Back in the 16-bit era, few genres had as much of a grip on both arcades and consoles as the beat ‘em up. Halfway between a fighting game and a platformer, a good side-scrolling brawler generally offered more complex combat than a basic action game, with the dimensional depth of moving up and down in planar space. But most importantly, they invited everyone to join in and play with their friends — desperately pooling their lives (or pocket change) to stay in the game to see the credits roll.

Outside of series built entirely around the premise like Battletoads or Final Fight, beat ‘em ups became the ultimate way to bring popular IP to gaming; basically, any cartoon or comic that had a core group of recognizable characters was fair play. Konami ruled the scene with The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time — both of which were coin-op classics that arrived in 1991. Marvel made their mark with the supersized deluxe cabinet for 1992’s X-Men, which allowed up to six players to squeeze together in movie theater lobbies and pizzerias for a greasy-fingered group beatdown.

And although the genre faded in the periphery for a while, beat ‘em ups have seen a resurgence in the nostalgia-driven modern era. Publisher Dotemu has cornered the market, reviving series like Streets of Rage and TMNT with all-timer entries in the pantheon, on top of delivering their own all-new franchise with this year’s Absolum.

But just in time for the holiday break, they’ve managed to sneak in one more winner with Marvel Cosmic Invasion (out now) — a space-themed jaunt through comic book history that might’ve been heralded as one of the greatest games ever made, had it arrived in the early Nineties.

The Simple Pleasures

Developed by Tribute Games, the team behind the fantastic TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge (2022), Marvel Cosmic Invasion lifts the same core tenets of that popular beat ‘em up, allowing up to four players to pick their heroes and fight together locally or online. The base story mode is the meat of the game, letting users take their time combing through 16 stages (including a tutorial), each with interstitial cut scenes doling out the plot, tackling level-specific challenges and replaying portions as they see fit.

Story mode is smartly designed to offer a little bit of wiggle room with how players can progress, with some branching paths that determine which stages they’ll tackle first (although all are required to beat) and plot and challenge-based setups that push certain heroes at particular levels to try everyone out. With 15 selectable characters at launch, there’s a ton of variety, and each one can be leveled up to grow in strength and stamina, also adding to the allure of revisiting areas repeatedly.

Arcade mode has all the same stages but condensed into a score-attack rush that’s a more traditional format for beat ‘em ups. Eschewing the paper-thin plot and character progression, it’s a purely action-focused way to play the game as it might’ve been back in the day. Unlike its peers Streets of Rage and Absolum, the levels in Cosmic Invasion are incredibly short, usually taking about 10 minutes to complete — assuming everyone can stay alive. Sitting on the couch with friends, it might not feel as much of an uphill gauntlet as other games, but the snack-sized stages are great for online play, where jumping in and out at intervals feels less like punishment for your teammates; but the quick run time tugs at the part of you that whispers “just one more” well into the night.

The controls are straightforward but provide a generous number of moves that prevent things from becoming stale. There are basic attacks and special abilities, mix-ups on the ground and in mid-air, and screen-clearing ultimate powers that can wipe out every enemy at once. There’s also a dodge-and-parry system which, while completely saturated in the current game design space, makes sense for this kind of experience — adding an additional layer of depth and strategy in what could be a mostly mindless experience.

But that’s basically it. Marvel Cosmic Invasion has no delusions about what type of game it is; there’s no mini-games or crazy handicaps to apply to change things up. There’s just a bunch of levels and baddies to tear through. Now get going.

The Kitchen Sink Approach

Despite its simplicity, Cosmic Invasion does advance the concept just enough to stand out in its field — and a huge part of that is its wise use of the Marvel IP. While most games of this genre might offer four, six, maybe even 10 characters after unlocking everything, Cosmic Invasion hits the ground running with 11 playable heroes from the onset, with four more to unlock through gameplay. However, the twist is that every user gets to pick two characters at once in both story and arcade mode.

The framework of using two heroes changes things up substantially, allowing players to call in their partner for single hit assists or swap them out entirely to extend combos or reserve their precious health meter. It also means that, when a full four-person squad is together, things can get chaotic. Imagine beating down on double digits worthy of enemies and everyone calling in their assists at the same time; that’s eight characters at once turning the visuals into candy-colored pixel vomit. It’s kind of hilarious, but can dramatically slow down the performance depending on each player’s online connection.

One of the best decisions made by the developers was to focus on the spacefaring aspect of Marvel comics which, despite getting some play in later MCU films, remains a blind spot for many casual fans. The roster includes some obvious favorites like Black Panther, Captain America, Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon, Spider-Man, and Wolverine — but the real treat here is embodying lesser-known fighters like the Thor-like Beta Ray Bill, Nova, and Phyla-Vell. There’s even a “cosmic” version of Ghost Rider with a little space helmet and machine gun, which is equally ridiculous and inspired.

Choosing this avenue means that Cosmic Invasion explores corners of the Marvel universe rarely seen in previous games, leaving the likes of Thanos relegated to mid-game bosses rather than the end all, be all — and classic villains like Magneto retired entirely. Inspired by many of the great stories from the Jack Kirby era, there’s a Saturday morning cartoon vibe that’s pitch perfect, especially for those already exhausted by Disney’s never-ending modern output.

It’s not entirely balanced; some fan-favorites like Spider-Man struggle to be heavy hitters despite their mobility, while others like Phoenix, Silver Surfer, and Phyla-Vel are absolute menaces. But there’s a real joy in seeing such a hodgepodge of heroes working in sync, with some select lines of dialogue reserved for specific pairings that keep things comedic. On that front, though, the voicework is a massive letdown. Despite having actors like Critical Role’s Matt Mercer involved, most of the line readings are dry and barely register at times. What could’ve accentuated the maximalist approach to the game’s design and aesthetic instead feels phoned in, like the barebones digitized voicework of the arcade days.RS Recommends: The Best Bluetooth Speakers Under $200We review the best portable speakers under $200, from Marshall to Bose, that wirelessly pair with Bluetooth to stream music and more.Presented By RS Recommends

Outside of the comics, one clear inspiration that pushes Cosmic Invasion’s gameplay from solid to stellar are mechanics and playstyles borrowed from fighting series Marvel vs. Capcom. Heroes who appear in that series (primarily the early entries) will have moves and combos that feel extremely familiar, but just different enough to avoid a Capcom lawsuit. Spider-Man, Wolverine, Cap and Storm — all of them have some version of the abilities from the classic franchise that feel fantastic when applied to the beat ‘em up. That’s not surprising, however, given that the two genres share much of the same DNA in their systems.

Although it only lasts a few short hours — maybe 20 or more if you’re really going for 100 percent completion — Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a late-year treat for players of all kinds. At a point where every game is just so damned long, it’s nice to have something that rewards the efforts of quick in-and-out session and doesn’t try to muddy the waters with more.

And while it could feel repetitive by nature, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is spry enough in its level design and more varied than almost any game of this kind, making it a consistent joy to play. Even after memorizing each stage and maxing out every characters stats, there’s an id-tickling pleasure derived from absolutely demolishing waves of sentinels and symbiotes while the screen flickers in technicolor rave mode that rarely gets old.

While the last two decades of IP explosion might have desensitized audiences to the spectacle this game provides, there’s plenty of original ideas and previously unused old ones that make this beat ‘em up worth the time. In the old days, there would’ve been long lines to play this one; today, it’s just a nice reprieve from everything else we have to think about.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is out now for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

From Rolling Stone US.

The post ‘Marvel Cosmic Invasion’ Brings Saturday Morning Cartoon Vibes to a Modern Beat ‘Em Up appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

The Greek mythos is a vast, rich, colorful palette and features an endless cast of characters with strong motivations and, on occasion, questionable actions. It isn’t surprising that it is a source of inspiration for a lot of modern media, be it films (Troy 2004, books (Percy Jackson series), comics (Lore Olympus) or video games (God of War 2005). Even the least enlightened members of the populace have at least a working knowledge of the Olympic Pantheon.    

But Hades brought a long forgotten Greek God hiding in the shadows of Orphic mythology and thrust him into the spotlight —Zagreus. While his origins are as obscure as the depths of Erebus, Supergiant Games gave him a tether. Basing him off one of Aeschylus’ lost Sisyphus plays, Zagreus in Hades is the Prince of the Underworld, son of Hades and Persephone. A quick refresher for the uninitiated; Hades is the Greek God of the Dead whose domain is the Underworld. He’s the older brother of Zeus, the King of Gods who wields thunder and lightning and Poseidon, the God of the Seas.  

Hades saw Zagreus fight to break out of his dark domain and reach the surface. He was going to get out or die trying — again and again and again.  

And now, in a strange twist of fate, his younger sister Melinoë is the opposite — she’s trying to break into the Underworld, over and over and over again.  

This is a historic first for Supergiant Games because they aren’t known to make sequels to any of their games. But again, there is much Greek mythology to explore. On May 6, 2024, the game hit Early Access, giving players a taste of what’s to come. Five hundred and seven days later, Hades II has officially launched. 

Chronos, Titan of Time, has escaped from Tartarus, the deepest recesses of the Underworld with the intention of restoring his reign over the natural order. The result is a game that’s essentially a second Titanomachy. With the Hades and the rest of the Underworld denizens (including the ever-loyal Cerberus) out of commission, it falls squarely on the shoulders of young Melinoë, Princess of the Underworld to set things right once again. Will she be successful? Even with the might of the Olympians supporting her? Luckily for her (and you) she has an infinite number of chances to find out. 

