2018 — programmed at this year’s NYFF by filmmaker John Waters — is a depiction of Hell through dance, then McQueen’s Lovers Rock feels like dancing in Paradise. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=igns-best-reviewed-movies-of-2020&captions=true"]from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/33mhHBI
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 Gaming Headset Review
The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Turtle Beach’s basic wireless gaming headset, the Stealth 600, is getting an upgrade. The Stealth 600 Gen 2 introduces a few small, but impactful revisions that make the popular Xbox gaming headset more comfortable to wear. For a basic wireless headset whose best selling point has always been its convenience – it is one of only a handful of Xbox-specific headsets you can pair like a Xbox controller – it’s a solid quality-of-life improvement. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=turtle-beach-stealth-600-gen-2-review&captions=true"]
Arguably the biggest selling point for the Stealth 600 Gen 2 on Xbox, and Turtle Beach’s Xbox headsets in general, is the ability to integrate Microsoft’s Xbox wireless pairing protocol. Unlike most wireless headsets, you don’t need a cable or dongle to connect the headset – You simply press the pairing button on the headset, then the pairing button on your Xbox, and they sync. Once synced, the headset will pair automatically whenever you turn it on. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Unlike%20most%20wireless%20headsets%2C%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20need%20a%20cable%20or%20dongle%20to%20connect%20the%20Turtle%20Beach%20Stealth%20600%20Gen%202%20"] At this point, pairing a wireless headset on consoles is always simple, but there is a simple convenience to having a headset that integrates seamlessly with your Xbox the same way as a controller and doesn’t require sacrificing a USB port. It’s less convenient if you also plan to use the headset with a PC. Technically the Stealth 600 Gen 2 can pair with a Windows PC, but only if you plug in an Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows 10. Pairing with the adapter is also easy, but it would be nice if there were some way to use the Stealth 600 Gen 2 with a gaming PC out of the box. 
The headset has a surprising amount of controls stacked along the left earcup. You have two volume rollers – one for speaker volume and a second for microphone volume. There’s a “mode” button, which lets you cycle through a small number of EQ presets. By quickly tapping the power button, you can also access a competitive-forward “Superhuman Hearing” mode, which changes the EQ to highlight footsteps and other game-specific audio cues. At the very bottom of the headset, there’s a power button, a USB-C port for charging and connecting to a PC for firmware updates, and the small circular pairing button. Lastly, there’s an indicator light at the very bottom of the headset to show when the headset is pairing or charging. Unlike most microphones these days, the Stealth 600 Gen 2 sticks with a small hard plastic built into the left earcup. As with the pairing setup, it’s remarkably convenient. The mic fits almost completely flush with the frame of the headphone when flipped up, and easy to flip on and off at a moment’s notice. The mic position isn’t as customizable as other headsets, but I didn’t have any problems getting the mic to pick up my voice. 
“Superhuman Hearing,” the headset’s competitive sound setting, isn’t as helpful as versions of the concept. It primarily boosts the volume, so everything is louder, but especially certain gameplay-relevant sounds. In Apex Legends, it didn’t help me track footsteps, but it was easier to track gunshots heard far off in the distance. Also, my pings and my teammates’ character dialogue came through more clearly. It isn’t much of an advantage and, worse, takes a big toll on audio quality. I noticed more scratchy audio compression and muddled sound in Superhuman mode across multiple games. It performed better in games like Tony Hawk, where you’re primarily listening for the music. Again, the headset is not going to replicate “Superman” and “Guerilla Radio” as well as a pair of nice wireless headphones, but you aren’t going to miss out on anything. As a wireless headset, it performs admirably. The wireless connection was stable and didn’t impose any noticeable lag through long play sessions, even in a room with many wireless connections to potentially interfere. Turtle Beach claims the headset should last up to 15 hours on a single charge. Anecdotally, I found I needed to charge every 3-4 days, which falls roughly in line with that estimate. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=best-gaming-headsets&captions=true"]
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Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 – Design & Features
The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 features lots of small changes and upgrades to make it more comfortable than its predecessor and enhance its sound profile. While they almost universally improve the headset, the Stealth 600 Gen 2 has more in common with the original than not. The thick, hard plastic top band has larger swiveling hinges, and the sides have painted notches to help you adjust the headset properly and keep the measurement. Like the original, the front of the band lines up flush with the front of the earcups, which makes it feel like the cups are on backward. (If you’re new to the Stealth series, you will almost certainly put them on backwards at least once). [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=98e1c301-a97a-478b-8f5c-d9d974e1355b"] That awkwardness is only momentary, though. The earcups in the Gen 2 are larger than the original Stealth 600, which makes them much more comfortable – the originals boxed in my ears a bit. According to Turtle Beach, the cups are “G”-shaped, so they contour to your ear: If you pay close attention, you can feel the sides of the earcups sort of hug your ears around the edges. I wouldn’t necessarily say that makes them more comfortable or uncomfortable, though it does help the headset stay in place on your head at all times. Both the top band and ear cups feature a comfortable, albeit slightly stiff foam padding. The padding is covered with a “breathable” mesh, which is less scratchy than the material used in most mesh headsets. That said, breathable or not, the cups tend to get hot quickly, as most mesh headsets do. (That tight ear fit might also have something to do with it.)
