• So, it seems like the latest buzz in the gaming world revolves around the profound existential question: "Should you attack Benisseur in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?" I mean, what a dilemma! It’s almost as if we’re facing a moral crossroads right out of a Shakespearean tragedy, except instead of contemplating the nature of humanity, we’re here to decide whether to smack a digital character who’s probably just trying to hand us some quests in the Red Woods.

    Let’s break this down, shall we? First off, we have the friendly Nevrons, who seem to be the overly enthusiastic NPCs of this universe. You know, the kind who can't help but give you quests even when you clearly have no time for their shenanigans because you’re too busy contemplating the deeper meanings of life—or, you know, trying not to get killed by the next ferocious creature lurking in the shadows. And what do they come up with? "Hey, why not take on Benisseur?" Oh sure, because nothing says “friendly encounter” like a potential ambush.

    Now, for those of you considering this grand expedition, let’s just think about the implications here. Attacking Benisseur? Really? Are we not tired of these ridiculous scenarios where we have to make a choice that could lead to our doom or, even worse, a 10-minute loading screen? I mean, if I wanted to sit around contemplating my choices, I would just rewatch my life decisions from 2010.

    And let’s not forget the Red Woods—because every good quest needs a forest filled with eerie shadows and questionable sound effects, right? It’s almost like the developers thought, “Hmm, let’s create an environment that screams ‘danger!’ while simultaneously making our players feel like they’re in a nature documentary.” Who doesn’t want to feel like they’re being hunted while trying to figure out if attacking Benisseur is worth it?

    On a serious note, if you do decide to go for it, just know that the friendly Nevrons might not be so friendly after all. After all, what’s a little betrayal between friends? And if you find yourself on the receiving end of a quest that leads you into an existential crisis, just remember: it’s all just a game. Or is it?

    So here’s to you, brave adventurers! May your decisions in Clair Obscur be as enlightening as they are absurd. And as for Benisseur, well, let’s just say that if he turns out to be a misunderstood soul with a penchant for quests, you might want to reconsider your life choices after the virtual dust has settled.

    #ClairObscur #Expedition33 #GamingHumor #Benisseur #RedWoods
    So, it seems like the latest buzz in the gaming world revolves around the profound existential question: "Should you attack Benisseur in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?" I mean, what a dilemma! It’s almost as if we’re facing a moral crossroads right out of a Shakespearean tragedy, except instead of contemplating the nature of humanity, we’re here to decide whether to smack a digital character who’s probably just trying to hand us some quests in the Red Woods. Let’s break this down, shall we? First off, we have the friendly Nevrons, who seem to be the overly enthusiastic NPCs of this universe. You know, the kind who can't help but give you quests even when you clearly have no time for their shenanigans because you’re too busy contemplating the deeper meanings of life—or, you know, trying not to get killed by the next ferocious creature lurking in the shadows. And what do they come up with? "Hey, why not take on Benisseur?" Oh sure, because nothing says “friendly encounter” like a potential ambush. Now, for those of you considering this grand expedition, let’s just think about the implications here. Attacking Benisseur? Really? Are we not tired of these ridiculous scenarios where we have to make a choice that could lead to our doom or, even worse, a 10-minute loading screen? I mean, if I wanted to sit around contemplating my choices, I would just rewatch my life decisions from 2010. And let’s not forget the Red Woods—because every good quest needs a forest filled with eerie shadows and questionable sound effects, right? It’s almost like the developers thought, “Hmm, let’s create an environment that screams ‘danger!’ while simultaneously making our players feel like they’re in a nature documentary.” Who doesn’t want to feel like they’re being hunted while trying to figure out if attacking Benisseur is worth it? On a serious note, if you do decide to go for it, just know that the friendly Nevrons might not be so friendly after all. After all, what’s a little betrayal between friends? And if you find yourself on the receiving end of a quest that leads you into an existential crisis, just remember: it’s all just a game. Or is it? So here’s to you, brave adventurers! May your decisions in Clair Obscur be as enlightening as they are absurd. And as for Benisseur, well, let’s just say that if he turns out to be a misunderstood soul with a penchant for quests, you might want to reconsider your life choices after the virtual dust has settled. #ClairObscur #Expedition33 #GamingHumor #Benisseur #RedWoods
    Should You Attack Benisseur In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
    In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you’ll come across friendly Nevrons that’ll hand out quests for the party to take on. Some are easier than others, including this one located in the Red Woods.Read more...
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  • design/leader: Sheppard Robson’s Michael Davies

    Michael Davies is head of Stix Design, the graphic design and branding arm of architecture firm Sheppard Robson. He’s worked on BBC Cardiff, UCL Marshgate and Freshfields law firm’s London HQ.
    Design
    What would your monograph be called?
    No, I don’t shop at High and Mighty. I am the first-born son of West African parents, and growing up, I stood out because I was very tall – I’m now 6’ 7” – and also one of the only black kids at school. This led to a strong desire to fit in.
    Maybe this has made me always feel really comfortable as part of the team, working shoulder-to-shoulder to create work that stands out. But, of course, this instinct to collaborate is balanced with my idiosyncrasies and expressing my own perspectives on work and life.
    And yes, I shop at the same places as everyone else.
    What recent design work made you a bit jealous?
    I really like the wayfinding scheme at Borough Yards by f.r.a. When I first went there, the designs really spoke to me as a body of work. The work hit every button – intuition, intrigue, interaction, story-telling. The lot.
    It’s how I would love to have answered the brief.
    f.r.a.’s wayfinding work at Borough Yards
    What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from?
    I have a few. Salts Mill at Saltaire – a former mill housing art galleries, shops, and cafe and diner – and The Pheasantry Cafe at Bushy Park, but my current favourite has to be the ground floor cafe at the V&A.
    The sheer scale of its beauty and ambience is always surprising. They’ll throw in a quartet every now and then, in case you might think it isn’t atmospheric enough. It’s great for people-watching, too – I bet it’s a good spot for writers.
    Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked.
    It has to be a brand new pencil. The very sight of one conjures up so much potential before you’ve even made a mark.
    What object in your studio best sums up your taste?
    Perhaps not strictly an object, but I Iove the cupboard-sized meeting room in the far corner of the second floor of our Camden office. It has a huge, cantilevered window that looks out onto our green roof.
    In the summer it turns into a full-on meadow. It’s a great place to feel the breeze, feel connected to nature and think.
    The view from the second floor meeting room
    Leadership
    What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful?
    Earlier in my senior career I worked for someone who’d employed a number of us from a previous agency. The familiarity was a key factor in why I took the position.
    A good friend and design director there advised me to step up and assume full responsibility for all aspects of the projects I worked on – “Don’t wait for instruction from your design leader, try to come forward with solutions rather than asking what should you do.”
    His implication was, “Don’t be too comfortable” and try not to lean into my design leader too often. Be more proactive.
    This proved to be a difficult period of transition for me at the time, with lots of sleepless nights questioning my every decision. Eventually, I learned there’s a value to making mistakes as it afforded me the opportunity to grow. That outcome was career-changing.
    What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need?
    Make the process as enjoyable as you can. A little self-deprecation and good humour goes a long way. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be honest with praise – say when something goes well or looks great, just as you would when it doesn’t.
    What keeps you up at night?
    I work with a smallish team in a large organisation, so occasionally, several jobs might come in from different directions, all at the same time. That can be quite stressful. There’s always that one job that’s taking too long to land, you take on others to fill the gap and then it suddenly drops – arrrgh!
    What trait is non-negotiable in new hires?
    Working alongside so many different skill-sets here at Sheppard Robson affords us the luxury of attacking problems from all sides.
    The key to doing this successfully is through open lines of communication. I need good communicators and great listeners. Their work will always speak for itself, but those two traits make all the difference.
    Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…”
    …would allow us to just lead the way. I know this isn’t always easy for clients, seeing as creativity is a totally different language/science to some.
    However, there’s no need to fight the process. Take your time selecting the right agency, then trust us, and enjoy the journey.
    #designleader #sheppard #robsons #michael #davies
    design/leader: Sheppard Robson’s Michael Davies
    Michael Davies is head of Stix Design, the graphic design and branding arm of architecture firm Sheppard Robson. He’s worked on BBC Cardiff, UCL Marshgate and Freshfields law firm’s London HQ. Design What would your monograph be called? No, I don’t shop at High and Mighty. I am the first-born son of West African parents, and growing up, I stood out because I was very tall – I’m now 6’ 7” – and also one of the only black kids at school. This led to a strong desire to fit in. Maybe this has made me always feel really comfortable as part of the team, working shoulder-to-shoulder to create work that stands out. But, of course, this instinct to collaborate is balanced with my idiosyncrasies and expressing my own perspectives on work and life. And yes, I shop at the same places as everyone else. What recent design work made you a bit jealous? I really like the wayfinding scheme at Borough Yards by f.r.a. When I first went there, the designs really spoke to me as a body of work. The work hit every button – intuition, intrigue, interaction, story-telling. The lot. It’s how I would love to have answered the brief. f.r.a.’s wayfinding work at Borough Yards What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from? I have a few. Salts Mill at Saltaire – a former mill housing art galleries, shops, and cafe and diner – and The Pheasantry Cafe at Bushy Park, but my current favourite has to be the ground floor cafe at the V&A. The sheer scale of its beauty and ambience is always surprising. They’ll throw in a quartet every now and then, in case you might think it isn’t atmospheric enough. It’s great for people-watching, too – I bet it’s a good spot for writers. Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked. It has to be a brand new pencil. The very sight of one conjures up so much potential before you’ve even made a mark. What object in your studio best sums up your taste? Perhaps not strictly an object, but I Iove the cupboard-sized meeting room in the far corner of the second floor of our Camden office. It has a huge, cantilevered window that looks out onto our green roof. In the summer it turns into a full-on meadow. It’s a great place to feel the breeze, feel connected to nature and think. The view from the second floor meeting room Leadership What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful? Earlier in my senior career I worked for someone who’d employed a number of us from a previous agency. The familiarity was a key factor in why I took the position. A good friend and design director there advised me to step up and assume full responsibility for all aspects of the projects I worked on – “Don’t wait for instruction from your design leader, try to come forward with solutions rather than asking what should you do.” His implication was, “Don’t be too comfortable” and try not to lean into my design leader too often. Be more proactive. This proved to be a difficult period of transition for me at the time, with lots of sleepless nights questioning my every decision. Eventually, I learned there’s a value to making mistakes as it afforded me the opportunity to grow. That outcome was career-changing. What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need? Make the process as enjoyable as you can. A little self-deprecation and good humour goes a long way. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be honest with praise – say when something goes well or looks great, just as you would when it doesn’t. What keeps you up at night? I work with a smallish team in a large organisation, so occasionally, several jobs might come in from different directions, all at the same time. That can be quite stressful. There’s always that one job that’s taking too long to land, you take on others to fill the gap and then it suddenly drops – arrrgh! What trait is non-negotiable in new hires? Working alongside so many different skill-sets here at Sheppard Robson affords us the luxury of attacking problems from all sides. The key to doing this successfully is through open lines of communication. I need good communicators and great listeners. Their work will always speak for itself, but those two traits make all the difference. Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…” …would allow us to just lead the way. I know this isn’t always easy for clients, seeing as creativity is a totally different language/science to some. However, there’s no need to fight the process. Take your time selecting the right agency, then trust us, and enjoy the journey. #designleader #sheppard #robsons #michael #davies
    WWW.DESIGNWEEK.CO.UK
    design/leader: Sheppard Robson’s Michael Davies
    Michael Davies is head of Stix Design, the graphic design and branding arm of architecture firm Sheppard Robson. He’s worked on BBC Cardiff, UCL Marshgate and Freshfields law firm’s London HQ. Design What would your monograph be called? No, I don’t shop at High and Mighty. I am the first-born son of West African parents, and growing up, I stood out because I was very tall – I’m now 6’ 7” – and also one of the only black kids at school. This led to a strong desire to fit in. Maybe this has made me always feel really comfortable as part of the team, working shoulder-to-shoulder to create work that stands out. But, of course, this instinct to collaborate is balanced with my idiosyncrasies and expressing my own perspectives on work and life. And yes, I shop at the same places as everyone else. What recent design work made you a bit jealous? I really like the wayfinding scheme at Borough Yards by f.r.a. When I first went there, the designs really spoke to me as a body of work. The work hit every button – intuition, intrigue, interaction, story-telling. The lot. It’s how I would love to have answered the brief. f.r.a.’s wayfinding work at Borough Yards What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from? I have a few. Salts Mill at Saltaire – a former mill housing art galleries, shops, and cafe and diner – and The Pheasantry Cafe at Bushy Park, but my current favourite has to be the ground floor cafe at the V&A. The sheer scale of its beauty and ambience is always surprising. They’ll throw in a quartet every now and then, in case you might think it isn’t atmospheric enough. It’s great for people-watching, too – I bet it’s a good spot for writers. Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked. It has to be a brand new pencil. The very sight of one conjures up so much potential before you’ve even made a mark. What object in your studio best sums up your taste? Perhaps not strictly an object, but I Iove the cupboard-sized meeting room in the far corner of the second floor of our Camden office. It has a huge, cantilevered window that looks out onto our green roof. In the summer it turns into a full-on meadow. It’s a great place to feel the breeze, feel connected to nature and think. The view from the second floor meeting room Leadership What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful? Earlier in my senior career I worked for someone who’d employed a number of us from a previous agency. The familiarity was a key factor in why I took the position. A good friend and design director there advised me to step up and assume full responsibility for all aspects of the projects I worked on – “Don’t wait for instruction from your design leader, try to come forward with solutions rather than asking what should you do.” His implication was, “Don’t be too comfortable” and try not to lean into my design leader too often. Be more proactive. This proved to be a difficult period of transition for me at the time, with lots of sleepless nights questioning my every decision. Eventually, I learned there’s a value to making mistakes as it afforded me the opportunity to grow. That outcome was career-changing. What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need? Make the process as enjoyable as you can. A little self-deprecation and good humour goes a long way. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be honest with praise – say when something goes well or looks great, just as you would when it doesn’t. What keeps you up at night? I work with a smallish team in a large organisation, so occasionally, several jobs might come in from different directions, all at the same time. That can be quite stressful. There’s always that one job that’s taking too long to land, you take on others to fill the gap and then it suddenly drops – arrrgh! What trait is non-negotiable in new hires? Working alongside so many different skill-sets here at Sheppard Robson affords us the luxury of attacking problems from all sides. The key to doing this successfully is through open lines of communication. I need good communicators and great listeners. Their work will always speak for itself, but those two traits make all the difference. Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…” …would allow us to just lead the way. I know this isn’t always easy for clients, seeing as creativity is a totally different language/science to some. However, there’s no need to fight the process. Take your time selecting the right agency, then trust us, and enjoy the journey.
    0 Comments 0 Shares
  • YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads

    It’s fairly easy to block the constant, incessant advertising that appears on YouTube. Google would prefer that you don’t, or pay upto make them go away. Last weekend, the company started its latest campaign to try and badger ad-block users into disabling their extensions. Since then, it looks like YouTube has escalated things and is now intentionally slowing down videos.
    Posters on Reddit and the Brave browser forum have observed videos being blacked out on first load, approximately for the length of pre-roll ads, with a pop-up link that directs users to the ad-blocking section of this technical support page. “Check whether your browser extensions that block ads are affecting video playback,” suggests Google. “As another option, try opening YouTube in an incognito window with all extensions disabled and check if the issue continues.” PCWorld staff has seen this in action, using uBlock Origin Lite.
    Google
    Ad-block extension developers quickly got around the pop-up issue earlier this week, with one AdGuard representative calling the process “a classic cat-and-mouse game.” But if Google wanted to instigate a more serious crackdown on users blocking ads without paying up, it could do so easily—and we’ve seen it pull this same move before. Posters on the latest issue speculate that the slowdowns might be tagged to specific Google or YouTube user accounts that were detected blocking ads previously, which would bypass any kind of interaction with a specific browser or extension.
    I can’t independently confirm that’s happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It also wouldn’t shock me if Google is seeing a larger percentage of YouTube users blocking advertising, as is the case all across the web, as the quantity of advertising rises while quality takes a nosedive. YouTube video creators are having to get, well, creative to seek alternate revenue beyond basic AdSense accounts, as sponsored videos are now constant across the platform and more channels put new videos behind paywalls on YouTube itself or via other platforms like Patreon.

    YouTube is attacking the issue from other angles as well. Tech-focused creators that show how to use third-party tools to block ads or download videos from the siteare getting their videos taken down and their accounts flagged, for violation of the extremely vague policy around “harmful and dangerous content.”
    If I may editorialize a bit: Google, if you want more people to subscribe to YouTube Premium and remove advertising, you need to make it cheaper. Charging per month just to get rid of ads is the same cost of a premium subscription from other sources where users can watch full movies and series. YouTube as a platform is a much lower bar and just doesn’t compete at that level. I’m not going to pay that much to get rid of ads, not when it doesn’t actually get rid of all the ads—those sponsored and subscriber-only videos are still all over the place—and the site is filling up with AI slop. “Premium Lite,” which neuters the offerings for mobile and music-focused users, doesn’t make the cut either.
    And to be clear, I have no problem paying for the stuff I watch. I already pay more than a month to support the individual YouTube channels I enjoy, like Second Wind, Drawfee, and several tech podcasts. But I do it via Patreon because sending that money through YouTube feels gross. If Google wants people to pay up, it needs to lower the price enough so that it’s no longer worth the hassle of blocking them.
    It’s a lesson that the music, movie, and game industries learned a long time ago as they fought the initial wave of internet piracy… and now seem to be forgetting again.
    #youtube #might #slow #down #your
    YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads
    It’s fairly easy to block the constant, incessant advertising that appears on YouTube. Google would prefer that you don’t, or pay upto make them go away. Last weekend, the company started its latest campaign to try and badger ad-block users into disabling their extensions. Since then, it looks like YouTube has escalated things and is now intentionally slowing down videos. Posters on Reddit and the Brave browser forum have observed videos being blacked out on first load, approximately for the length of pre-roll ads, with a pop-up link that directs users to the ad-blocking section of this technical support page. “Check whether your browser extensions that block ads are affecting video playback,” suggests Google. “As another option, try opening YouTube in an incognito window with all extensions disabled and check if the issue continues.” PCWorld staff has seen this in action, using uBlock Origin Lite. Google Ad-block extension developers quickly got around the pop-up issue earlier this week, with one AdGuard representative calling the process “a classic cat-and-mouse game.” But if Google wanted to instigate a more serious crackdown on users blocking ads without paying up, it could do so easily—and we’ve seen it pull this same move before. Posters on the latest issue speculate that the slowdowns might be tagged to specific Google or YouTube user accounts that were detected blocking ads previously, which would bypass any kind of interaction with a specific browser or extension. I can’t independently confirm that’s happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It also wouldn’t shock me if Google is seeing a larger percentage of YouTube users blocking advertising, as is the case all across the web, as the quantity of advertising rises while quality takes a nosedive. YouTube video creators are having to get, well, creative to seek alternate revenue beyond basic AdSense accounts, as sponsored videos are now constant across the platform and more channels put new videos behind paywalls on YouTube itself or via other platforms like Patreon. YouTube is attacking the issue from other angles as well. Tech-focused creators that show how to use third-party tools to block ads or download videos from the siteare getting their videos taken down and their accounts flagged, for violation of the extremely vague policy around “harmful and dangerous content.” If I may editorialize a bit: Google, if you want more people to subscribe to YouTube Premium and remove advertising, you need to make it cheaper. Charging per month just to get rid of ads is the same cost of a premium subscription from other sources where users can watch full movies and series. YouTube as a platform is a much lower bar and just doesn’t compete at that level. I’m not going to pay that much to get rid of ads, not when it doesn’t actually get rid of all the ads—those sponsored and subscriber-only videos are still all over the place—and the site is filling up with AI slop. “Premium Lite,” which neuters the offerings for mobile and music-focused users, doesn’t make the cut either. And to be clear, I have no problem paying for the stuff I watch. I already pay more than a month to support the individual YouTube channels I enjoy, like Second Wind, Drawfee, and several tech podcasts. But I do it via Patreon because sending that money through YouTube feels gross. If Google wants people to pay up, it needs to lower the price enough so that it’s no longer worth the hassle of blocking them. It’s a lesson that the music, movie, and game industries learned a long time ago as they fought the initial wave of internet piracy… and now seem to be forgetting again. #youtube #might #slow #down #your
    WWW.PCWORLD.COM
    YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads
    It’s fairly easy to block the constant, incessant advertising that appears on YouTube. Google would prefer that you don’t, or pay up (quite a lot) to make them go away. Last weekend, the company started its latest campaign to try and badger ad-block users into disabling their extensions. Since then, it looks like YouTube has escalated things and is now intentionally slowing down videos. Posters on Reddit and the Brave browser forum have observed videos being blacked out on first load, approximately for the length of pre-roll ads, with a pop-up link that directs users to the ad-blocking section of this technical support page. “Check whether your browser extensions that block ads are affecting video playback,” suggests Google. “As another option, try opening YouTube in an incognito window with all extensions disabled and check if the issue continues.” PCWorld staff has seen this in action, using uBlock Origin Lite. Google Ad-block extension developers quickly got around the pop-up issue earlier this week, with one AdGuard representative calling the process “a classic cat-and-mouse game.” But if Google wanted to instigate a more serious crackdown on users blocking ads without paying up, it could do so easily—and we’ve seen it pull this same move before. Posters on the latest issue speculate that the slowdowns might be tagged to specific Google or YouTube user accounts that were detected blocking ads previously, which would bypass any kind of interaction with a specific browser or extension. I can’t independently confirm that’s happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It also wouldn’t shock me if Google is seeing a larger percentage of YouTube users blocking advertising, as is the case all across the web, as the quantity of advertising rises while quality takes a nosedive. YouTube video creators are having to get, well, creative to seek alternate revenue beyond basic AdSense accounts, as sponsored videos are now constant across the platform and more channels put new videos behind paywalls on YouTube itself or via other platforms like Patreon. YouTube is attacking the issue from other angles as well. Tech-focused creators that show how to use third-party tools to block ads or download videos from the site (again, without paying the steep fees for YouTube Premium) are getting their videos taken down and their accounts flagged, for violation of the extremely vague policy around “harmful and dangerous content.” If I may editorialize a bit: Google, if you want more people to subscribe to YouTube Premium and remove advertising, you need to make it cheaper. Charging $14 per month just to get rid of ads is the same cost of a premium subscription from other sources where users can watch full movies and series. YouTube as a platform is a much lower bar and just doesn’t compete at that level. I’m not going to pay that much to get rid of ads, not when it doesn’t actually get rid of all the ads—those sponsored and subscriber-only videos are still all over the place—and the site is filling up with AI slop. “Premium Lite,” which neuters the offerings for mobile and music-focused users, doesn’t make the cut either. And to be clear, I have no problem paying for the stuff I watch. I already pay more than $15 a month to support the individual YouTube channels I enjoy, like Second Wind, Drawfee, and several tech podcasts. But I do it via Patreon because sending that money through YouTube feels gross. If Google wants people to pay up, it needs to lower the price enough so that it’s no longer worth the hassle of blocking them. It’s a lesson that the music, movie, and game industries learned a long time ago as they fought the initial wave of internet piracy… and now seem to be forgetting again.
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  • The Best Jaws Knockoffs of the Past 50 Years