The sequel has a lot in common with its predecessor—they’re both roguelikes with similar controls, populated with familiar faces and both protagonists are the offspring of Hades and Persephone. At the same time, Hades II is strikingly distinct from Hades. 

In the first game, all Zagreus had to contend with was the Underworld itself and the final boss was Daddy dearest, Hades himself. Zagreus was charming, impulsive, sometimes naïve, and often reckless in his way of handling things. It showed in his fighting skills as he battled his way out of his father’s domain. Zagreus’s strategy in Hades was more or less to brute-force every door open. His Infernal Arms were straight to the point (which were very sharp). He fought like he had nothing to lose, because he didn’t.  

Melinoë in contrast is more reserved, serious, respectful, and incredibly hardworking. The stakes are higher this time. Knowing only life on the battlefield, she has never met her family, but holds them in very high regard. Trained under Hecate, Witch of the Crossroads, Melinoë wields Magick (an expendable energy resource to cast spells) , allowing her to use devastating Ω-moves, which turn the tide of battle in her favor. Executing these Ω-moves require careful thought, especially while running around trying to avoid getting hit by opponents, striking with her Nocturnal Arms, setting up a counterattack and simultaneously keeping track of her Magick reserves.  

In addition to this, Melinoë also has access to Hexes, bestowed by the Moon Goddess, Selene. When the Magick cost has been met, she can use these Hexes. Melinoë can choose one of three Hexes each night, and can even continue to upgrade them via the skill tree —the Path of The Stars. 

The Melinoë in Greek mythology is often associated with Hecate, possibly the reason for Hades II to define their relationship as student and teacher. Being associated with witchcraft, suffice to say, Melinoë is a witch-in-training herself. And every good witch needs a bubbling cauldron. In the Crossroads, which is where Melinoë and her allies reside, there is a large cauldron. This cauldron allows Melinoë to perform various Incantations to aid her in her journey.   

Animal lovers can rejoice — Melinoë doesn’t need to venture into battle alone. The game features Familiars, who are animal companions that accompany Melinoë on her quest. There are a total of five that can be unlocked when the criteria are met. Each Familiar has a specific skill so Melinoë can decide who gets to tag along depending on what build the player is going for.   

There’s also a dress-up element in the game. Arachne’s Silken Fineries lets Melinoë change the color of her outfit. These provide armor as well as boost certain abilities depending on what dress Melinoë decides to don for the run. One provides extra health, another generates Magick, while others affect attacks and supplies.   

Hades II is a much larger canvas than Hades. Chronos has attacked two extremes—the Underworld and Mount Olympus, —and Melinoë must strike both locations. Both paths have their own unique enemies, mini-bosses, Guardians and inhabitants (Arachne can only be encountered when going down to Tartarus, while Icarus is always found en route to Mount Olympus). Not only have the locations doubled, but so has the cast. 

With all the Olympians up in arms, Melinoë has quite a lot of people (including gods) who are eager to help in the form of boons. There are any number of permutations and combinations of what boon she’ll get and from whom. There are familiar faces from Hades, like Zeus and Artemis, and new ones like Apollo and Hephaestus, all of whom have distinctive personalities. It’s also interesting to see the difference in how the returning characters treat Melinoë versus Zagreus, with some, like Chaos, remarking that he prefers the older son of Hades.    

As is the norm with Supergiant Games, the aesthetics are unmatched. The character designs are highly stylized, and for the mythology enthusiasts, there are fun easter eggs and callbacks to the source material. No two areas are alike, and the environment details will have you stopping and staring before moving onto the next chamber.  

For fans of the Hades OST, Hades II has you covered, especially in Oceanus, where the boss encounter is the rock band Scylla and the Sirens. Before going for the lead vocalist (Scylla), Melinoë needs to take out the guitarist and drummer, and depending on who is taken out first, the corresponding instrument is taken out of the track.  

The story, visuals and music are the strongest selling points of this game. The only gripe one could possibly have is the amount of grinding Melinoë has to do to unlock her full potential. Gathering ingredients for incantations means getting the ability and the tools to do it first. At times, the game can be punishing, especially when starting off. The Nocturnal Arms take a while to get used to, unlike the Infernal Arms. Turning on God Mode does make things a tad easier for Melinoë, but has no effect in unlocking her abilities earlier. The game wants you to focus on exploring her abilities as a witch rather than Zagreus’s methods of mixing and matching boons. Depending on your luck, Melinoë’s run could either be a breeze, or as grueling as Sisyphus rolling his boulder uphill.  

There are more mechanics to balance compared to the first game, but once you make it over the steep learning curve, it’s smooth sailing. Perhaps it’s because of how well everything synergizes after Melinoë masters her talents that Hades II feels significantly easier to beat than Hades. It took two tries to make it to Chronos and beat him, clocking just under half an hour — albeit thirty hours were spent unlocking a lot of Melinoë’s abilities.  

At the end of the day, Zagreus and Melinoë are different people so it makes sense that their games would also be different.  

But one thing is certain: killing Time has never been more fun.   

The post Good Luck Killing Time: Hades II Review  appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

As the end of summer draws near, so begins the hype cycle for the next annual iteration of Call of Duty. Kicking off the opening night of this week’s Gamescom 2025 in Cologne is the first official trailer for the game, titled Black Ops 7, which reveals what fans can expect from the game’s action-heavy story when it launches on Nov. 14.

Watch the first look below.

The trailer opens with a look at a mostly unrecognizable future with David Mason (Milo Ventimiglia), the returning protagonist from Black Ops II (2012), and a troop of sci-fi looking soldiers. But things quickly go off the deep end as, either by some psychotropic drug or virtual reality shenanigans, the game’s world is literally turned upside down with roads, building, and more warped to twist into sky like something out of Inception. From just a quick look, it appears extremely different visually and mechanically from any Call of Duty before it.

Following the trailer, the game’s developers took the stage to tell host Geoff Keighley more about the game, which will include a fully cooperative story campaign as well as an all-new PvP (player vs. player) endgame experience that opens up after the main narrative ends.

Arriving just a year after Black Ops 6, the new game is set in 2035 and technically serves as a direct sequel to Black Ops II and prequel to Black Ops 4 (2018) — which might be confusing to casual fans, but such is the nature of the sub-series. The Black Ops games follow their own continuity under the larger Call of Duty banner, and frequently bounce around non-chronologically between eras, with Black Ops 4 being the furthest entry in the timeline, taking place in the 2040s.

Unlike last year’s Black Ops 6, whose Nineties-era setting brought the franchise back to a (relatively) grounded place, the new game once again stretches into a near-future, pseudo-sci-fi tone with high-tech gadgets and weaponry at players’ disposal. Once again co-developed by Call of Duty studios Treyarch and Raven Software, the next entry will have all the many modes fans expect like a robust single-player and cooperative campaign, competitive multiplayer, and of course, Zombies.

Initially announced back in June, the game surprised many by returning the world of Black Ops so soon after the previous installment, making it the first Call of Duty title to stick to a specific sub-series or serve as a direct sequel since the original trilogy of games that launched from 2003 to 2006. Traditionally, Call of Duty swaps between its mini-series and subtitles like Modern Warfare and Black Ops annually, each developed by a different creative team. This will be the first time in two decades that the same studios will have released back-to-back entries just a year apart.

Recently, Call of Duty has been on its fans’ good graces, with last year’s Black Ops 6 arriving to acclaim with an innovative new movement system and solid trifecta of game modes that all felt exceptionally well-designed (and are all practically individual games in their own right). The series’ free-to-play live-service game Warzone has remained immensely popular as a throughline for fans who might not be interested in the perpetual release cycle of the paid entries, which are rendered mostly obsolete year after year.

The return to a more fantastical near-future setting may also serve as a blessing for the franchise, which finally sees some still competition in the military shooter space with the upcoming release of EA’s Battlefield 6. Early impressions of that game’s beta test have been extremely positive, and with a contemporary setting closer to Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare series. With a clear differentiation between the two flavors of jingoistic multiplayer shooter, players can revel in the franchise rivalry that was previously most heated back in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

It remains to be seen if Black Ops 7 can live up to the high watermark of last year’s entry, but players will know soon enough when the game launches for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Nov. 14.

From Rolling Stone US.

The post ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’ First Trailer Reveals a Psychedelic Sci-Fi Future appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

A massive, digital “how-to” economy has sprung up seemingly overnight, all centered around this summer’s hottest accessory: a small, plush monster hanging from a keychain known as a Labubu.

Legitimate versions of the bunny-eared, snaggle-toothed, elf-like plushies (based on a character inspired by Nordic fairytales), made to be hung on pocketbooks, off beltloops, or from a car’s rearview mirror, are hard to come by. If you’re looking for the real thing — and you don’t want to deal with the inflated second-hand market — you’ll have to go through Pop Mart, the Chinese company that manufactures them. But you can’t just walk into a store or buy them online. In order to get one, you have to be online when they have one of their regular “restocks,” and supplies usually sell out within minutes. Either that, or you can play the Pop Now game, where if you’re quick enough, you can win the right to purchase one. 