Arguably the biggest selling point for the Stealth 600 Gen 2 on Xbox, and Turtle Beach’s Xbox headsets in general, is the ability to integrate Microsoft’s Xbox wireless pairing protocol. Unlike most wireless headsets, you don’t need a cable or dongle to connect the headset – You simply press the pairing button on the headset, then the pairing button on your Xbox, and they sync. Once synced, the headset will pair automatically whenever you turn it on. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Unlike%20most%20wireless%20headsets%2C%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20need%20a%20cable%20or%20dongle%20to%20connect%20the%20Turtle%20Beach%20Stealth%20600%20Gen%202%20"] At this point, pairing a wireless headset on consoles is always simple, but there is a simple convenience to having a headset that integrates seamlessly with your Xbox the same way as a controller and doesn’t require sacrificing a USB port. It’s less convenient if you also plan to use the headset with a PC. Technically the Stealth 600 Gen 2 can pair with a Windows PC, but only if you plug in an Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows 10. Pairing with the adapter is also easy, but it would be nice if there were some way to use the Stealth 600 Gen 2 with a gaming PC out of the box. 
The headset has a surprising amount of controls stacked along the left earcup. You have two volume rollers – one for speaker volume and a second for microphone volume. There’s a “mode” button, which lets you cycle through a small number of EQ presets. By quickly tapping the power button, you can also access a competitive-forward “Superhuman Hearing” mode, which changes the EQ to highlight footsteps and other game-specific audio cues. At the very bottom of the headset, there’s a power button, a USB-C port for charging and connecting to a PC for firmware updates, and the small circular pairing button. Lastly, there’s an indicator light at the very bottom of the headset to show when the headset is pairing or charging. Unlike most microphones these days, the Stealth 600 Gen 2 sticks with a small hard plastic built into the left earcup. As with the pairing setup, it’s remarkably convenient. The mic fits almost completely flush with the frame of the headphone when flipped up, and easy to flip on and off at a moment’s notice. The mic position isn’t as customizable as other headsets, but I didn’t have any problems getting the mic to pick up my voice. 
Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 – Software
If you connect the Stealth 600 Gen 2 for Xbox to a PC using the USB-C charging cable, you can use Turtle Beach Audio Hub, the company’s headset configuration software. With the Stealth Gen 2, the software is primarily for downloading firmware updates, but there are a couple of options you can customize, including the volume of the tones the headset makes to let you know it’s paired or low on battery. It’s a little annoying that you need to connect to a PC to change these settings, as the headset is made specifically to work with the Xbox One, but it’s better than nothing. (Those indicator tones are very loud by default). If you only use the Stealth 600 Gen 2 with your Xbox One (Or Series S/X), you’ll only need Audio Hub to update the headset’s firmware.
Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 – Gaming
The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 delivers good, but not outstanding sound. In testing with games like Marvel’s Avengers, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remake, Streets of Rage 4, Mortal Kombat 11, and more, the audio was accurate and clean, but didn't always convey the little details of a game’s sound design. Low tones, like explosions or a booming “Finish Him,” come in hard, but the “thud” of the bass doesn’t sound as crisp as it could. High tones like the crackle of Thor’s lightning lack the texture you’d get from a high-end gaming headset. You won’t miss those little sound design details when chatting with friends, but they make a remarkable difference when you’re paying close attention, especially in story-focused experiences. The Stealth 600 Gen 2 supports Windows Sonic, which delivers a crude, but effective virtual 7.1 surround sound. In 3D games, noises coming from the sides or behind often sound disproportionately loud. In a way, that’s good, because it’s very easy to register that they came from a specific direction, but its poorly balanced audio feels jarring and takes you out of the experience.