    To this day, Jaws remains the best example of Steven Spielberg‘s genius as a filmmaker. He somehow took a middling pulp novel about a killer shark and turned it into a thrilling adventure about masculinity and economic desperation. And to the surprise of no one, the massive success of Jaws spawned a lot of knockoffs, a glut of movies about animals terrorizing communities. None of these reach the majesty of Jaws, of course. But here’s the thing—none of them had to be Jaws. Sure, it’s nice that Spielberg’s film has impeccably designed set pieces and compelling characters, but that’s not the main reason people go to animal attack movies. We really just want to watch people get attacked. And eaten.

    With such standards duly lowered, let’s take a look at the best animal attack movies that came out in the past half-century since Jaws first scared us out of the water. Of course this list doesn’t cover every movie inspired by Jaws, and some can argue that these movies were less inspired by Jaws than other nature revolts features, such as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But every one of these flicks owes a debt to Jaws, either in inspiration or simply getting people interested in movies about animals eating people. Those warning aside, lets make like drunken revelers on Amity Island and dive right in!
    20. SharknadoSharknado almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s less a movie and more of a meme, a precursor to Vines and TikTok trends. Yes, many fantastic movies have been made off of an incredibly high concept and a painfully low budget. Heck, that approach made Roger Corman’s career. But Sharknado‘s high concept—a tornado sweeps over the ocean and launches ravenous sharks into the mainland—comes with a self-satisfied smirk.
    Somehow, Sharknado managed to capture the imagination of the public, making it popular enough to launch five sequels. At the time, viewers defended it as a so bad it’s good-style movie like The Room. But today Sharknado‘s obvious attempts to be wacky are just bad, making the franchise one more embarrassing trend, ready to be forgotten.

    19. OrcaFor a long time, Orca had a reputation for being the most obvious Jaws ripoff, and with good reason—Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would go on to support Flash Gordon, Manhunter, and truly launch David Lynch‘s career with Blue Velvet, wanted his own version of the Spielberg hit. On paper he had all the right ingredients, including a great cast with Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, and another oceanic threat, this time a killer whale.
    Orca boasts some impressive underwater cinematography, something that even Jaws largely lacks. But that’s the one thing Orca does better than Jaws. Everything else—character-building, suspense and scare scenes, basic plotting and storytelling—is done in such a haphazard manner that Orca plays more like an early mockbuster from the Asylum production companythan it does a product from a future Hollywood player.
    18. TentaclesAnother Italian cheapie riding off the success of Jaws, Tentacles at least manages to be fun in its ineptitude. A giant octopus feature, Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he annoyed first-time director James Cameron so much on Piranha II: The Spawning that he activated the future legend’s infamous refusal to compromise with studios and producers.
    Tentacles somehow has a pretty impressive cast, including John Huston, Shelly Winters, and Henry Fonda all picking up paychecks. None of them really do any hard work in Tentacles, but there’s something fun about watching these greats shake the the octopus limbs that are supposed to be attacking them, as if they’re in an Ed Wood picture.
    17. Kingdom of the SpidersSpielberg famously couldn’t get his mechanical shark to work, a happy accident that he overcame with incredibly tense scenes that merely suggested the monster’s presence. For his arachnids on the forgotten movie Kingdom of the Spiders, director John “Bud” Cardos has an even more formative tool to make up for the lack of effects magic: William Shatner.
    Shatner plays Rack Hansen, a veterinarian who discovers that the overuse of pesticides has killed off smaller insects and forced the tarantula population to seek larger prey, including humans. These types of ecological messages are common among creature features of the late ’70s, and they usually clang with hollow self-righteousness. But in Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner delivers his lines with such blown out conviction that we enjoy his bluster, even if we don’t quite buy it.

    16. The MegThe idea of Jason Statham fighting a giant prehistoric shark is an idea so awesome, it’s shocking that his character from Spy didn’t already pitch it. And The Meg certainly does deliver when Statham’s character does commit to battle with the creature in the movie’s climax. The problem is that moment of absurd heroism comes only after a lot of long sappy nonsense.

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    It’s hard to figure out who is to blame for The Meg‘s failure. Director Jon Turteltaub hails from well-remembered Disney classics Cool Runnings and National Treasure. But too often he forgets how to pace an adventure film and gives into his most saccharine instincts here. One of the many Chinese/Hollywood co-produced blockbusters of the 2010s, The Meg also suffers from trying to innocuously please too wide an audience. Whatever the source, The Meg only fleetingly delivers on the promise of big time peril, wasting too much time on thin character beats.
    15. Lake PlacidI know already some people reading this are taking exception to Lake Placid‘s low ranking, complaining that this list isn’t showing enough respect to what they consider a zippy, irreverent take on a creature feature, one written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley and co-starring Betty White. To those people, I can only say, “Please rewatch Lake Placid and then consider its ranking.”
    Lake Placid certainly has its fun moments, helped along by White as a kindly grandmother who keeps feeding a giant croc, Bill Pullman as a dumbfounded simple sheriff, and Oliver Platt as a rich adventurer. Their various one-liners are a pleasure to remember. But within the context of a movie stuffed with late ’90s irony, the constant snark gets tiresome, sapping out all the fun of a killer crocodile film.
    14. Open WaterLike Sharknado, Open Water had its fans for a few years but has fallen in most moviegoers’ esteem. Unlike Sharknado, Open Water is a real movie, just one that can’t sustain its premise for its entire runtime.
    Writer and director Chris Kentis draws inspiration from a real-life story about a husband and wife who were accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their scuba excursion group. The same thing happens to the movie’s Susan Watkinsand Daniel Travis, who respond to their predicament by airing out their relationship grievances, even as sharks start to surround them. Kentis commits to the reality of the couple’s bleak situation, which sets Open Water apart from the thrill-a-minute movies that mostly make up this list. But even with some shocking set pieces, Open Water feels too much like being stuck in car with a couple who hates each other and not enough like a shark attack thriller.