That scarcity, and the toys’ adoption in the fashion, music, and LGBTQ+ communities, have driven the demand for Labubu to heights reminiscent of the 1990s obsession with Beanie Babies. The people who have cracked the code on how to buy them at face value are garnering hundreds of new social media followers, teaching the rest of us, who may have Lafufu’s (bootlegs often sold in bodegas or on sites like Shein) or can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on reseller stock on eBay or StockX, how to join in on the fun.

“My Labubu content performs very well,” says Linda Stahl (@SleepySpoof on TikTok), who bought her first Labubu for $25 on Japanese marketplace app Mercari early this year. “I joined Discord communities and watched TikToks to understand the restocking concept. Every time I post an updated method on TikTok, people love it.”

Expert Labubu buyers like Stahl have put in hours of research to hone their craft, swiping back and forth on the official Labubu retailer app into the wee hours of the night to secure more of the fuzzy little monsters. And with Pop Mart constantly changing the rules and regulations for buying a Labubu through its gamified Pop Now feature, content creators must update their tips and tricks consistently. 

It feels eerily similar to video game websites offering guides to those struggling with the latest Super Mario game — except it’s IRL toys being bought with very real money.

The gamification of Labubu

Getting a Labubu at face value feels like winning a game, especially when the rules are always changing. To nab one, you have to log onto the Pop Mart app at the exact right time — many Labubu experts believe Pop Mart restocks the little monsters on Thursday evenings, and from my research, that appears to be the case. Then you’ll have to navigate a series of hurdles that require you to know your way around a smartphone or tablet (effectively removing boomers from the buyer’s market) and have both mountains of patience and lightning-fast reflexes. 

Potential Labubu buyers can (and often do) encounter speed bumps during this process: The app can crash, you can get locked out for clicking too swiftly through the storefront, or you can watch helplessly as an available Labubu disappears before your eyes. Many have spent hours trying to buy one, to no avail. Or, enterprising collectors have hoovered up half a dozen Labubu, just to find out at check-out that none of them are the colorway they want (the plushies are sold in blind boxes, requiring you to pay before digitally opening them up to reveal what’s inside).  

Earlier this month, Labubu catchers had figured out a “URL trick,” or hack, which requires you to use a web browser (not the app), copy the Labubu URL, add an item’s box number to the end of that URL in the browser bar, then replace the four middle digits with random numbers. The results were reportedly full sets (six boxes) of Labubu available to purchase immediately. The glory of securing so many in one go was short-lived, however, as PopMart quickly made changes on the site’s back-end to prevent the trick’s use.

Learning the Labubu ways

Stahl had never heard of Pop Mart before getting into Labubu, but she now owns over a dozen. She says the digital storefront has undergone major changes within the last year, all of which require Labubu buyers to switch up their approach regularly. It feels, in many ways, like a live-service video game that regularly tweaks its gameplay or adjusts its character roster, requiring players to adjust their playstyle in order to succeed.

“In the beginning, there were no set drop times and no pre-orders,” she explains. “There was a 15-minute timer [to keep a Labubu in your cart] that you could refresh. I would sit there and wait for it to count down and furiously tap the grey locked box.”

She discovered a method on TikTok “where you use one thumb to tap and one thumb to click randomly on a part of the box.” She adapted this technique to better suit her style (much like a gamer would) and began “scoring” Labubu with ease. PopMart has since made the “two-thumb” method nearly impossible to pull off — using both fingers on the screen may accidentally mimic the movement of a bot, and the app will ban you from using it for an undisclosed period. 

Stahl sees her TikTok content as a personal duty, a way to help spread the Labubu wealth. Though it’s unclear if PopMart is purposefully keeping Labubu stock low to increase demand (the company did not reply to a request for comment), she believes that PopMart is “much better at making sure everyone gets one now” because of the barriers put in place to prevent bots from snatching all of the stock up. 

However, content creators like Stahl acknowledge the inherent competitiveness of nabbing a Labubu and seek to push that boundary through new methods and tactics. And almost every Labubu lover understands the inherent coolness factor, the status symbol, of securing a genuine version of the toy by the sweat of your brow. 

“Times are tough and we are all looking for a way to fit in, and people like to join in on what’s cool,” Stahl says about her quest to ensure people don’t have Labubu FOMO. “It gives me a serotonin boost! There is so much going on in our world today that is sad, so having some sort of happiness is nice.” 

From Rolling Stone US.

The post How Labubu Fans Are Using Gaming Tactics to Nab the Summer’s Hottest Trend appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

When you think about it, it must kind of suck to be Donkey Kong. Despite introducing the modern world to Nintendo games with 1981’s arcade classic, the great ape was quickly sidelined in favor of making Mario a star. While the mustachioed plumber and his brother became the face of the brand, Donkey Kong appears more sporadically — wavering occasionally between a hero and villain — and doesn’t even have a consistent lore. The Eighties original is generally understood to be an old timer named Cranky Kong, with the modern tie-wearing bruiser being his grandson (per Nintendo’s marketing materials); in the middle, DK Jr. has all but disappeared entirely.

And while Mario’s had the luxury of living the celebrity life, worshipped as a hero in the Mushroom Kingdom on top of rocking a medical license, DK is just trying to get by. As the ruler of Donkey Kong Island, he’s constantly warding off invasion by external threats like the Kremlings, Tiki Tak Tribe, and the Snowmads — all the while taking guff from his ornery granddad and crew.

Now, with the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza (out July 17), DK is going back to his blue-collar roots, toiling away in the banana mines until he answers the call to action against a new group of foes. The Switch 2 title is DK’s first big adventure since 2014’s Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and only the second fully 3D game in the franchise after 1999’s Donkey Kong 64. More importantly, it’s the first time that a standalone DK title has debuted as an anchor for the launch of a new Nintendo console. With a new Mario game nowhere in sight, it’s finally DK’s time in the limelight.

Rolling Stone recently attended a preview event of Donkey Kong Bananza, going hands-on with multiple sections of the game over the course of the two-hour session. Based on our early impressions, Nintendo’s latest is more than just a return to form for a classic character — it could be one of the series’ best entries ever. Here’s why.

What is Donkey Kong Bananza about?

Unlike earlier games that mostly take place on the hero’s home island, Bananza introduces a new locale with the golden banana-rich Ingot Isle, where DK is over the moon to be working the mines for the newly discovered gems. Donning a hardhat and overalls, he’s a far cry from the reigning king of the Kongs we’ve seen previously, which has led to speculation that the game could be some kind of prequel (alongside another big reveal a bit later).

After an early tutorial sequence where players learn the ropes of controlling the powerful yet agile ape, the story introduces its antagonists: Void Company, an evil corporate mining operation hell-bent on creating a golden banana monopoly. Sucked underground by an explosive whirlwind, DK must team up with a talking mineral named Odd Rock to prevent VoidCo from reaching the planet’s core, where legend says something has the power to grant wishes.

Although DK’s relationship with Odd Rock is played up early on, it’s all just bait-and-switch. After completing the first big area of the game and meeting a giant god-like ape that resembles a headphone-wearing homage to The Jungle Book’s King Louie, a musical sequence shatters the stone revealing it to be a young girl named Pauline. It’s both a literal and figurative record scratch moment given that Pauline is a deep-cut Nintendo character who’s always been depicted as an adult.

In the 1981 Donkey Kong, she’s Mario’s girlfriend who must be rescued from the clutches of the ape; more recently she’s appeared as a lounge singer-turned-mayor of New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey (2017) and since has popped up in spin-offs like Mario Golf: Super Rush (2021) and Mario Kart World (2025).

Pauline’s diminutive redesign has raised plenty of questions, although Nintendo rarely seems interested in providing any answers from DK lore. At first, the game seems like it could be a prequel to the 1981 original starring a younger version of Cranky Kong, except that character directly appears in the world as an NPC. Perhaps this Pauline could be the daughter of the one players know — which would be fitting, given how the nebulously Donkey Kong exists as one of multiple family members in his lineage depending on the game. Right now, it’s a mystery, but could end up being brushed aside entirely.

How does it play?

Like the Mario games, the Donkey Kong series has encompassed tons of different genres and gameplay styles throughout the years. The early titles began as vertical platformers where the player must dodge hazards to reach the top of the level. The Donkey Kong Country games were more direct side-scrollers like Super Mario Bros., although they utilized a tag-team system to swap characters on-the-fly, each having their own unique abilities. Donkey Kong 64 was a third person collect-athon, a genre that was big in the era of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie.

Bananza mostly resembles the Nintendo 64 version, at least superficially. It’s a game dedicated to exploring large open environments for small quests and tokens to collect. A lot of them. Giant golden bananas serve as the main collectible (like stars, sprites, or moons in 3D Mario), but there’s also tons of others ranging from buried fossils (which are specific to each level) and banana chips that can be used as currency for new outfits. On top of that, bits of gold spew from broken rocks and enemies, which both serve to power up DK’s special abilities and can be used to unlock permanent upgrades.

Gameplaywise, Bananza looks to differentiate itself from other 3D Nintendo games by emphasizing DK’s raw strength and speed. The character is agile on-foot, able to stop on a dime and whiz in every direction. Using a tuck-and-roll mechanic, he can also barrel along at high speed or dive forward to extend jumps across chasms. But it’s the symbiotic pairing of DK’s power that’s the real game changer. Unlike other characters that need to jump on enemies to defeat them, DK can throw an endless stream of haymaker punches in all directions and can even rip chunks of rock and the ground itself out to throw with precision.