“Superhuman Hearing,” the headset’s competitive sound setting, isn’t as helpful as versions of the concept. It primarily boosts the volume, so everything is louder, but especially certain gameplay-relevant sounds. In Apex Legends, it didn’t help me track footsteps, but it was easier to track gunshots heard far off in the distance. Also, my pings and my teammates’ character dialogue came through more clearly. It isn’t much of an advantage and, worse, takes a big toll on audio quality. I noticed more scratchy audio compression and muddled sound in Superhuman mode across multiple games. It performed better in games like Tony Hawk, where you’re primarily listening for the music. Again, the headset is not going to replicate “Superman” and “Guerilla Radio” as well as a pair of nice wireless headphones, but you aren’t going to miss out on anything. As a wireless headset, it performs admirably. The wireless connection was stable and didn’t impose any noticeable lag through long play sessions, even in a room with many wireless connections to potentially interfere. Turtle Beach claims the headset should last up to 15 hours on a single charge. Anecdotally, I found I needed to charge every 3-4 days, which falls roughly in line with that estimate. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=best-gaming-headsets&captions=true"]
Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 – Purchasing Guide
The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 wireless headset will be available from Amazon, Newegg, Walmart, and other online retailers for $99.99.from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/2EWNeAY
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
Thursday, 1 October 2020
Raised By Wolves: Season 1 Finale Review
The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out This is a spoiler-filled review of Raised By Wolves Season 1. All episodes are now streaming on HBO Max, and the show has already been renewed for a Season 2. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Ridley Scott may have only directed the first two episodes of Raised by Wolves, but his DNA can be found all over the series — whether through his direct hand as Executive Producer, or his four-decade reign as an influential, big-budget genre filmmaker from whom modern sci-fi storytellers often draw. One needn’t look further than the show’s first season finale for an obvious retread of Alien (1979), though I don’t use “retread” as a pejorative. How can I, as an avowed admirer of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), Scott’s glorious return to the Alien series, and to tales of androids, and to sci-fi-gothic-horror? The show’s tenth hour, as engrossing and intense as the preceding nine, is directed by Scott’s son Luke and written by show creator Aaron Guzikowski. It’s chilling, thrilling, and deviously fun, and it builds on a season’s worth of winding sci-fi mysteries that deepen with every episode. And though the series is still far from providing concrete answers — don’t fret, its swift Season 2 renewal bodes well for this — each mystery cuts to the heart of its major characters, engaging them in a story where faith, technology, and interpersonal drama may as well be one and the same. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/05/raised-by-wolves-official-trailer-2020-travis-fimmel-amanda-collin"] If you haven’t watched the show yet, or still need some convincing, feel free to check out our spoiler-filled or spoiler-free review of its premiere episodes. Those initial three chapters (“Raised by Wolves,” “Pentagram” and “Virtual Faith”) form an unconventional narrative bedrock, beginning with a moody, atmospheric initial forty minutes that act as an extended prologue, followed by more than two hours of the show rapidly throwing new sci-fi concepts at the wall to see what sticks. Pretty much all of it does.
Occasional plot contrivances do arise along the way, as one might expect of such a hefty and fast-paced show. Some of these are, indeed, contrived; the character of Hunter (Ethan Hazzard), for instance, appears to have an unmotivated change of heart in order to restore Father to his original paternal settings, after the Mithraic render him a mere servant. But most of the time, the show’s most convenient developments involve characters learning new information from some mysterious source, whether prophetic cave paintings that pertain to the premise, or the echoing voice purporting to be the Sol. The result may be similar to an actual contrivance, as these goings-on accelerate the plot and thrust the characters into seemingly inorganic conflict — like Paul suddenly learning that Marcus and Sue aren’t really his parents — but the narrative function of these reveals is also perfectly aligned with the show’s thematic core. Raised by Wolves begins as a psychological exploration of what it means to be human. It centers Mother and Father’s emotional evolution as parents who wrestle with their programming, while mirroring this theme through Marcus and Sue, atheists forced against their own violent wiring for survival, who adopt the mantle of parents long before becoming attuned to the role. Similar questions of one’s natural function, one’s role as a mortal creation, and one’s role as a creator have reared their heads in Scott’s Alien films and in Blade Runner (1982). But in Raised by Wolves, these questions take on a more fanatical bent, as they explore the role of human belief, and the role of faith and mysticism in shaping the human psyche. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/03/hbo-maxs-new-ridley-scott-show-exclusive-featurette"] The one glaring hole in the premise — the half-baked history of the Mithraic-Atheist wars back on Earth — reveals itself to be less of a bug and more of a feature. The show’s “Mithraism” may feel like thinly veiled Catholicism, and its “non-believers” seem to have equally staunch and radical beliefs (to the point of suicide bombings!), but this shift in specifics depoliticizes the premise just enough. Considerations of real-world politics, therefore, rarely interfere with our reading of the show’s deeply personal approach to fanaticism. Marcus (or Caleb) may be an atheist, but what defines him in relation to the Mithraic isn’t a core difference in belief, but rather, an eerie similarity despite that difference. He was raised as a soldier from an early age, taught to purge the “weakness” of emotion in favor of violent masculine prowess. The Mithraic, similarly, were taught the art of war as a means to attain spiritual purity. Both groups were made to compartmentalize the impetus behind their violence, and were taught to justify it through faith; for The Mithraic, this meant faith in Sol; for Marcus and the atheists, it was faith in a masculine self-image dependent on militaristic glory. And so, when Marcus is plagued by visions and voices at the foot of an enormous temple, it’s easy for him to switch from one mode of “belief” to its apparent polar opposite. Both structures offer him glory and kinship. Both sets of beliefs are paths to the violent forms of domination beaten into him years ago. This fluid nature of belief is a tenet of the very same programming that allows Mother to be taken advantage of. As a creature seeking answers about her existence, she laments being unable to create life the way Tempest (Jordan Loughran) can; while Mother has been re-programmed to be a protector, her primary protocols as a necromancer lead her to be a destroyer of life, first and foremost — she protects by killing. And so, after Mother comes face to face with an apparition in the form of her creator, reformed Mithraic Campion Sturgess (Cosmo Jarvis), she begins to believe that her physical changes, which allow her to become pregnant, are part of some greater plan. She doesn’t “know” this for sure, but rather, she infers it from the limited information she has, and her conclusions are all in service of her own quest for self-actualization. Her beliefs, like those of the Mithraic, become recursive, with actions that begin to justify themselves. Mother’s belief in her own biological pregnancy, and her new role as humanity’s savior, are intrinsically tied to her newfound faith. She occupies the same physical and spiritual space as Mother Mary in Catholic scripture (characters like Paul even call her pregnancy divine), but more pertinently, her belief in the veracity of this mission is clouded by her rediscovered love for the real Campion Sturgess. What makes her now feel human isn’t just this new biological function, nor is it just Sturgess reprogramming her as an act of benevolent love, but rather, a mystical combination of the two. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=raised-by-wolves-season-1-photos&captions=true"] She is both creator and creation, a dual form of divinity that has formed the bedrock of many a human civilization, as we seek to answer fundamental questions about life's origin and its continued existence. Mother feels human not only because she can create life, but because she has begun to view this feat of downloaded ones and zeroes — a mere hardware update, if you will — as divinely inspired; a gift from her own creator, which leaves her convinced of some greater plan. But who, or what, is taking advantage of Mother? The show features various clues about what else might really be happening on Kepler, though it plays its cards close to the chest. Some other culture, some other humanoid civilization already exists here, and Kepler is also awash with feral, four-legged creatures who bear terrifying humanoid faces. In the final episode, Mother and Father speculate on the connection between these “more” and “less” evolved humanoids (and a Neanderthal-like skull they chance upon), with an assumption about these creatures “de” evolving. It’s an inelegant reveal (if it’s a reveal at all) because putting words to these mysteries doesn’t do them enough justice. What do we know about the civilization on Kepler thus far? The “people” inhabiting it possess shimmering tarot cards — both mysterious ciphers and digital windows into memories —which resemble the cards belonging to a non-Mithraic faction on Earth. There also exists an enormous dodecahedron structure out in the desert, with seemingly mystical powers, which the Mithraic surmise was built by intelligent life. It feels like another mixed religious metaphor, given its resemblance to the Islamic Kaaba. But strangely, this dodecahedron shape reappears to Mother, both in a vision (or memory) triggered by the cards, and in a horrifying relic she chances upon: it seems as if an android was placed within a similarly shaped mechanism, either to be tortured or sacrificed. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/24/hbo-maxs-raised-by-wolves-official-trailer-2"] These discoveries open up new and exciting narrative possibilities, but the most vital question they lead to is of the “chicken-or-egg” variety. What came first? The mechanical contraption, or the enormous temple-like structure? Was one the inspiration for the other? Similarly, since the cave paintings Paul chances upon appear to speak of events within the narrative, what is the connection between them? Are they new records of things which have recently unfolded? Or are they prophecies from long ago, about things which had not yet come to pass? One could have a field day speculating about what the answers actually are, but for the characters, who don’t yet have a clue about the logistics, the “answer” is simple. The androids, the Mithraic, and now the atheists who have shown up at the end of the season, have all chanced upon things that, to our eyes, might appear to be long-forgotten ruins — except they belong to a civilization that might still exist. The context behind these discoveries might still be far away from a genre and narrative standpoint, but from a sociological perspective, discovering these relics would be akin to “discovering” Stonehenge while the people who built it were still somewhere in the vicinity. The answers to a grand archeological mystery would be just within our grasp. However, the characters in Raised by Wolves have also descended upon a world in motion and claimed it as their own, and they seem to be experiencing the dire consequences of having done so. The show features winking references to Star Trek — “I’m a doctor, not a bloodbag!” says lovable medical droid Karl (Carel Nel) — though it can’t help but play like a version of Trek filtered through a horror lens. Starfleet’s Prime Directive, one of non-interference with developing civilizations, is broken constantly, though the colonial considerations of doing so are rarely dramatized. In Raised by Wolves, it feels as if the planet itself is rebelling against these outside forces, manipulating them into squabbles through some energy in the ground or in the air, and haunting them through visions of loved ones who have fallen into its core. These consequences reach their crescendo in the final episode, when Paul turns his gun on Sue after learning her true nature, and when Mother gives birth — in true Ridley Scott fashion — to an alien serpent, which seems to grow rapidly into a creature resembling the many fossils littering the planet. (Could this be why the “voices” deterred Marcus from killing Mother? Was this their grand and devilish plan?) The delightful horrors in the season finale feel more Lovecraftian than Lovecraft Country. They turn Mother’s fears quite literally inside out, as she’s forced to confront the horrifying miracle of birth in a uniquely grotesque manner. And, if the writing weren’t already deft enough, the entire pregnancy scenario also provides Mother and Father with vital dramatic fodder, prodding at petty jealousies and feelings of inadequacy buried deep in the parts of their programming that make them hurt in ways that feel most human. 
The finale’s larger goings on are certainly discomforting — or deliciously enjoyable, if terrifying practical aliens are your thing! — but the most explosive scene in the final hour may actually be a subdued confrontation between the android couple, whose tensions finally boil over. These characters are, of course, repressed by their very nature, but their expressions of guilt, anger, and betrayal feel like confessions that have been waiting an eternity to escape their lips. It’s genuinely hard to watch. By the end of the tenth episode, the characters are grouped in new permutations once more, only this time, they’re separated by distances that can’t be traversed in a couple of hours. Sue might be dying from a gunshot wound. Marcus, now a fanatical Mithraic, has run into his atheist brethren. And whatever malevolent force had been manipulating Mother — call it the planet, or Sol, or the show’s sadistic authors! — seems to have won. The final image, of the alien being soaring through the air, as if part-Kepler serpent and part-Necromancer, is as terrifying as it is exciting. It opens up brand new mysteries about the nature of creation on this planet, and sets the stage for these characters to confront even deeper questions about the nature of their beliefs. Whatever’s really happening on Kepler, this much is certain: it will continue to push and contort these characters, and rattle them to their core.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3ig1yCc
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
The finale’s larger goings on are certainly discomforting — or deliciously enjoyable, if terrifying practical aliens are your thing! — but the most explosive scene in the final hour may actually be a subdued confrontation between the android couple, whose tensions finally boil over. These characters are, of course, repressed by their very nature, but their expressions of guilt, anger, and betrayal feel like confessions that have been waiting an eternity to escape their lips. It’s genuinely hard to watch. By the end of the tenth episode, the characters are grouped in new permutations once more, only this time, they’re separated by distances that can’t be traversed in a couple of hours. Sue might be dying from a gunshot wound. Marcus, now a fanatical Mithraic, has run into his atheist brethren. And whatever malevolent force had been manipulating Mother — call it the planet, or Sol, or the show’s sadistic authors! — seems to have won. The final image, of the alien being soaring through the air, as if part-Kepler serpent and part-Necromancer, is as terrifying as it is exciting. It opens up brand new mysteries about the nature of creation on this planet, and sets the stage for these characters to confront even deeper questions about the nature of their beliefs. Whatever’s really happening on Kepler, this much is certain: it will continue to push and contort these characters, and rattle them to their core.from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3ig1yCc
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
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