    13. Eaten AliveSpielberg’s artful execution of Jaws led many of the filmmakers who followed to attempt some semblance of character development and prestige, even if done without enthusiasm. Not so with Tobe Hooper, who followed up the genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Eaten Alive.
    Then again, Hooper draws just as much from Psycho as he does Jaws. Neville Brand plays Judd, the proprietor of a sleazy hotel on the bayou where slimy yokels do horrible things to one another. Amity Island, this is not. But when one of the visitors annoy Judd, he feeds them to the pet croc kept in the back. Eaten Alive is a nasty bit of work, but like most of Hooper’s oeuvre, it’s a lot of fun.
    12. ProphecyDirected by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Grand Prix fame, Prophecy is easily the best of the more high-minded animal attack movies that followed Jaws. This landlocked film, written by David Seltzer, stars Robert Foxworth as Dr. Robert Verne, a veterinarian hired by the EPA to investigate bear attacks against loggers on a mountain in Maine. Along with his wife Maggie, Verne finds himself thrown into a conflict between the mining company and the local Indigenous population who resist them.
    Prophecy drips with an American hippy mentality that reads as pretty conservative today, making its depictions of Native people, including the leader played by Italian American actor Armand Assante, pretty embarrassing. But there is a mutant bear on the loose and Frankenheimer knows how to stage an exciting sequence, which makes Prophecy a worthwhile watch.
    11. Piranha 3DPiranha 3D begins with a denim-wearing fisherman named Matt, played by Richard Dreyfuss no less, falling into the water and immediately getting devoured by the titular flesh-eaters. This weird nod to Matt Hooper and Jaws instead of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the movie Piranha 3D is supposed to be remaking, is just one of the many oddities at play yhere. Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have some of the wacky energy and social satire of the original film, but director Alexandre Aja, a veteran of the French Extreme movement, includes so much nastiness in Piranha 3D that we’re not sure if we want to laugh or throw up.
    Still, there’s no denying the power of Piranha 3D‘s set pieces, including a shocking sequence in which the titular beasties attack an MTV/Girls Gone Wild Spring Break party and chaos ensues. Furthermore, Piranha 3D benefits from a strong cast, which includes Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, and Ving Rhames.

    10. AnacondaWith its many scenes involving an animal attacking a ragtag group on a boat, Anaconda clearly owes a debt to Jaws. However, with its corny characters and shoddy late ’90s CGI, Anaconda feels today less like a Jaws knockoff and more like a forerunner to Sharknado and the boom of lazy Syfy and Redbox horror movies that followed.
    Whatever its influences and legacy, there’s no denying that Anaconda is, itself, a pretty fun movie. Giant snakes make for good movie monsters, and the special effects have become dated in a way that feels charming. Moreover, Anaconda boasts a enjoyably unlikely cast, including Eric Stoltz as a scientist, Owen Wilson and Ice Cube as members of a documentary crew, and Jon Voight as what might be the most unhinged character of his career, second only to his crossbow enthusiast from Megalopolis.
    9. The ShallowsThe Shallows isn’t the highest-ranking shark attack movie on this list but it’s definitely the most frightening shark attack thriller since Jaws. That’s high praise, indeed, but The Shallows benefits from a lean and mean premise and clear direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made some solid modern thrillers. The Shallows focuses almost entirely on med student Nancy Adams, who gets caught far from shore after the tide comes in and is hunted by a shark.
    A lot of the pleasure of The Shallows comes from seeing how Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski avoid the problems that plague many of the movies on this list. Adams is an incredibly competent character, and we pull for her even after the mistake that leaves her stranded. Moreover, The Shallows perfectly balances thrill sequences with character moments, making for one of the more well-rounded creature features of the past decade.
    8. RazorbackJaws, of course, has a fantastic opening scene, a thrilling sequence in which the shark kills a drunken skinny dipper. Of the movies on this list, only Razorback comes close to matching the original’s power, and it does so because director Russell Mulcahy, who would make Highlander next, goes for glossy absurdity. In the Razorback‘s first three minutes, a hulking wild boar smashes through the rural home of an elderly man in the Australian outback, carrying away his young grandson. Over the sounds of a synth score, the old man stumbles away from his now-burning house, screaming up into the sky.
    Sadly, the rest of Razorback cannot top that moment. Mulcahy directs the picture with lots of glossy style, while retaining the grit of the Australian New Wave movement. But budget restrictions keep the titular beast from really looking as cool as one would hope, and the movie’s loud, crazy tone can’t rely on Jaws-like power of suggestion.

    7. CrawlAlexandre Aja’s second movie on this list earns its high rank precisely because it does away with the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Piranha 3D and leans into what the French filmmaker does so well: slicked down and mean horror. Set in the middle of a Florida hurricane, Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario as competitive swimmer Haley and always-welcome character actor Barry Pepper as her father Dave, who get trapped in a flooding basement that’s menaced by alligators.
    Yet as grimy as Crawl can get, Aja also executes the strong character work in the script by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen. Dave and Haley are real people, not just gator-bait, making their peril feel all the more real, and their triumphs all the sweeter.
    6. PiranhaPiranha is the only entry on this list to get a seal of approval from Stephen Spielberg himself, who not only praised the movie, even as Universal Pictures planned to sue the production, but also got director Joe Dante to later helm Gremlins. It’s not hard to see why Piranha charmed Spielberg, a man who loves wacky comedy. Dante’s Looney Tunes approach is on full display in some of the movie’s best set pieces.
    But Piranha is special because it also comes from legendary screenwriter John Sayles, who infuses the story with social satire and cynicism that somehow blends with Dante’s approach. The result is a film about piranha developed by the U.S. military to kill the Vietnamese getting unleashed into an American river and making their way to a children’s summer camp, a horrifying idea that Dante turns into good clean fun.
    5. SlugsIf we’re talking about well-made movies, then Slugs belongs way below any of the movies on this list, somewhere around the killer earthworm picture Squirm. But if we’re thinking about pure enjoyable spectacle, it’s hard to top Slugs, a movie about, yes, flesh-eating slugs.
    Yes, it’s very funny to think about people getting terrorized by creatures that are famous for moving very, very slowly. But Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, perhaps best known for his equally bugnuts giallo Pieces, pays as little attention to realism as he does to good taste. Slugs is filled with insane and ghastly sequences of killer slugs ending up in unlikely places, swarming the floor of someone’s bedroom or inside a fancy restaurant, and then devouring people, one methodical bite at a time.

    4. Deep Blue SeaWhen it comes to goofy ’90s CGI action, it’s hard to top Deep Blue Sea, directed by Renny Harlin and featuring sharks with genetically enhanced brains. Deep Blue Sea doesn’t have a strong sense of pacing, it lacks any sort of believable character development, and the effects looked terrible even in 1999. But it’s also the only movie on this list that features LL Cool J as a cool chef who recites a violent version of the 23rd Psalm and almost gets cooked alive in an oven by a genius-level shark.
    It’s scenes like the oven sequence that makes Deep Blue Sea such a delight, despite its many, many flaws. The movie tries to do the most at every turn, whether that’s clearly reediting the movie in postproduction so that LL Cool J’s chef becomes a central character, stealing the spotlight form intended star Saffron Burrows, or a ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson monologue with a delightfully unexpected climax.
    3. AlligatorIn many ways, Alligator feels like screenwriter John Sayles’ rejoinder to Piranha. If Joe Dante sanded down Piranha‘s sharp edges with his goofy humor, then Alligator is so filled with mean-spiritedness that no director could dilute it. Not that Lewis Teague, a solid action helmer who we’ll talk about again shortly, would do that.
    Alligator transports the old adage about gators in the sewers from New York to Chicago where the titular beast, the subject of experiments to increase its size, begins preying on the innocent. And on the not so innocent. Alligator shows no respect for the good or the bad, and the film is filled with scenes of people getting devoured, whether it’s a young boy who becomes a snack during a birthday party prank or an elderly mafioso who tries to abandon his family during the gator’s rampage.
    2. GrizzlyGrizzly stands as the greatest of the movies obviously ripping off Jaws precisely because it understands its limitations. It takes what it can from Spielberg’s masterpiece, including the general premise of an animal hunting in a tourist location, and ignores what it can’t pull off, namely three-dimensional characters. This clear-eyed understanding of everyone’s abilities makes Grizzly a lean, mean, and satisfying thriller.
    Directed by blaxploitation vet William Girdler and written by Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon, Grizzly stars ’70s low-budget king Christopher George as a park ranger investigating unusually vicious bear attacks on campers. That’s not the richest concept in the world, but Girdler and co. execute their ideas with such precision, and George plays his character with just the right amount of machismo, that Grizzly manages to deliver on everything you want from an animal attack.