Punches are impactful and satisfying; socking an enemy sends them careening into the distance with a single punch. But hitting things isn’t just fun, it’s an essential part of the core loop. DK uses his fists to plow through walls, floors, and ceiling like a living bulldozer — which is an essential part of exploration. Almost everything in the game’s environment can be destroyed or tunneled through, turning every level into a sandbox of buried treasure intended to be burrowed through and gutted. It’s very easy for players with a compulsion for clearing out areas to spend hours whittling away at the map like a coloring book until its edges are laid bare.

And while DK is mighty enough on his own, his partnership with Pauline opens a multitude of new abilities. Using the sidekick’s singing voice, players can unlock certain sonically reactive locks and doors when solving puzzles, as well as induce DK’s Bananza form that affords the ape different transformations — ranging from a fiery superpowered version of himself to a musclebound zebra that can sprint over water, and even an ostrich form that can hover for short periods of time. The transformations can be refilled by picking up gold (which is plentiful) and swapped on the fly to be used over and over.

But that’s not all Pauline can do. In cooperative two-player mode, the second person takes control of the young girl dangling from DK’s back, and can use one of the detachable Switch 2 Joy-Con controllers with point-and-click mouse controls. Unlike games like Super Mario Galaxy, which allow P2 to sort of play along by shooting little stars to stun enemies, Bananza’s version of coop feels extremely robust and changes the entire game.

During the demo, we swapped over to the second player seat and found that using Pauline voice (which shoots onomatopoeia like “Pow”) can be as — or at times, more — empowered than controlling DK. Pauline’s ability to inhale the essence of materials like gold and apply it to her voice makes her words more lethal than anything DK can do solo. In the session, we found that by sucking up the gold from an enemy, Pauline’s voice took on explosive power and could quickly wipe out anything in her path.

One boss fight in particular should’ve been a greater challenge, but between DK and Pauline dropping literal bombs on the foe, the encounter was over in moments. It isn’t meant for arbitrarily sticking a little sibling with a pointless participatory role; it’s actually a really fun easy mode.

What can players expect?

From just a few hours of playtime, it’s clear that Donkey Kong Bananza is an extremely ambitious rethinking of what a DK game can be. Developed by the team that previously worked on Super Mario Odyssey, the game is packed to the brim with imaginative level design and highly expressive characters. DK himself is extremely cartoonish, wearing his emotions on display, whereas Pauline’s quips (as the only fully voiced character) add a devilishly fun flair. Dropping explosive onomatopoeia on enemies while the little girl giggles creates a laugh-out-level point of dissonance.

Like in Odyssey, each level is filled with mainline quests to complete and hundreds of secrets, but it’s the intuitive way players can carve up the earth itself that’s most appealing. While the game is a snappy platformer in the vein of Mario, the ability to manipulate the environment, even to the point of creating mud bridges by tossing dirt, evokes the crafting spirit of the recent Legend of Zelda games. Using all of those techniques is key, as each open area begets another and another, with hundreds of individual levels becoming available as players descend straight down into the depths of the planet.

With so much to do, and with a lackadaisical sense of urgency, each area is filled with gleeful distractions. During our own demo, we ended up missing an entire boss encounter while mindlessly destroying everything in sight in search of bananas and fossils.

But those boss battles aren’t something you’ll want to miss. The action in Bananza is top rate and exponentially more enthralling than even recent Mario games. DK’s suite of different abilities add variety to each encounter beyond simple jumping and punching, and there are many side areas designed to recreate the 2D sections of the Donkey Kong Country series, down to blasting barrel to barrel in precise timing puzzles to dodging and drifting on runaway minecarts.

When it was first announced as a post-launch title for Switch 2, there was something of a tempered enthusiasm for Donkey Kong Bananza. Sure, it’s great to see other characters from Nintendo’s portfolio get a big new release, but without a mainline Super Mario or Zelda, the lineup felt lacking. But it’s now clear that Bananza isn’t meant to be some kind of stopgap until the next killer app; it’s a full-on spiritual successor to both Super Mario Odyssey and the DK games of old that aims to elevate the franchise back to the upper echelon of video game royalty.  

Donkey Kong Bananza launches on July 17 for Nintendo Switch 2.

From Rolling Stone US.

The post ‘Donkey Kong Bananza’ Makes Nintendo’s Great Ape Into a King Again appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

In 2015, Supermassive Games released Until Dawn for the PlayStation 4. Simply put, it was a slasher film in the form of a video game, and a good one too. The game was responsible for hammering the term ‘butterfly effect’ in the minds of everyone who played it.  

Most slasher films follow a formula—a group of young adults being hacked into bits one by one until it reaches the final girl (a trope used in such films for the final survivor of a massacre, who often confronts the killer). While watching these films, it’s often hard not to feel frustrated at the foolish decisions that lead to these characters’ early demise. Sometimes we even find ourselves thinking, “If it was me, I would have never decided to split up. Or open the door without looking to see who was out there. Or get into an argument with a friend while a killer was out and about.” 

That’s where Until Dawn came in. 

Until Dawn gave its player agency over its mechanics, handing them a sense of control in these life-or-death situations, but with a catch:  the butterfly effect. This meant a simple choice or an insignificant remark you chose to make at the beginning of the game, determined the fate of the characters at the end. If you made the right decisions, you just might manage to get everyone out of it alive. And because of the plethora of options to pick from, you could always replay the game to get a different ending.  

That was the novelty with Until Dawn the game—it was a movie you could control. And it really did feel like a full-fledged theatrical experience, with actors like Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere and Peter Stormare playing the characters whose fates lay in your hands.   

Therefore, it came as a surprise when a decade later, Until Dawn returned in the form of a film, instead of a game. Aside from the name, and Peter Stormare reprising his role, the film vastly differs from the source material.  

In the game, a group of eight teenagers converge at a remote lodge owned by their friend Josh Washington (Rami Malek) a year after his sister’s disappearance. The group is then taunted by both natural and supernatural killers and must survive until dawn. Sinister plots and secrets are uncovered throughout the night, and the saying “keep your friends close but enemies closer,” is the best way to describe the antagonist’s motivations.   

Set in the same universe as the game, the film instead focuses on a completely different group. A year after the disappearance of her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell), Clover (Ella Rubin) and her four friends try to retrace Melanie’s steps. Their search leads them to the mining town of Glore Valley. But on the way, a heavy downpour forces the group to seek shelter at a seemingly abandoned visitor center. Picked off one by one by a masked killer, they discover that the night resets after they die. Stuck in a “Hotel California“-type of situation, the group discovers they have thirteen nights to try and make it out alive. In other words, they need to keep dying if they hope to survive.  

Since David Fredrik Sandberg (Annabelle: Creation) is directing this, the film obviously does not hold back on blood, gore and violence. There’s no shortage of death and dismemberment either. And while there are a lot of fun easter eggs from the games sprinkled in the film, what it lacked was the pure adrenaline and terror of its source material.  

Part of what made the game Until Dawn, or any other titles by Supermassive, so scary, was the fact that the hiding, the running away and the final decisions were made by the player. Failing a quick time event, choosing whose side to pick in an argument or taking the riskier route could lead to a character’s untimely death. The pressure of trying to predict what could possibly go wrong added to the tension and nail-biting anxiety.  

The game was a combination of every single slasher film cliché in the form of a roughly ten-hour interactive movie. Obviously, this can’t be mimicked in a film, and there would be no reason to remake it frame for frame.  

It does, however, beg the question: why slap on the same title for a film that is completely different from the source? It isn’t as if Supermassive Games hasn’t done other projects like Until Dawn. They have The Quarry (2022) and their episodic horror game franchise The Dark Pictures Anthology, all of which are standalone stories which work.  

But translating a film in the form of a game, back into a film, doesn’t work. It defeats the purpose entirely. The reason Until Dawn is a statement horror game is because of the interactive element. The looping feature in the film serves as a placeholder for the viewer to understand which bad decision led to what ending, but it really is no fun when the player is not holding the controller. The film seems to be trying to deliver multiple horror films in 103 minutes, but it is bursting at the seams. Where does one night end and the next begin? How are they making progress? Everything is vague and even with the in-universe knowledge, it’s hard to really understand what’s going on.  

Another thing that gives slasher horror killers an edge is the tensions between the victims. Most often they’re hot-headed, have skeletons in their closet, and are all waiting to take it out on the nearest companion. In a game, there’s plenty of time to expand on the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. But in a film, that kind of nuance is often lost in taking the plotline ahead. There is no proper explanation as to why the characters do what they do. They’re also not as charismatic as the ones in the game. There’s no pressure to keep anyone alive since no one stands out. You won’t find yourself particularly invested in their stories either.    

There are a lot of interesting ideas in the film—the premise itself is intriguing—but the execution is where it goes wrong. Perhaps if this film was a game, it might have worked out better. Giving the player a chance to wind back the clock and get it right isn’t a mechanic they’ve implemented in the games so far.   

But translating a game like Until Dawn into a film fundamentally goes against what makes it fun to play. There are plenty of generic run-of-the-mill slasher flicks. Until Dawn the game built on their foundations and delivered something new. The film, on the other hand, just doesn’t.  

It’s better to just stick to playing the original game or the 2024 remake with its new endings and mechanics. 

The post The ‘Until Dawn’ Film Adaptation Proves If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It  appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

The certainty of death is something we all grapple with. The uncertainty lies more in the when, not if. But in the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, death comes in the form of a number drawn by The Paintress.  

The Paintress is a mysterious being who rouses from slumber once a year and paints a number on her monolith. Everyone who matches the age of the painted number turns to dust and fades away. Every year, a few brave souls undertake a journey, known in the realm as an expedition, to try and thwart The Paintress from sealing their fate with a painting. Every year, they fail.  

Gustave, an expeditioner who has just turned 32, has about a year left to live and is determined to make it count. Racing against time, Gustave is on a mission to break the cycle so that the Paintress can’t steal anyone else’s future. Among the other expeditioners who join him are Lune, a researcher who functions as a mage-style player character, young Maelle, who’s determined to forge her own destiny, and Sciel, whose smile hides her painful past. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, in one line, plays like Final Fantasy XVI meets the Persona series. 

The name itself, Clair obscur, is the French translation of the Italian term chiaroscuro, which literally means “light-dark.” Chiaroscuro refers to the technique of using strong contrasts between light and shadow to enhance the atmosphere, volume, and composition of a painting. While this technique originated during the Renaissance, it was widely prevalent during the Baroque era. Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Goya are among the artists who employed this style. It feels fitting that a game about fighting a Paintress who erases people one by one derives its name from such a dramatic art style. 

Set against a backdrop of a dark fantasy Belle Époque setting, there is a very French aesthetic to the game—unsurprising as the development studio behind it, Sandfall Interactive, is from France. What is surprising, though, is how polished the game is despite being made by a relatively small development team. The game resembles a painting, with vivid colors, an intricate environment, and a distinct design identity given to both the monsters and characters.  It’s a world that’s richly detailed, from the ripples on the surface of the water to the strands of hair that have escaped Maelle’s ponytail. As you run around the map, you fight unique-looking enemies—some of them are eerily humanoid forms, while others resemble abstract pottery or an orb with two legs. Taking in the world around you, it really feels as though you’ve stepped into a three-dimensional canvas.  

Adding to the atmosphere is the soundtrack that washes over you as you embark on your quest. From the quiet calm that envelopes you when you return to camp to the thrum that matches your heartbeat while you are in combat. It haunts you long after you’ve put away your controller. In fact, composer Lorien Testard’s soundtrack has even topped Billboard’s Classical Album charts.  

The expressions given to the characters, especially in the cutscenes, are impressively executed—animated and lifelike in a way that adds weight to their dialogue. They’re united by a common goal—and this shows even in their body language. Considering that the game has an emotional storyline, the way the characters grapple with the uncertainty of their mission, the helplessness of a task they feel they’re doomed to fail, and survivor’s guilt comes across clearly. They’re all very fleshed out, with their own motivations, goals, and approaches to the situation. With a stacked voice cast that breathes life into the game’s characters—Andy Serkis (Renoir), Charlie Cox (Gustave), Jennifer English (Maelle) and Ben Starr (Verso)—the emotions in the game get a little too real too quick. There are also different quirks and animation cycles for every character, from fighting to walking. Lune, for example, gracefully glides when she sprints, while Gustave has his legs firmly planted on the ground as he races ahead.   

The combat in this game is a particularly unique blend of turn-based and real-time mechanics. On each turn, the characters can do a basic attack, use an item or skill, and even carry out a ranged attack in which you manually aim to target the weak points of your enemies. To use items or skills, you need Ability Points, which can be generated via basic attacks. Each skill has a certain number of Ability Points attached to it. If you want to unleash a devastating attack that can hit multiple enemies, it is best to generate and use those Ability Points strategically. To execute a skill-based attack, you must first successfully complete a quick time event to deal critical damage.  

There are plenty of ways to approach a fight depending on your playstyle. You can create and customize a build that best suits you with the plethora of attributes and skills the characters have at their disposal. Levelling up also lets you unlock new skills like From Fire, Storm Caller, and Terraquake on the skill tree. Your weapons also get better as you level up, but you can also manually upgrade them with items you harvest in this world by visiting The Curator, a mysterious NPC who joins you at camp to help you with your journey. Even the weapons you get early on in the game are good enough to embark on this dangerous mission. 

Items, weapons, and materials with which you upgrade can be purchased from vendors that you come across on your journey. Defeating them gives you access to secret and valuable goods that will no doubt serve you well.  

No two playable characters have the same fighting style, skills, or weapons, and you can cherry-pick how you want to play them out on the battlefield. Invest in vitality if you’d like to tank out attacks, or perhaps agility if you want more turns on the battlefield, or luck to land those critical hits, the choice is yours. 

You can allocate these skill points at the checkpoints known as Expedition Flags. These Expedition Flags also serve as save stations and rest stops where you catch up on that much-needed R&R. Beware, though, resting respawns enemies.  

In a way, it is a blessing because there’s a lot to grind in this game. There are optional fights, some of them particularly difficult mini boss fights, where you could die with a single hit. But there is nothing tiring about the grind, even if it does get a little repetitive.  

This is because the combat in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is both exciting and challenging. Some enemies are tough, and underestimating your opponent might just lead you to an early grave, even if they have a good loot. The most difficult aspect of these encounters lies in the difficulty of the timing. 

This is where the real-time aspect of the turn-based combat comes into play. I don’t recall a single game that gives you the ability to parry attacks in a turn-based combat setting, in real time. Just like the player characters, enemies too can land devastating blows that result in one-hit kills. And there are two ways of preventing that—parrying and dodging. While dodging is easier, a successful parry results in getting those much-needed Ability Points and landing a cataclysmic counter. But there’s a very small window of opportunity to get the timing just right, and it does take a while to get used to the rhythm of the attack flow.  With its highly stylized combat featuring a lot of flourishes, successful quick time events, and deadly skill attacks, combat sequences in this game are extremely satisfying.  

A strong plot, well fleshed-out characters, breathtaking graphics, and dramatic soundtrack, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has all the makings for the Game of the Year.  

The post ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ is a Turn-based RPG That Feels Like Fighting in a Painting  appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

It’s a frosty January night in New York City, but Madison Square Garden is red hot. You feel the heat when pillars of flame spit out from black butane tanks that encircle a half-domed stage. The thunder of swag rock is drowned out by the dog-whistle cheers of 20,000 people alive with electricity. Under the tiled roof where Knicks and Rangers banners hang, between walls that often echo with Billy Joel and Taylor Swift, an epic game of Dungeons & Dragons played by Dimension 20 is about to get rolling.

An arena spectacle with WWE auras is unusual for Dungeons & Dragons, the famously nerdy tabletop game of fantasy heroics and lucky (or unlucky) rolls of dice. It’s also unusual for Dimension 20, a show where Los Angeles comics play serialized D&D games. It is the flagship show of Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor), a streaming service whose organic brand of comedy and feverish fanbase make it agile against lumbering corporate giants. At the center of Dimension 20 is Brennan Lee Mulligan. His ringmaster’s charisma, chameleonic voices, and occasionally viral socio-anarchist zingers work in concert with his encyclopedic knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition to qualify him as arguably the greatest Dungeon Master alive. Normally Mulligan’s games are filmed in an L.A. studio, on a domed set that looks like a spaceship’s interior where players sit around a U-shaped table. But tonight they’re inside the Garden, standing where Frazier upset Ali, waving to a roaring crowd on a 360-degree stage illuminated by a pattern of LED triangles under a waterfall of golden stars. Tonight, these jesters are turned into rock stars in the heart of midtown.

Since its launch in 2018, D20 has survived a gauntlet of uncertainty, rocked by layoffs from its corporate owners just before a pandemic sent them all playing virtually in isolation. Now Dimension 20 thrives as one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG) shows on the internet. Their sold-out MSG event, “Gauntlet at the Garden,” slated to premiere on Dropout later this year, affords Dimension 20 bragging rights as the hosts of the single-biggest live game of D&D ever. That’s even bigger than when fellow D&D troupe Critical Role sold out their Wembley Arena show in October 2023. While MSG is a one-night-only affair that D20 just might outperform themselves later this year — they have more live events set for Los Angeles, Seattle, and Las Vegas — a capacity crowd in the “World’s Most Famous Arena” for a tiny streaming show centered around a 51-year-old game is proof that an online audience can and will log off and show up. It is revealing of Dimension 20 itself, an oasis of warmth in an unmagical and increasingly frightening cold world. 

“Everyone understands storytelling on a profound level,” Brennan Lee Mulligan tells Rolling Stone. “Every culture in the world uses it to talk about what matters, to talk about being human. What makes people come back [to watch us], season after season, rests on characters people love and stakes they feel in their spine. They feel the weight of these journeys.”

“Gauntlet at the Garden” is ineffable for what might still seem like a niche hobby, a game still played mostly on kitchen tables. As the music fades and the cast take their seats, the jumbo screens that normally display Knicks scores now sport the blown-up faces of Dimension 20. Surrounding the headliners are grumpy arena security, who spend the night wearing baffled expressions watching a sea of adults cheer and laugh and applaud over imaginary characters engaged in battles no one can actually see, and rolls of acrylic dice just 16 millimeters in size. D&D is a game of the imagination, but with the right pieces, the allure for stories that unfold with total spontaneity is no fiction.

With his castmates before him, Mulligan, a 37-year-old improv performer with bouncy theater kid energy, ginger-red hair, and an AM radio DJ’s voice, greets his hometown of New York City. “Hello, one and all!” he booms, ringing through arena speakers like the voice of God. 