    1. CujoTo some modern readers, it might seem absurd to put Cujo on a list of Jaws knockoffs. After all, Stephen King is a franchise unto himself and he certainly doesn’t need another movie’s success to get a greenlight for any of his projects. But you have to remember that Cujo came out in 1983 and was just the third of his works to get adapted theatrically, which makes its Jaws connection more valid. After all, the main section of the film—in which momand her son Tadare trapped in their car and menaced by the titular St. Bernard—replicates the isolation on Quint’s fishing vessel, the Orca, better than any other film on this list.
    However, it’s not just director Lewis Teague’s ability to create tension that puts Cujo at the top. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier key into the complicated familial dynamics of King’s story, giving the characters surprising depth. It’s no wonder that Spielberg would cast Wallace as another overwhelmed mom for E.T. The Extraterrestrial the very next year, proving that he still has a soft spot for animal attack movies—even if none of them came close to matching the power of Jaws.
    #best #jaws #knockoffs #past #years
    The Best Jaws Knockoffs of the Past 50 Years
    To this day, Jaws remains the best example of Steven Spielberg‘s genius as a filmmaker. He somehow took a middling pulp novel about a killer shark and turned it into a thrilling adventure about masculinity and economic desperation. And to the surprise of no one, the massive success of Jaws spawned a lot of knockoffs, a glut of movies about animals terrorizing communities. None of these reach the majesty of Jaws, of course. But here’s the thing—none of them had to be Jaws. Sure, it’s nice that Spielberg’s film has impeccably designed set pieces and compelling characters, but that’s not the main reason people go to animal attack movies. We really just want to watch people get attacked. And eaten. With such standards duly lowered, let’s take a look at the best animal attack movies that came out in the past half-century since Jaws first scared us out of the water. Of course this list doesn’t cover every movie inspired by Jaws, and some can argue that these movies were less inspired by Jaws than other nature revolts features, such as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But every one of these flicks owes a debt to Jaws, either in inspiration or simply getting people interested in movies about animals eating people. Those warning aside, lets make like drunken revelers on Amity Island and dive right in! 20. SharknadoSharknado almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s less a movie and more of a meme, a precursor to Vines and TikTok trends. Yes, many fantastic movies have been made off of an incredibly high concept and a painfully low budget. Heck, that approach made Roger Corman’s career. But Sharknado‘s high concept—a tornado sweeps over the ocean and launches ravenous sharks into the mainland—comes with a self-satisfied smirk. Somehow, Sharknado managed to capture the imagination of the public, making it popular enough to launch five sequels. At the time, viewers defended it as a so bad it’s good-style movie like The Room. But today Sharknado‘s obvious attempts to be wacky are just bad, making the franchise one more embarrassing trend, ready to be forgotten. 19. OrcaFor a long time, Orca had a reputation for being the most obvious Jaws ripoff, and with good reason—Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would go on to support Flash Gordon, Manhunter, and truly launch David Lynch‘s career with Blue Velvet, wanted his own version of the Spielberg hit. On paper he had all the right ingredients, including a great cast with Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, and another oceanic threat, this time a killer whale. Orca boasts some impressive underwater cinematography, something that even Jaws largely lacks. But that’s the one thing Orca does better than Jaws. Everything else—character-building, suspense and scare scenes, basic plotting and storytelling—is done in such a haphazard manner that Orca plays more like an early mockbuster from the Asylum production companythan it does a product from a future Hollywood player. 18. TentaclesAnother Italian cheapie riding off the success of Jaws, Tentacles at least manages to be fun in its ineptitude. A giant octopus feature, Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he annoyed first-time director James Cameron so much on Piranha II: The Spawning that he activated the future legend’s infamous refusal to compromise with studios and producers. Tentacles somehow has a pretty impressive cast, including John Huston, Shelly Winters, and Henry Fonda all picking up paychecks. None of them really do any hard work in Tentacles, but there’s something fun about watching these greats shake the the octopus limbs that are supposed to be attacking them, as if they’re in an Ed Wood picture. 17. Kingdom of the SpidersSpielberg famously couldn’t get his mechanical shark to work, a happy accident that he overcame with incredibly tense scenes that merely suggested the monster’s presence. For his arachnids on the forgotten movie Kingdom of the Spiders, director John “Bud” Cardos has an even more formative tool to make up for the lack of effects magic: William Shatner. Shatner plays Rack Hansen, a veterinarian who discovers that the overuse of pesticides has killed off smaller insects and forced the tarantula population to seek larger prey, including humans. These types of ecological messages are common among creature features of the late ’70s, and they usually clang with hollow self-righteousness. But in Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner delivers his lines with such blown out conviction that we enjoy his bluster, even if we don’t quite buy it. 16. The MegThe idea of Jason Statham fighting a giant prehistoric shark is an idea so awesome, it’s shocking that his character from Spy didn’t already pitch it. And The Meg certainly does deliver when Statham’s character does commit to battle with the creature in the movie’s climax. The problem is that moment of absurd heroism comes only after a lot of long sappy nonsense. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s hard to figure out who is to blame for The Meg‘s failure. Director Jon Turteltaub hails from well-remembered Disney classics Cool Runnings and National Treasure. But too often he forgets how to pace an adventure film and gives into his most saccharine instincts here. One of the many Chinese/Hollywood co-produced blockbusters of the 2010s, The Meg also suffers from trying to innocuously please too wide an audience. Whatever the source, The Meg only fleetingly delivers on the promise of big time peril, wasting too much time on thin character beats. 15. Lake PlacidI know already some people reading this are taking exception to Lake Placid‘s low ranking, complaining that this list isn’t showing enough respect to what they consider a zippy, irreverent take on a creature feature, one written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley and co-starring Betty White. To those people, I can only say, “Please rewatch Lake Placid and then consider its ranking.” Lake Placid certainly has its fun moments, helped along by White as a kindly grandmother who keeps feeding a giant croc, Bill Pullman as a dumbfounded simple sheriff, and Oliver Platt as a rich adventurer. Their various one-liners are a pleasure to remember. But within the context of a movie stuffed with late ’90s irony, the constant snark gets tiresome, sapping out all the fun of a killer crocodile film. 14. Open WaterLike Sharknado, Open Water had its fans for a few years but has fallen in most moviegoers’ esteem. Unlike Sharknado, Open Water is a real movie, just one that can’t sustain its premise for its entire runtime. Writer and director Chris Kentis draws inspiration from a real-life story about a husband and wife who were accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their scuba excursion group. The same thing happens to the movie’s Susan Watkinsand Daniel Travis, who respond to their predicament by airing out their relationship grievances, even as sharks start to surround them. Kentis commits to the reality of the couple’s bleak situation, which sets Open Water apart from the thrill-a-minute movies that mostly make up this list. But even with some shocking set pieces, Open Water feels too much like being stuck in car with a couple who hates each other and not enough like a shark attack thriller. 13. Eaten AliveSpielberg’s artful execution of Jaws led many of the filmmakers who followed to attempt some semblance of character development and prestige, even if done without enthusiasm. Not so with Tobe Hooper, who followed up the genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Eaten Alive. Then again, Hooper draws just as much from Psycho as he does Jaws. Neville Brand plays Judd, the proprietor of a sleazy hotel on the bayou where slimy yokels do horrible things to one another. Amity Island, this is not. But when one of the visitors annoy Judd, he feeds them to the pet croc kept in the back. Eaten Alive is a nasty bit of work, but like most of Hooper’s oeuvre, it’s a lot of fun. 12. ProphecyDirected by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Grand Prix fame, Prophecy is easily the best of the more high-minded animal attack movies that followed Jaws. This landlocked film, written by David Seltzer, stars Robert Foxworth as Dr. Robert Verne, a veterinarian hired by the EPA to investigate bear attacks against loggers on a mountain in Maine. Along with his wife Maggie, Verne finds himself thrown into a conflict between the mining company and the local Indigenous population who resist them. Prophecy drips with an American hippy mentality that reads as pretty conservative today, making its depictions of Native people, including the leader played by Italian American actor Armand Assante, pretty embarrassing. But there is a mutant bear on the loose and Frankenheimer knows how to stage an exciting sequence, which makes Prophecy a worthwhile watch. 11. Piranha 3DPiranha 3D begins with a denim-wearing fisherman named Matt, played by Richard Dreyfuss no less, falling into the water and immediately getting devoured by the titular flesh-eaters. This weird nod to Matt Hooper and Jaws instead of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the movie Piranha 3D is supposed to be remaking, is just one of the many oddities at play yhere. Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have some of the wacky energy and social satire of the original film, but director Alexandre Aja, a veteran of the French Extreme movement, includes so much nastiness in Piranha 3D that we’re not sure if we want to laugh or throw up. Still, there’s no denying the power of Piranha 3D‘s set pieces, including a shocking sequence in which the titular beasties attack an MTV/Girls Gone Wild Spring Break party and chaos ensues. Furthermore, Piranha 3D benefits from a strong cast, which includes Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, and Ving Rhames. 10. AnacondaWith its many scenes involving an animal attacking a ragtag group on a boat, Anaconda clearly owes a debt to Jaws. However, with its corny characters and shoddy late ’90s CGI, Anaconda feels today less like a Jaws knockoff and more like a forerunner to Sharknado and the boom of lazy Syfy and Redbox horror movies that followed. Whatever its influences and legacy, there’s no denying that Anaconda is, itself, a pretty fun movie. Giant snakes make for good movie monsters, and the special effects have become dated in a way that feels charming. Moreover, Anaconda boasts a enjoyably unlikely cast, including Eric Stoltz as a scientist, Owen Wilson and Ice Cube as members of a documentary crew, and Jon Voight as what might be the most unhinged character of his career, second only to his crossbow enthusiast from Megalopolis. 9. The ShallowsThe Shallows isn’t the highest-ranking shark attack movie on this list but it’s definitely the most frightening shark attack thriller since Jaws. That’s high praise, indeed, but The Shallows benefits from a lean and mean premise and clear direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made some solid modern thrillers. The Shallows focuses almost entirely on med student Nancy Adams, who gets caught far from shore after the tide comes in and is hunted by a shark. A lot of the pleasure of The Shallows comes from seeing how Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski avoid the problems that plague many of the movies on this list. Adams is an incredibly competent character, and we pull for her even after the mistake that leaves her stranded. Moreover, The Shallows perfectly balances thrill sequences with character moments, making for one of the more well-rounded creature features of the past decade. 