Actually, playing God is kind of Mulligan’s deal on Dimension 20. He is its resident Dungeon Master, or DM. It’s a complex task requiring many hats at once: story writer and narrator writer, rules referee, ensemble actor. (Mulligan is a virtuoso of impressions, with midwestern dads and drunk bachelorettes a few personas he’s adopted as DM.) DMs, like Mulligan, kick off games of D&D by verbally describing the story — who, what, why? — before painting more vivid descriptions of the worlds the characters exist. The players, in turn, describe their actions and converse in-character, and so it can go for hours, even days, across campaigns that can last years. That’s the cadence of D&D, and to watch others engaged in it is akin to watching actors at a table-read, except without a script.

“On a primal level, I’m asking: What’s going to make my friends happy?” Mulligan says. “Telling stories with friends is perennial. It refreshes itself because people are refreshing themselves.”

To be a good DM is to have a third eye for creativity. It’s not just describing worlds that aren’t real with the clarity of a dispatched reporter. It’s bringing to life characters born in that instant. It’s unspooling lore and unraveling plot twists with little preparation. “Gauntlet” had rehearsals for lighting and music, but no one knows how the story will end. Not even Mulligan. “There is no way to practice,” he says. “You can do lots of planning, but you cannot practice. Nothing recreates the environment of being there, in that room, with that audience, until you are there.”

Around Mulligan are the “Intrepid Heroes,” D20‘s stars from the L.A. comedy scene. There’s Lou Wilson, a teddy bear of a man who announces for Jimmy Kimmel Live; Siobhan Thompson, a peppy Brit with cat eye glasses and a blonde bob with writing credits on Rick and Morty; Zac Oyama, a soft-spoken soul whose sharp cheeks house a boy band smile; Ally Beardsley, a nonbinary individual with a cropped mullet and a skateboarder’s zen; Emily Axford, a New York native with undertones of Bettie Page and Tina Fey; and Brian Murphy, an ex-MTV host with horn-rimmed glasses and gelled hair whose habit of bad dice rolls can be appropriately called Murphy’s Law. (Axford and Murphy are married, and played versions of themselves on Adam Ruins Everything on truTV.)

After a roll call where each reveals their imminent reprisal of fan-favorite Dimension 20 characters — including a Staten Island divorcee, a wisecracking pizza rat, and a drug dealer still coping from a breakup  — the game begins. With painterly narration, Mulligan whisks the audience (mentally) back to The Unsleeping City, a story first explored in 2019. It is an urban fantasy, a glittering New York like the one just outside on Seventh Avenue. But in Mulligan’s vision, a secret parallel world is teeming between the cracks of concrete.

“We go to other worlds not to escape, but to imagine what this world could be and should be,” Mulligan tells me later. “We tell stories about heroes to understand how to become them. We’re looking at frightening times. My goal with Dimension 20 is to make the best show I can. If I thought stories did not motivate action, I would stop telling them.”

DIMENSION 20, SO NAMED FOR its multiversal anthology format and the twenty-sided die of D&D, is a leader in “actual plays,” also called live plays, where people play Dungeons & Dragons for an audience. Other prolific actual plays like Critical Role, Acquisitions Incorporated, and The Adventure Zone star voice actors or comedians — professions suited to D&D‘s role-playing. Dimension 20 seizes on the synergy, what Mulligan says is “such a clear marriage” of improv comedy and fantasy. “It is something that seems so clear in hindsight, but has become a surprise in this boom of actual plays,” he says.

Dungeons & Dragons was created in 1974 by midwestern gaming legends Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Players adopt alter egos, from warriors to sorcerers, who traverse worlds of mysticism and monsters. The outcomes of challenges, like slicing orcs with axes or smooth-talking tavern maidens, are decided by dice. The higher the rolls, the better the result. Twenty is the highest possible number, and to roll it naturally (a “natural 20”) is a soaring success. Roll a one, however, and that is a critical failure. Whatever players do, it’s up to the DM to reinforce the guardrails and impose stakes, building suspense, exerting godlike control while yielding to the power of chance created by players. Such is the joyous tension of the game.

“The game is the tool. Story is the most important part,” says Thompson. “Sometimes failing and losing is more interesting than succeeding.” At MSG, Thompson reprises her role as Misty Moore, a Broadway diva prone to calling strangers “dah-ling.” In fan art, Misty is often illustrated in color palettes of glamorous gold and white. As a Bard (her character class) Misty casts magical spells through singing — and at Level 12, she’s very good at it. 

Zac Oyama, who role-plays a himbo firefighter named Ricky Matsui, says he considers it “kind of a gift” that D&D allows their improv training to shine. “It lets you know what you’re supposed to do,” he says. “If you jump across a skyscraper, you roll one and fall, it’s funny. You embrace that. Rolling in the middle is boring.”

It’s surreal to see the golden age of actual plays when you know the baggage that used to follow D&D. In the 1980s the game was engulfed in the Satanic panic, attracting accusations of perverting youth with witchcraft. In 1982, a young Tom Hanks starred in Mazes & Monsters, a made-for-TV movie about a deluded college student who becomes dangerously obsessed with D&D. In the climax he nearly leaps off the Twin Towers, believing it to be a gateway to a magical realm. While this notoriety is a key chapter in the game’s cultural mythos, today, D&D is valued intellectual property owned by Hasbro. 

The stars aligned for actual plays to rise in the 2010s, owed to a zeitgeist where geek became chic. The success of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films were the overture for Game of Thrones to become a smash HBO show, to say nothing of the books that spawned them. Meanwhile, a generation of Hollywood writers with fond memories of D&D featured it in shows like Community and Stranger Things. During Covid-19, Dungeons & Dragons saw a prodigious surge in interest as isolated friends reconnected by playing the game remotely, which is possible over online platforms like Roll20 and communication tools like Discord.

Actual plays also found a sizable audience in 2020. For Dimension 20, its existing library of pre-pandemic games attracted people who maybe craved togetherness and lighthearted escapism. “I’ve heard from people that during those lonely times, we were there to keep you company,” says Beardsley. In the green room of MSG before the show, Beardsley says the live events Dimension 20 is embarking on “is completely about people fighting back against isolation.” “Covid pushed us into a deep loneliness being separated from people,” they say. “This is a moment that could never have happened during that time.”

“Stories like this help people make sense of uncertainty,” says Oyama. “Where you don’t know how you’re gonna get out of situations, it’s nice to see the bond of this group. How we can rely on each other and push through anything.”

In the actual play scene, Critical Role keeps a high profile with institutional footing. The show, which airs as an internet livestream, features cartoon voice actors led by their DM, Matthew Mercer. Since its premiere on Twitch in 2015, Critical Role now boasts 3.78 million subscribers across Twitch and YouTube, mountains of merch, and a Prime Video animated series. For comparison, Dimension 20‘s YouTube channel has just 997,000 subscribers. (Dropout, their primary streaming platform, does not disclose viewership numbers.) 

But Dimension 20 is no underdog. It is a major endeavor by Dropout, the comedy streamer sprung from defunct website CollegeHumor and has a cult subscriber base. D20 is defined in the space by its unique brand of feel-good antics and top-shelf production. Where most shows simply stick a camera on a tripod, Dimension 20 lends immersion as its moving camera weaves over arrays of painted miniatures. Inch-high avatars stand to scale in lush 3D sets of magical forests, hellish underworlds, even high schools. Cinematic sound mixing, from the glimmering metal of swords to the rumble of grenades, add texture to Mulligan’s phlegmy mouth effects. 

“The amount of artistry Dimension 20 has behind its scenes to show the world of our imagination have set us apart,” Mulligan says. “The editors, the people that design the miniatures, the list goes on. I cannot articulate the pride I feel. The people we are competing against are none of our fellow shows. We’re competing against ourselves, from the last season.”

Dimension 20 tells stories that detour from the known roads of Tolkienesque fantasy. Rather, a D20 campaign might look like a John Hughes drama (Fantasy High), or a mishmash of 1980s and 1990s action movies (Never Stop Blowing Up), or a bizarre concoction of Game of Thrones with Candyland (A Crown of Candy). Dungeons & Drag Queens is an increasingly popular sub-series under Dimension 20 where a bedazzled Mulligan holds court over RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni. If you’re sick of dungeons with dragons in them, Dimension 20‘s laugh-out-loud campaigns are a panacea.

The show came to life in 2018, when comedy website CollegeHumor launched Dropout as a streaming service to platform more ambitious content than their output of digestible sketches on YouTube. Mulligan, a staff writer and performer at CollegeHumor, was invited by then-Chief Creative Officer Sam Reich to adapt his home games of Dungeons & Dragons for a show in the vein of Critical Role. Most of the cast assembled were already CollegeHumor colleagues. “It felt like a no-brainer,” remembers Thompson, adding Lou Wilson came from another game run by Mulligan. Beardsley was a “last-minute” replacement for comedian Rekha Shankar, who joined CollegeHumor in 2017 and is now a regular on other Dropout shows like Game Changer. (Shankar has since played in various seasons of Dimension 20.) “Ally has put a huge stamp on the show,” comments Thompson. “I don’t know what the show would look like without Ally.”

Mulligan knew from the second episode they were on a different level than their competitors. Stepping into the domed set for the first time was one thing, but “watching players grab their miniatures” based on their characters was another. The engrossing camerawork by cinematographer Kevin Stiller, who plunged eye-level to a battle inside a high school cafeteria, gave Dimension 20, well, dimension, according to Mulligan. “When you see the jib arm moving through the space, we were bringing something to the potluck that’s not there already,” he says.  

“When Dimension 20 began, our goal posts were, ‘Let’s be the funniest TTRPG show,’” says Sam Reich, who was made CEO of CollegeHumor in 2020. Reich echoes Mulligan, believing episode two was when he knew it had sauce. “It shocked me to attention,” he says. “I got the same laughs I get watching comedy, the same sense of immersion I get reading a novel. A byproduct of comedy is that it lowers audience defenses. When defenses are down, you’re more susceptible to emotionally resonant storytelling. Between those spaces are where you can hook people.”

DURING THE MSG SHOW, the audience is invited to roll along a few times. A QR code will pull up virtual dice, and the most common number rolled by the audience is displayed in jumbotron-sized glory. This happens early on in the night when the multiverse ruptures to allow two characters from other campaigns to cameo. It’s a crowd-interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure,” with Mulligan’s agility as DM to move with it. After two bummer rolls, a benevolent Mulligan gives the crowd “advantage” on another — a stipulation that allows two rolls of a 20-sided die instead of one. There’s a pause, and then it’s there, blown up for all to see: “20,” in glowing gold over an onyx die. The audience comes unglued, drowning out Mulligan’s introduction of cult favorite characters “Plug Strutt” and “Ayda Aguefort,” who enter through the rift. Once again, there is nothing to actually see, but such is the spellbinding power of a good story.

Later in the night, the heroes stand against a “business dragon” named Kalvaxus who’s taken over Wall Street. Mulligan invites Thompson — after her Misty used magic to compel the dragon to dance as a distraction — to roll for the dragon’s power to resist it. (This is a rare case where a low roll is desired.) Mulligan hands Thompson a comically oversized 20-sided die, a boulder in Thompson’s petite arms. As he explains the stipulations of the roll to the audience Thompson runs up to fans in the front row, inviting them to “bless the die.” 

It is the final roll of the night, lest the audience want a reroll. “Just start chanting reroll,” Mulligan calmly explains to a buzzing crowd. Thompson rolls a 19. The crowd boos before chanting for the reroll. Will the dragon dance because of a powerful Broadway superstar? Or will the center of the universe succumb to a snarling, fire-breathing beast? At last, Thompson rolls, and — well, that’s a spoiler. 

There lies what might be the real spell of Dimension 20. Sure, the miniatures and the pyrotechnics are neat. And yes, the talent of the stars, their magnetism and comic timing are a draw. But it’s the moments of hushed suspense, when the die is cast and no one can predict what will happen. That’s been the story of Dimension 20, too. It’s an unlikely thing, where the pieces and the elements come together to create something that still defies words. One might call it magic. 

From Rolling Stone US.

The post Inside the Biggest Live Game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Ever Played appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

The term ‘Cyberpunk’ immediately conjures the image of a dystopian future where neon lights tower over the populace, the line between man and machine nearly non-existent. A highly hedonistic society, where bright, shining technological advancements hide the societal collapse and its dwindling human nature.

Despite the genre being a cautionary tale, there’s something about it that is fascinating. Reading a book like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, watching a film like Blade Runner (1982), or playing a game like Cyberpunk 2077 don’t exactly put one off from living in a future like the one depicted. There is some small part of you that will undoubtedly wish, “I would like to live in a world like that.”

That is an inherent flaw in cyberpunk media. It focuses on the ‘cool punks’ who live life on a razor-sharp stylish edge of a dystopian society, while downplaying how far removed it is from utopia. The punk side is largely left forgotten and the cyber aspect takes precedence.

The game Cruelty Squad belongs to the cyberpunk category and is perhaps the only piece of media among the genre that truly repulses the player. It breaks those rose-tinted glasses, grinds it to dust on the ground and shows the ugly side of the cyberpunk world that remains shrouded in the shadows cast by blinding neon and shining chrome.

If Hunter S. Thompson and Philip K. Dick decided to make a game together then it would be this. Cruelty Squad embodies a fever dream, and a really bad trip rolled into one neat 1000 MB package. This is truly the cyberpunk edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the corporate CEO mindset.

“Hey, it’s me. Did I wake you up from your depression nap?” 

That’s the game’s opening line, said to the protagonist as he stands in his spartan bedroom featuring an old CRT TV displaying static and a mattress on the floor. He stands like a statue, his eyes covered by his fluorescent green visor, utterly unbothered by the chaos that rages outside his window. 

You play as another cog in the filthy murder machine. Your previously unemployed self finds employment as a hitman, a member of the Cruelty Squad. It’s a private organization that does the bidding of larger conglomerates who just want results. But, it is, of course, difficult being an assassin in a world where your targets can cheat death by amassing a vast fortune that plays a vital role in bringing them back to life. 

At first glance, the game has absolutely no cohesion to it.

At all.

Your health is a big green oozing blob, and you have 1 out of 5 mysterious creepy smiling faces which later turned out to be ammo. The controls are all over the place with the strangest key placement. The game also features one of the most interesting reload mechanics. To reload your gun to whatever number of creepy smiling faces you have at your disposal, you need to hold the right click and have to pull the mouse back.

By the time you figure out this knowhow (because there is no handholding in this game), you are shot and killed.

Your death screen reads: Divine light severed: you are a flash automaton animated by neurotransmitters.

You get back up, regenerate and come back better prepared.

There are quite a lot of customization options in this game to better outfit you for your job. Since this is a cyberpunk game, cyberware and implants are part and parcel of the deal. But unlike most cyberpunk games where your cyberware is used to enhance your skills or give you defense, in Cruelty Squad not all implants are strictly beneficial. The Nightmare Vision Goggles are probably the first thing any player would purchase considering the cheap price tag. It is only upon equipping it that you realize these goggles are not helpful in the slightest. Sometimes, these implants have their advantages but come with their downsides. It further drives home the message that not all upgrades and cyberware increase quality of life. It completely subverts the cool factor of the nature of technology in the cyberpunk world.

It feels like something is missing… prompts the game when you try to unlock a door on a mission.

The answer would be, yes, the context and the sense of belonging in this world. You constantly ask, Who are you?

Where is this?

What is this?

And finally, what am I?

Especially when you happen to glance at the viscera of an unfortunate individual who stood before your gun and the game informs you ‘pancreas acquisition complete’.

Somehow, during the course of events, without your knowledge, you are consuming the leftover flesh of your enemies to regain health.

Talk about the right kind of nourishment.

If killing corpos is proving to be difficult and your wallet seems a little dry, the game offers an alternate way to rake in the zeros — the stocks. Cruelty Squad has an in-game stock market that will enable you to go from an inexperienced greenhorn to the Wolf of Wall Street.

At first glance, Cruelty Squad looks to be a seizure-inducing acid trip with PS1 graphics, with its loud colors, strange textures and frankly terrifying-looking populace. The strange borders of the game occupy the screen, certain implants impair your ability to see, the icons are just downright weird. There’s an assault on your auditory canals as well with its bizarre sound effects and random loud noises. This is a game that wants you to be uncomfortable. It takes pride in being gross to look at and gross to listen to. This is a game that loves to make you hate it. This is a game that you will fear to love but love to fear, deeply.

But somehow, when you manage to distinguish your targets from the graphical miasma and get used to this frightening world, you begin to really enjoy Cruelty Squad. Because this game will infect your brain.

It is a very engaging first-person shooter with good level design. Your mission is to eliminate your mark, be it a competent CEO who is doing a good job or an inept CEO with a crippling Chunkopop addiction. The Cruelty Squad (the organization) asks no questions and acts as an impartial executioner. There is no right or wrong way to go about putting a bullet in your target’s skull. To say that this game gives you complete freedom to go about your job would be underselling it. Perhaps you value stealth like any good assassin — you can break open vents and get to the best vantage point via your grapple hook. Or maybe you prefer to be straightforward, go in guns blazing, shoot down the front door and leave a trail of corpses in your wake. You can even go out of bounds of the map and break the game, as long as the end result is mission accomplished.

Between the freedom of playstyle and the secret levels and hidden missions, the replayability of Cruelty Squad is high.

It truly dials up the ‘punk’ in cyberpunk to the max and does a fantastic job of portraying a decaying hyper-capitalist society as you go about your business slaughtering whoever the highest bidder asks. It is the endings of Cruelty Squad that give a lot of food for thought. What’s frightening about it is that the world of Cruelty Squad is the future we might just be heading to. For the first time, you think maybe this cyberpunk future isn’t what you want to live in.

If a game can somehow make you so confused about whether you are having a good time understanding anything that is going on in the screen in front of you, that is an accomplishment by itself. You can’t deny that you aren’t enjoying it yet, at the same time, the experience isn’t exactly pleasant. You just do what you’re told to pay the bills and perhaps, you find some happiness in this bleak existence.

Cruelty Squad is one of those kinds of games where you really shouldn’t judge a book (or game) by its cover. Peel back the layers of filth, grime and psychedelic rot, you will find something at the end that is worth the journey. It may be frightening; it may be disgusting but it is guaranteed to tingle your neurotransmitters. Cruelty Squad provides the best insight into the bleak and rotten nature of our cyberpunk future.