8. RazorbackJaws, of course, has a fantastic opening scene, a thrilling sequence in which the shark kills a drunken skinny dipper. Of the movies on this list, only Razorback comes close to matching the original’s power, and it does so because director Russell Mulcahy, who would make Highlander next, goes for glossy absurdity. In the Razorback‘s first three minutes, a hulking wild boar smashes through the rural home of an elderly man in the Australian outback, carrying away his young grandson. Over the sounds of a synth score, the old man stumbles away from his now-burning house, screaming up into the sky. Sadly, the rest of Razorback cannot top that moment. Mulcahy directs the picture with lots of glossy style, while retaining the grit of the Australian New Wave movement. But budget restrictions keep the titular beast from really looking as cool as one would hope, and the movie’s loud, crazy tone can’t rely on Jaws-like power of suggestion. 7. CrawlAlexandre Aja’s second movie on this list earns its high rank precisely because it does away with the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Piranha 3D and leans into what the French filmmaker does so well: slicked down and mean horror. Set in the middle of a Florida hurricane, Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario as competitive swimmer Haley and always-welcome character actor Barry Pepper as her father Dave, who get trapped in a flooding basement that’s menaced by alligators. Yet as grimy as Crawl can get, Aja also executes the strong character work in the script by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen. Dave and Haley are real people, not just gator-bait, making their peril feel all the more real, and their triumphs all the sweeter. 6. PiranhaPiranha is the only entry on this list to get a seal of approval from Stephen Spielberg himself, who not only praised the movie, even as Universal Pictures planned to sue the production, but also got director Joe Dante to later helm Gremlins. It’s not hard to see why Piranha charmed Spielberg, a man who loves wacky comedy. Dante’s Looney Tunes approach is on full display in some of the movie’s best set pieces. But Piranha is special because it also comes from legendary screenwriter John Sayles, who infuses the story with social satire and cynicism that somehow blends with Dante’s approach. The result is a film about piranha developed by the U.S. military to kill the Vietnamese getting unleashed into an American river and making their way to a children’s summer camp, a horrifying idea that Dante turns into good clean fun. 5. SlugsIf we’re talking about well-made movies, then Slugs belongs way below any of the movies on this list, somewhere around the killer earthworm picture Squirm. But if we’re thinking about pure enjoyable spectacle, it’s hard to top Slugs, a movie about, yes, flesh-eating slugs. Yes, it’s very funny to think about people getting terrorized by creatures that are famous for moving very, very slowly. But Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, perhaps best known for his equally bugnuts giallo Pieces, pays as little attention to realism as he does to good taste. Slugs is filled with insane and ghastly sequences of killer slugs ending up in unlikely places, swarming the floor of someone’s bedroom or inside a fancy restaurant, and then devouring people, one methodical bite at a time. 4. Deep Blue SeaWhen it comes to goofy ’90s CGI action, it’s hard to top Deep Blue Sea, directed by Renny Harlin and featuring sharks with genetically enhanced brains. Deep Blue Sea doesn’t have a strong sense of pacing, it lacks any sort of believable character development, and the effects looked terrible even in 1999. But it’s also the only movie on this list that features LL Cool J as a cool chef who recites a violent version of the 23rd Psalm and almost gets cooked alive in an oven by a genius-level shark. It’s scenes like the oven sequence that makes Deep Blue Sea such a delight, despite its many, many flaws. The movie tries to do the most at every turn, whether that’s clearly reediting the movie in postproduction so that LL Cool J’s chef becomes a central character, stealing the spotlight form intended star Saffron Burrows, or a ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson monologue with a delightfully unexpected climax. 3. AlligatorIn many ways, Alligator feels like screenwriter John Sayles’ rejoinder to Piranha. If Joe Dante sanded down Piranha‘s sharp edges with his goofy humor, then Alligator is so filled with mean-spiritedness that no director could dilute it. Not that Lewis Teague, a solid action helmer who we’ll talk about again shortly, would do that. Alligator transports the old adage about gators in the sewers from New York to Chicago where the titular beast, the subject of experiments to increase its size, begins preying on the innocent. And on the not so innocent. Alligator shows no respect for the good or the bad, and the film is filled with scenes of people getting devoured, whether it’s a young boy who becomes a snack during a birthday party prank or an elderly mafioso who tries to abandon his family during the gator’s rampage. 2. GrizzlyGrizzly stands as the greatest of the movies obviously ripping off Jaws precisely because it understands its limitations. It takes what it can from Spielberg’s masterpiece, including the general premise of an animal hunting in a tourist location, and ignores what it can’t pull off, namely three-dimensional characters. This clear-eyed understanding of everyone’s abilities makes Grizzly a lean, mean, and satisfying thriller. Directed by blaxploitation vet William Girdler and written by Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon, Grizzly stars ’70s low-budget king Christopher George as a park ranger investigating unusually vicious bear attacks on campers. That’s not the richest concept in the world, but Girdler and co. execute their ideas with such precision, and George plays his character with just the right amount of machismo, that Grizzly manages to deliver on everything you want from an animal attack. 1. CujoTo some modern readers, it might seem absurd to put Cujo on a list of Jaws knockoffs. After all, Stephen King is a franchise unto himself and he certainly doesn’t need another movie’s success to get a greenlight for any of his projects. But you have to remember that Cujo came out in 1983 and was just the third of his works to get adapted theatrically, which makes its Jaws connection more valid. After all, the main section of the film—in which momand her son Tadare trapped in their car and menaced by the titular St. Bernard—replicates the isolation on Quint’s fishing vessel, the Orca, better than any other film on this list. However, it’s not just director Lewis Teague’s ability to create tension that puts Cujo at the top. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier key into the complicated familial dynamics of King’s story, giving the characters surprising depth. It’s no wonder that Spielberg would cast Wallace as another overwhelmed mom for E.T. The Extraterrestrial the very next year, proving that he still has a soft spot for animal attack movies—even if none of them came close to matching the power of Jaws. #best #jaws #knockoffs #past #years
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    The Best Jaws Knockoffs of the Past 50 Years
    To this day, Jaws remains the best example of Steven Spielberg‘s genius as a filmmaker. He somehow took a middling pulp novel about a killer shark and turned it into a thrilling adventure about masculinity and economic desperation. And to the surprise of no one, the massive success of Jaws spawned a lot of knockoffs, a glut of movies about animals terrorizing communities. None of these reach the majesty of Jaws, of course. But here’s the thing—none of them had to be Jaws. Sure, it’s nice that Spielberg’s film has impeccably designed set pieces and compelling characters, but that’s not the main reason people go to animal attack movies. We really just want to watch people get attacked. And eaten. With such standards duly lowered, let’s take a look at the best animal attack movies that came out in the past half-century since Jaws first scared us out of the water. Of course this list doesn’t cover every movie inspired by Jaws ( for example Godzilla Minus One, which devotes its middle act to a wonderful Jaws riff), and some can argue that these movies were less inspired by Jaws than other nature revolts features, such as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But every one of these flicks owes a debt to Jaws, either in inspiration or simply getting people interested in movies about animals eating people. Those warning aside, lets make like drunken revelers on Amity Island and dive right in! 20. Sharknado (2013) Sharknado almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s less a movie and more of a meme, a precursor to Vines and TikTok trends. Yes, many fantastic movies have been made off of an incredibly high concept and a painfully low budget. Heck, that approach made Roger Corman’s career. But Sharknado‘s high concept—a tornado sweeps over the ocean and launches ravenous sharks into the mainland—comes with a self-satisfied smirk. Somehow, Sharknado managed to capture the imagination of the public, making it popular enough to launch five sequels. At the time, viewers defended it as a so bad it’s good-style movie like The Room. But today Sharknado‘s obvious attempts to be wacky are just bad, making the franchise one more embarrassing trend, ready to be forgotten. 19. Orca (1977) For a long time, Orca had a reputation for being the most obvious Jaws ripoff, and with good reason—Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would go on to support Flash Gordon, Manhunter, and truly launch David Lynch‘s career with Blue Velvet, wanted his own version of the Spielberg hit. On paper he had all the right ingredients, including a great cast with Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, and another oceanic threat, this time a killer whale. Orca boasts some impressive underwater cinematography, something that even Jaws largely lacks. But that’s the one thing Orca does better than Jaws. Everything else—character-building, suspense and scare scenes, basic plotting and storytelling—is done in such a haphazard manner that Orca plays more like an early mockbuster from the Asylum production company (makers of Sharknado) than it does a product from a future Hollywood player. 18. Tentacles (1977) Another Italian cheapie riding off the success of Jaws, Tentacles at least manages to be fun in its ineptitude. A giant octopus feature, Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he annoyed first-time director James Cameron so much on Piranha II: The Spawning that he activated the future legend’s infamous refusal to compromise with studios and producers. Tentacles somehow has a pretty impressive cast, including John Huston, Shelly Winters, and Henry Fonda all picking up paychecks. None of them really do any hard work in Tentacles, but there’s something fun about watching these greats shake the the octopus limbs that are supposed to be attacking them, as if they’re in an Ed Wood picture. 17. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) Spielberg famously couldn’t get his mechanical shark to work, a happy accident that he overcame with incredibly tense scenes that merely suggested the monster’s presence. For his arachnids on the forgotten movie Kingdom of the Spiders, director John “Bud” Cardos has an even more formative tool to make up for the lack of effects magic: William Shatner. Shatner plays Rack Hansen, a veterinarian who discovers that the overuse of pesticides has killed off smaller insects and forced the tarantula population to seek larger prey, including humans. These types of ecological messages are common among creature features of the late ’70s, and they usually clang with hollow self-righteousness. But in Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner delivers his lines with such blown out conviction that we enjoy his bluster, even if we don’t quite buy it. 16. The Meg (2018) The idea of Jason Statham fighting a giant prehistoric shark is an idea so awesome, it’s shocking that his character from Spy didn’t already pitch it. And The Meg certainly does deliver when Statham’s character does commit to battle with the creature in the movie’s climax. The problem is that moment of absurd heroism comes only after a lot of long sappy nonsense. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s hard to figure out who is to blame for The Meg‘s failure. Director Jon Turteltaub hails from well-remembered Disney classics Cool Runnings and National Treasure. But too often he forgets how to pace an adventure film and gives into his most saccharine instincts here. One of the many Chinese/Hollywood co-produced blockbusters of the 2010s, The Meg also suffers from trying to innocuously please too wide an audience. Whatever the source, The Meg only fleetingly delivers on the promise of big time peril, wasting too much time on thin character beats. 15. Lake Placid (1999) I know already some people reading this are taking exception to Lake Placid‘s low ranking, complaining that this list isn’t showing enough respect to what they consider a zippy, irreverent take on a creature feature, one written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley and co-starring Betty White. To those people, I can only say, “Please rewatch Lake Placid and then consider its ranking.” Lake Placid certainly has its fun moments, helped along by White as a kindly grandmother who keeps feeding a giant croc, Bill Pullman as a dumbfounded simple sheriff, and Oliver Platt as a rich adventurer. Their various one-liners are a pleasure to remember. But within the context of a movie stuffed with late ’90s irony, the constant snark gets tiresome, sapping out all the fun of a killer crocodile film. 14. Open Water (2003) Like Sharknado, Open Water had its fans for a few years but has fallen in most moviegoers’ esteem. Unlike Sharknado, Open Water is a real movie, just one that can’t sustain its premise for its entire runtime. Writer and director Chris Kentis draws inspiration from a real-life story about a husband and wife who were accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their scuba excursion group. The same thing happens to the movie’s Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel Travis (Daniel Kintner), who respond to their predicament by airing out their relationship grievances, even as sharks start to surround them. Kentis commits to the reality of the couple’s bleak situation, which sets Open Water apart from the thrill-a-minute movies that mostly make up this list. But even with some shocking set pieces, Open Water feels too much like being stuck in car with a couple who hates each other and not enough like a shark attack thriller. 13. Eaten Alive (1976) Spielberg’s artful execution of Jaws led many of the filmmakers who followed to attempt some semblance of character development and prestige, even if done without enthusiasm (see: Orca). Not so with Tobe Hooper, who followed up the genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Eaten Alive. Then again, Hooper draws just as much from Psycho as he does Jaws. Neville Brand plays Judd, the proprietor of a sleazy hotel on the bayou where slimy yokels do horrible things to one another. Amity Island, this is not. But when one of the visitors annoy Judd, he feeds them to the pet croc kept in the back. Eaten Alive is a nasty bit of work, but like most of Hooper’s oeuvre, it’s a lot of fun. 12. Prophecy (1979) Directed by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Grand Prix fame, Prophecy is easily the best of the more high-minded animal attack movies that followed Jaws. This landlocked film, written by David Seltzer, stars Robert Foxworth as Dr. Robert Verne, a veterinarian hired by the EPA to investigate bear attacks against loggers on a mountain in Maine. Along with his wife Maggie (Talia Shire), Verne finds himself thrown into a conflict between the mining company and the local Indigenous population who resist them. Prophecy drips with an American hippy mentality that reads as pretty conservative today (“your body, your choice” one of Maggie’s friends tells her… to urge her against getting an abortion), making its depictions of Native people, including the leader played by Italian American actor Armand Assante, pretty embarrassing. But there is a mutant bear on the loose and Frankenheimer knows how to stage an exciting sequence, which makes Prophecy a worthwhile watch. 11. Piranha 3D (2010) Piranha 3D begins with a denim-wearing fisherman named Matt, played by Richard Dreyfuss no less, falling into the water and immediately getting devoured by the titular flesh-eaters. This weird nod to Matt Hooper and Jaws instead of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the movie Piranha 3D is supposed to be remaking, is just one of the many oddities at play yhere. Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have some of the wacky energy and social satire of the original film, but director Alexandre Aja, a veteran of the French Extreme movement, includes so much nastiness in Piranha 3D that we’re not sure if we want to laugh or throw up. Still, there’s no denying the power of Piranha 3D‘s set pieces, including a shocking sequence in which the titular beasties attack an MTV/Girls Gone Wild Spring Break party and chaos ensues. Furthermore, Piranha 3D benefits from a strong cast, which includes Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, and Ving Rhames. 10. Anaconda (1997) With its many scenes involving an animal attacking a ragtag group on a boat, Anaconda clearly owes a debt to Jaws. However, with its corny characters and shoddy late ’90s CGI, Anaconda feels today less like a Jaws knockoff and more like a forerunner to Sharknado and the boom of lazy Syfy and Redbox horror movies that followed. Whatever its influences and legacy, there’s no denying that Anaconda is, itself, a pretty fun movie. Giant snakes make for good movie monsters, and the special effects have become dated in a way that feels charming. Moreover, Anaconda boasts a enjoyably unlikely cast, including Eric Stoltz as a scientist, Owen Wilson and Ice Cube as members of a documentary crew, and Jon Voight as what might be the most unhinged character of his career, second only to his crossbow enthusiast from Megalopolis. 9. The Shallows (2016) The Shallows isn’t the highest-ranking shark attack movie on this list but it’s definitely the most frightening shark attack thriller since Jaws. That’s high praise, indeed, but The Shallows benefits from a lean and mean premise and clear direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made some solid modern thrillers. The Shallows focuses almost entirely on med student Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), who gets caught far from shore after the tide comes in and is hunted by a shark. A lot of the pleasure of The Shallows comes from seeing how Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski avoid the problems that plague many of the movies on this list. Adams is an incredibly competent character, and we pull for her even after the mistake that leaves her stranded. Moreover, The Shallows perfectly balances thrill sequences with character moments, making for one of the more well-rounded creature features of the past decade. 8. Razorback (1984) Jaws, of course, has a fantastic opening scene, a thrilling sequence in which the shark kills a drunken skinny dipper. Of the movies on this list, only Razorback comes close to matching the original’s power, and it does so because director Russell Mulcahy, who would make Highlander next, goes for glossy absurdity. In the Razorback‘s first three minutes, a hulking wild boar smashes through the rural home of an elderly man in the Australian outback, carrying away his young grandson. Over the sounds of a synth score, the old man stumbles away from his now-burning house, screaming up into the sky. Sadly, the rest of Razorback cannot top that moment. Mulcahy directs the picture with lots of glossy style, while retaining the grit of the Australian New Wave movement. But budget restrictions keep the titular beast from really looking as cool as one would hope, and the movie’s loud, crazy tone can’t rely on Jaws-like power of suggestion. 7. Crawl (2019) Alexandre Aja’s second movie on this list earns its high rank precisely because it does away with the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Piranha 3D and leans into what the French filmmaker does so well: slicked down and mean horror. Set in the middle of a Florida hurricane, Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario as competitive swimmer Haley and always-welcome character actor Barry Pepper as her father Dave, who get trapped in a flooding basement that’s menaced by alligators. Yet as grimy as Crawl can get, Aja also executes the strong character work in the script by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen. Dave and Haley are real people, not just gator-bait, making their peril feel all the more real, and their triumphs all the sweeter. 6. Piranha (1978) Piranha is the only entry on this list to get a seal of approval from Stephen Spielberg himself, who not only praised the movie, even as Universal Pictures planned to sue the production, but also got director Joe Dante to later helm Gremlins. It’s not hard to see why Piranha charmed Spielberg, a man who loves wacky comedy. Dante’s Looney Tunes approach is on full display in some of the movie’s best set pieces. But Piranha is special because it also comes from legendary screenwriter John Sayles, who infuses the story with social satire and cynicism that somehow blends with Dante’s approach. The result is a film about piranha developed by the U.S. military to kill the Vietnamese getting unleashed into an American river and making their way to a children’s summer camp, a horrifying idea that Dante turns into good clean fun. 5. Slugs (1988) If we’re talking about well-made movies, then Slugs belongs way below any of the movies on this list, somewhere around the killer earthworm picture Squirm. But if we’re thinking about pure enjoyable spectacle, it’s hard to top Slugs, a movie about, yes, flesh-eating slugs. Yes, it’s very funny to think about people getting terrorized by creatures that are famous for moving very, very slowly. But Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, perhaps best known for his equally bugnuts giallo Pieces (1982), pays as little attention to realism as he does to good taste. Slugs is filled with insane and ghastly sequences of killer slugs ending up in unlikely places, swarming the floor of someone’s bedroom or inside a fancy restaurant, and then devouring people, one methodical bite at a time. 4. Deep Blue Sea (1999) When it comes to goofy ’90s CGI action, it’s hard to top Deep Blue Sea, directed by Renny Harlin and featuring sharks with genetically enhanced brains. Deep Blue Sea doesn’t have a strong sense of pacing, it lacks any sort of believable character development, and the effects looked terrible even in 1999. But it’s also the only movie on this list that features LL Cool J as a cool chef who recites a violent version of the 23rd Psalm and almost gets cooked alive in an oven by a genius-level shark. It’s scenes like the oven sequence that makes Deep Blue Sea such a delight, despite its many, many flaws. The movie tries to do the most at every turn, whether that’s clearly reediting the movie in postproduction so that LL Cool J’s chef becomes a central character, stealing the spotlight form intended star Saffron Burrows, or a ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson monologue with a delightfully unexpected climax. 3. Alligator (1980) In many ways, Alligator feels like screenwriter John Sayles’ rejoinder to Piranha. If Joe Dante sanded down Piranha‘s sharp edges with his goofy humor, then Alligator is so filled with mean-spiritedness that no director could dilute it. Not that Lewis Teague, a solid action helmer who we’ll talk about again shortly, would do that. Alligator transports the old adage about gators in the sewers from New York to Chicago where the titular beast, the subject of experiments to increase its size, begins preying on the innocent. And on the not so innocent. Alligator shows no respect for the good or the bad, and the film is filled with scenes of people getting devoured, whether it’s a young boy who becomes a snack during a birthday party prank or an elderly mafioso who tries to abandon his family during the gator’s rampage. 2. Grizzly (1976) Grizzly stands as the greatest of the movies obviously ripping off Jaws precisely because it understands its limitations. It takes what it can from Spielberg’s masterpiece, including the general premise of an animal hunting in a tourist location, and ignores what it can’t pull off, namely three-dimensional characters. This clear-eyed understanding of everyone’s abilities makes Grizzly a lean, mean, and satisfying thriller. Directed by blaxploitation vet William Girdler and written by Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon, Grizzly stars ’70s low-budget king Christopher George as a park ranger investigating unusually vicious bear attacks on campers. That’s not the richest concept in the world, but Girdler and co. execute their ideas with such precision, and George plays his character with just the right amount of machismo, that Grizzly manages to deliver on everything you want from an animal attack. 1. Cujo (1983) To some modern readers, it might seem absurd to put Cujo on a list of Jaws knockoffs. After all, Stephen King is a franchise unto himself and he certainly doesn’t need another movie’s success to get a greenlight for any of his projects. But you have to remember that Cujo came out in 1983 and was just the third of his works to get adapted theatrically, which makes its Jaws connection more valid. After all, the main section of the film—in which mom (Dee Wallace) and her son Tad (Danny Pintauro) are trapped in their car and menaced by the titular St. Bernard—replicates the isolation on Quint’s fishing vessel, the Orca, better than any other film on this list. However, it’s not just director Lewis Teague’s ability to create tension that puts Cujo at the top. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier key into the complicated familial dynamics of King’s story, giving the characters surprising depth. It’s no wonder that Spielberg would cast Wallace as another overwhelmed mom for E.T. The Extraterrestrial the very next year, proving that he still has a soft spot for animal attack movies—even if none of them came close to matching the power of Jaws.
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  • Cronos: The New Dawn Receives Fresh and Gruesome Combat Trailer