The experience of Cruelty Squad can best be summed up by a quote from Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

The post ‘Cruelty Squad’: We Can’t Stop Here, This Is Chunkopop Country! appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

Well, it’s finally time. After years of speculation around what it could look like, this week Nintendo officially revealed the successor to its most popular home console ever: the Nintendo Switch 2.

The new device looks a lot like the old one, retaining the same hybrid handheld and TV-docked system design that made its predecessor a mainstream hit. Although most of the details around the hardware’s technology are currently unknown, the Japanese gaming titan will likely unveil all the inner workings during its Nintendo Direct livestream scheduled for April 2.

Through multiple leaks, many of which now look to have been on the money, rumors around the Switch 2’s capabilities have been circulating for a while now. Could it be as powerful as a PlayStation 4 Pro? Will it retain or improve upon the motion and gyroscopic controls of the OG Switch? Can its detachable Joy-Con controllers be used like a PC mouse for first-person shooter gaming? For now, the best available answer is a simple “maybe.”

But when it comes to Nintendo, it always comes down to the games. Regardless of whether the Switch 2 has any revolutionary gimmicks like the last one, or even the Wii, there’s an inherent trust that a new generation of Nintendo hardware will bring with it some of the best-designed titles of the era.

And the launch window is a crucial part of Nintendo’s strategy. Many of the games that were released on day one alongside new consoles would end up being some of their greatest overall. Games like Super Mario 64 (1996), Wii Sports (2006), and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) both introduced audiences to the potential for their systems and set the pace for the others to follow in the years that followed.

Currently, no one knows what’s in store for the initial wave of game announcements. The reveal video featured a quick glimpse of what appears to be a new Mario Kart game — which internet sleuths have already dissected to determine that the latest entry might finally deliver 24-person races alongside some major character redesigns. If it is a genuinely fresh installment, it’d be the first new iteration of the series since 2014’s Mario Kart 8, which saw an updated Deluxe version for the Switch in 2017.

Alongside the mysterious Mario Kart game, only a handful of titles are known to be in development. The biggest of which is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, a game originally announced back in 2017 before being completely scrapped and restarted in 2019 under Retro Studios, the team behind the original Metroid Prime trilogy. But after so many years existing only as vaporware, it’s hard to say whether the elusive title will be ready for the console’s launch (or at this point, ever).

That being said, there’s many different directions that Nintendo could take with producing the content lineup for the Switch 2. From rectifying past mistakes to reinventing the wheel once more, here are five things we want to see come to Nintendo’s next-gen platform.

A New 3D ‘Mario’ Game

This one’s a given, although it remains a fact that not every Nintendo console arrives with a flagship Mario game. While its first three consoles — NES, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 — all shipped with a mainline Mario title to kick off their generation, systems like the GameCube, Wii, and even the previous Switch all left players waiting months for the mustachioed plumber to make his mark with a big new release.

Super Mario Odyssey, which came out in 2017, was the last true 3D game in the franchise, and while the eight-year gap has been filled with some audacious 2D platformers and countless sports-centric side hustles for the character, the void left behind is apparent. As companies like Sony have returned to the mascot game trend with the likes of Astro Bot (2024), it feels like Nintendo’s well past due to take back its thunder.

And while sequels can be nice (2009’s Super Mario Galaxy 2 is easily better than the first), Nintendo would be mindful not to lean too hard on repeating the past, especially given some of the muted response to the Switch 2’s own reveal, which some have accused of playing it too safe. With an innovative gimmick and graphics on par with anything this decade, a new 3D Mario game would be a layup. It’s less a matter of “if,” and more so “when.”

Sequels to Long-Dormant Franchises Like ‘F-Zero’

For all the thriving franchises like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda, there’s an entire graveyard filled with the long-dead Nintendo IP. While the company’s early days were rife with new titles coming in droves — they were practically publishing any idea that came across the desk in the NES era — most of the games that were representative of the brand in its first two decades are barely remembered today.

Series like space shooter Star Fox, sci-fi racer F-Zero, and boxing sim Punch-Out may have seen their fair share of sequels here and there but have mostly been left to the history wikis. Modern day Nintendo has been cagier when it comes to continuing development of series that weren’t entirely smash hits through subsequent releases, and some (ahem, F-Zero) have even been deemed impossible to reinvent, with some designers claiming that there’s no meaningful way to evolve the concepts further.

But that’s kind of bullshit. No developer in the industry is as good at reinventing seemingly tired concepts than Nintendo. And with some of these games having been missing from action for over two decades, there’s entire generations of players who’d be blown away by even a 1:1 remake of a once-innovative classic that currently has no peers or design imitators. It’s also true that current Nintendo is very keen on returning to the well with a slew of remasters and deluxe re-issues making up a huge chunk of the Wii U and Switch libraries. So, Nintendo, if you’re listening — do the right thing and bring back some of the best games ever made that have been left to rot (again, that’s F-Zero).

Deeply Weird Ideas That Feel Fresh

There was a time when every Nintendo console delivered not just innovative reimaginings of the brand’s most beloved series but served as a testing ground for bizarre new concepts that, frankly, shouldn’t have worked. On the GameCube, that game was Pikmin (2001), a fever dream of a strategy game that saw players controlling a nickel-sized space captain commanding a troop of sentient veggie creatures on a hostile alien world. On the Wii U, it was Splatoon (2015), which took Nintendo in uncharted territory as a player-vs-player online shooter starring squid children who could disappear into their own ink.

And while Nintendo does love iteration, it’d be unfair to say that they have lost any of that gonzo spark. 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom turned the adventure game into an physics-based building game like Minecraft, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023) made the 2D platformer into an Alice in Wonderland-esque acid trip. But short of making good games weirder, it’s been nearly a decade since Nintendo introduced an all-new IP.

Speaking with Rolling Stone last summer, Mario producer Takashi Tezuka said that the future of the company is currently being built by a new generation of creative minds who all see things differently than the old guard. It’s due time that Nintendo brass, guided by guru Shigeru Miyamoto, take a deep look into their personal psyches and turn someone’s relatively normal personal hobby into the next great video game franchise.

Good Versions of Non-Nintendo Games

Since the Wii launched in 2006, Nintendo has held steadfast to the notion that they don’t necessarily need to compete with the technological prowess of its peers, Sony and Microsoft. With each subsequent console cycle, the company has instead opted to produce more outside-the-box devices tailored to a specific gimmick like dual-screen play or the Switch 2’s own hybrid, on-the-go design. But with that comes limitations, usually leaving the systems with years-old horsepower to work with.

In the past, that’s also meant being left behind by third-party developers who are chasing the latest and greatest trends and maximum potential of existing hardware. And while the first Switch saw many partners come back to the fray with cross-platform releases, most games required major concessions to basically run on the pint-sized device. Plenty of memes arose around Switch ports of games like Mortal Kombat 1, which ran so poorly and looked so ugly, they might’ve been better off never existing in the first place.

Yet, in 2025, things are different. The technological leaps forward have slowed to some degree, and games developed for platforms like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X don’t look or feel that much better than games even 10 years ago. In fact, even years into their life cycles, there’s still many games that are being produced that still run on both PS4 and PS5, with minimal differences. If the rumors of the Switch 2 being as powerful as a PlayStation 4 (or even a PS4 Pro when docked), it should stand to reason that third-party games like Marvel Rivals could be ported to Nintendo without much sacrifice in the process.

Technological Gimmicks That Open Up New Kinds of Experiences

Nobody makes a ridiculous gimmick as appealing as Nintendo. In the quest to make gaming more immersive, accessible, and appealing to people who’d rather not use just a standard controller, the company has always tested the waters (and sometimes players’ patience) with boundary-pushing creations that set them apart, before ultimately becoming the norm. In the past, they popularized concepts like analog joystick movement, vibrational feedback and rumble, and of course, motion controls. And while the Switch 2 doesn’t readily have a new shtick to capitalize on, there might be some surprises in store.

One major rumor circulating online is that the revised Joy-Con controllers for the Switch 2 won’t just feature gyroscopic controls or an accelerometer but may potentially have the ability to be used like a point-and-click PC mouse. Originally chalked up to conjecture, the reveal video for the console that published this week seemingly confirms the rumor with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of the Switch 2’s Joy-Con ports that many are claiming houses an optical light, just like any modern mouse. Pair this with the fact that the video also shows the controllers sliding around facedown on a surface, and the theory begins to gain more credibility.

But what use would there be for a mouse with a home or portable console like the Switch 2? Well, in the most obvious terms, it could be used to play previously PC-centric genres like real-time strategy games, MOBAs, and more competitive first-person shooters. But outside of that, it affords Nintendo the potential to bring back one of its weirdest games to date: Mario Paint. For those old enough to remember, Mario Paint was an SNES title from 1992 that’s exactly what it sounds like and more: an art creation game that used a peripheral mouse to let players bring out their inner Picasso. Featuring graphics editing, rough animation, and even music composition, Mario Paint was an concept well ahead of its time, arriving years before Roblox or Minecraft, yet fits perfectly with today’s audience weened on the world of content creation.

If the Joy-Con mouse is the real deal, it could open the Switch 2 to an entirely new world of functionality for a home console. It’s an opportunity for Nintendo — and players themselves — to be their weirdest selves.

From Rolling Stone US.

The post 5 Things We Want to See In Nintendo Switch 2 appeared first on Rolling Stone India.