    If its trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase wasn’t enough, Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn has received another gameplay trailer. It starts slowly enough, with the player, known as the Traveler, steadily walking through a quiet environment. Of course, an Orphan suddenly comes alive, prompting a quick extermination.

    They’re not all so easy to deal with, as exemplified by a larger Orphan that appears inside an abandoned hardware shop. Shrugging off hits and attacking with a root-like arm, it eventually begins to merge with a corpse, becoming stronger in the process. Any encounter with the Orphans means not giving them a chance to merge, which is likely easier said than done.

    Cronos: The New Dawn launches this Fall for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Resident Evil and Dead Space serve as inspirations, though the storyline revolves around traveling to the past at the behest of the Collective and extracting the Essence of important individuals. Check out the dev diary here for more details.

    Bloober Team has also recently announced its development of Silent Hill 1 remake with Konami. You can learn more about that here.
    #cronos #new #dawn #receives #fresh
    Cronos: The New Dawn Receives Fresh and Gruesome Combat Trailer
    If its trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase wasn’t enough, Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn has received another gameplay trailer. It starts slowly enough, with the player, known as the Traveler, steadily walking through a quiet environment. Of course, an Orphan suddenly comes alive, prompting a quick extermination. They’re not all so easy to deal with, as exemplified by a larger Orphan that appears inside an abandoned hardware shop. Shrugging off hits and attacking with a root-like arm, it eventually begins to merge with a corpse, becoming stronger in the process. Any encounter with the Orphans means not giving them a chance to merge, which is likely easier said than done. Cronos: The New Dawn launches this Fall for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Resident Evil and Dead Space serve as inspirations, though the storyline revolves around traveling to the past at the behest of the Collective and extracting the Essence of important individuals. Check out the dev diary here for more details. Bloober Team has also recently announced its development of Silent Hill 1 remake with Konami. You can learn more about that here. #cronos #new #dawn #receives #fresh
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    Cronos: The New Dawn Receives Fresh and Gruesome Combat Trailer
    If its trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase wasn’t enough, Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn has received another gameplay trailer. It starts slowly enough, with the player, known as the Traveler, steadily walking through a quiet environment. Of course, an Orphan suddenly comes alive, prompting a quick extermination. They’re not all so easy to deal with, as exemplified by a larger Orphan that appears inside an abandoned hardware shop. Shrugging off hits and attacking with a root-like arm, it eventually begins to merge with a corpse, becoming stronger in the process. Any encounter with the Orphans means not giving them a chance to merge, which is likely easier said than done. Cronos: The New Dawn launches this Fall for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Resident Evil and Dead Space serve as inspirations, though the storyline revolves around traveling to the past at the behest of the Collective and extracting the Essence of important individuals. Check out the dev diary here for more details. Bloober Team has also recently announced its development of Silent Hill 1 remake with Konami. You can learn more about that here.
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  • Hell is Us terrifies in all the best ways

    Hell is Us has been on my radar since it was first announced in April 2022, and I’ve finally been able to spend some time with it via its demo. The war-torn world of Hell is Us is immediately chilling and the demo’s brief glimpse of the gameplay, despite some minor hang-ups, has me eager for more.

    You play as Remi as he ventures to the fictional country of Hadea. A civil war has broken out, dividing and devastating Hadea’s people. Remi must travel through the war zone in search of his parents, and quickly comes across a farmer who exposition-dumps plenty of information that may or may not stick. Essentially, shit is bad, tragically so, and Remi is about to discover just how bad.

    You wander around a forest while an unsettling Returnal-esque score accompanies you. Eventually you gain access to ruins that turn out to have been some sort of dungeon for prisoners long ago. It’s here that Remi encounters the first of hopefully many “oh, shit!” moments. He comes across a creepy-ass enemy I can best describe as if Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was designed to horrify — a pale white humanoid with a black circle for a face who contorts around the level like a marionette. A mask-wearing woman shows up out of nowhere to take down the creepy foe, but dies saving Remi. Without explanation, Remi decides to don her poncho, take her drone, and wield her BGS.

    Turns out he’s pretty good with a sword. Remi will encounter a couple dozen enemies throughout the demo; the combat is easy to pick up and is somewhat standard third-person-melee, though it does rely heavily on stamina management. Your max stamina is also reduced when you take damage, so you really don’t wanna get hit much.

    You can heal using consumable med kits as well as a pulse mechanic. Attacking enemies creates floating particles around Remi and once those particles form into a circle, you can press your controller’s right bumper to activate a healing pulse. It’s an interesting mechanic, and I like how Hell is Us is giving players a way to recoup health in the midst of combat. However, actually doing it is a bit clunky; keeping one eye on an enemy and the other on the particles around Remi is distracting, and timing the pulse is a challenge — you can only activate it during a brief window, and you’ll likely be in the middle of a combo when a pulse opportunity presents itself.

    While Hell is Us’ combat has surface similarities to Soulslikes — like parrying blows from creepy enemies — it felt less punishing and more forgiving than what you’d expect from a FromSoftware title. I only died once in the demo, compared to countless deaths in the opening hours of Soulslikes such as Lies of P or Elden Ring. Notably, enemies don’t respawn when you save your game, so you don’t have to worry about repeatedly striking down the same foes.

    Because dead enemies remain dead, exploration is encouraged in Hell is Us. Developer Rogue Factor boasts that the game has “no map, no compass, no quest markers,” so you’re free to wander around the game’s world without a guiding hand and discover its secrets. For example, that farmer I mentioned earlier told Remi about how three of his sons died in this war. Later on, when exploring the World War I-like trenches outside of the ruins, I found a note from a soldier on the other side of the conflict bragging about killing three brothers “cowering in a farmhouse.”

    The note also mentioned taking a gold watch from one of the boys, which I grabbed and returned to the farmer — without a quest marker to guide me or a journal entry saying “give this item to the farmer.” This completed a “Good Deed” and I was told a reward may come from it later in the game; I’m curious how these types of quests will play out in the full release. The prospect of doing good deeds in this torn-asunder country is especially appealing.

    A Soulslike-adjacent game placing greater emphasis on user-guided exploration than combat sounds enticing, and Hell is Us is delivering on that promise so far. Its demo is available on Steam through June 16 before the full game launches Sept. 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.
    #hell #terrifies #all #best #ways
    Hell is Us terrifies in all the best ways
    Hell is Us has been on my radar since it was first announced in April 2022, and I’ve finally been able to spend some time with it via its demo. The war-torn world of Hell is Us is immediately chilling and the demo’s brief glimpse of the gameplay, despite some minor hang-ups, has me eager for more. You play as Remi as he ventures to the fictional country of Hadea. A civil war has broken out, dividing and devastating Hadea’s people. Remi must travel through the war zone in search of his parents, and quickly comes across a farmer who exposition-dumps plenty of information that may or may not stick. Essentially, shit is bad, tragically so, and Remi is about to discover just how bad. You wander around a forest while an unsettling Returnal-esque score accompanies you. Eventually you gain access to ruins that turn out to have been some sort of dungeon for prisoners long ago. It’s here that Remi encounters the first of hopefully many “oh, shit!” moments. He comes across a creepy-ass enemy I can best describe as if Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was designed to horrify — a pale white humanoid with a black circle for a face who contorts around the level like a marionette. A mask-wearing woman shows up out of nowhere to take down the creepy foe, but dies saving Remi. Without explanation, Remi decides to don her poncho, take her drone, and wield her BGS. Turns out he’s pretty good with a sword. Remi will encounter a couple dozen enemies throughout the demo; the combat is easy to pick up and is somewhat standard third-person-melee, though it does rely heavily on stamina management. Your max stamina is also reduced when you take damage, so you really don’t wanna get hit much. You can heal using consumable med kits as well as a pulse mechanic. Attacking enemies creates floating particles around Remi and once those particles form into a circle, you can press your controller’s right bumper to activate a healing pulse. It’s an interesting mechanic, and I like how Hell is Us is giving players a way to recoup health in the midst of combat. However, actually doing it is a bit clunky; keeping one eye on an enemy and the other on the particles around Remi is distracting, and timing the pulse is a challenge — you can only activate it during a brief window, and you’ll likely be in the middle of a combo when a pulse opportunity presents itself. While Hell is Us’ combat has surface similarities to Soulslikes — like parrying blows from creepy enemies — it felt less punishing and more forgiving than what you’d expect from a FromSoftware title. I only died once in the demo, compared to countless deaths in the opening hours of Soulslikes such as Lies of P or Elden Ring. Notably, enemies don’t respawn when you save your game, so you don’t have to worry about repeatedly striking down the same foes. Because dead enemies remain dead, exploration is encouraged in Hell is Us. Developer Rogue Factor boasts that the game has “no map, no compass, no quest markers,” so you’re free to wander around the game’s world without a guiding hand and discover its secrets. For example, that farmer I mentioned earlier told Remi about how three of his sons died in this war. Later on, when exploring the World War I-like trenches outside of the ruins, I found a note from a soldier on the other side of the conflict bragging about killing three brothers “cowering in a farmhouse.” The note also mentioned taking a gold watch from one of the boys, which I grabbed and returned to the farmer — without a quest marker to guide me or a journal entry saying “give this item to the farmer.” This completed a “Good Deed” and I was told a reward may come from it later in the game; I’m curious how these types of quests will play out in the full release. The prospect of doing good deeds in this torn-asunder country is especially appealing. A Soulslike-adjacent game placing greater emphasis on user-guided exploration than combat sounds enticing, and Hell is Us is delivering on that promise so far. Its demo is available on Steam through June 16 before the full game launches Sept. 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. #hell #terrifies #all #best #ways
    WWW.POLYGON.COM
    Hell is Us terrifies in all the best ways
    Hell is Us has been on my radar since it was first announced in April 2022, and I’ve finally been able to spend some time with it via its demo. The war-torn world of Hell is Us is immediately chilling and the demo’s brief glimpse of the gameplay, despite some minor hang-ups, has me eager for more. You play as Remi as he ventures to the fictional country of Hadea. A civil war has broken out, dividing and devastating Hadea’s people. Remi must travel through the war zone in search of his parents, and quickly comes across a farmer who exposition-dumps plenty of information that may or may not stick. Essentially, shit is bad, tragically so, and Remi is about to discover just how bad. You wander around a forest while an unsettling Returnal-esque score accompanies you. Eventually you gain access to ruins that turn out to have been some sort of dungeon for prisoners long ago. It’s here that Remi encounters the first of hopefully many “oh, shit!” moments. He comes across a creepy-ass enemy I can best describe as if Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was designed to horrify — a pale white humanoid with a black circle for a face who contorts around the level like a marionette. A mask-wearing woman shows up out of nowhere to take down the creepy foe, but dies saving Remi. Without explanation, Remi decides to don her poncho, take her drone, and wield her BGS (big glowing sword). Turns out he’s pretty good with a sword. Remi will encounter a couple dozen enemies throughout the demo; the combat is easy to pick up and is somewhat standard third-person-melee, though it does rely heavily on stamina management. Your max stamina is also reduced when you take damage, so you really don’t wanna get hit much. You can heal using consumable med kits as well as a pulse mechanic. Attacking enemies creates floating particles around Remi and once those particles form into a circle, you can press your controller’s right bumper to activate a healing pulse. It’s an interesting mechanic, and I like how Hell is Us is giving players a way to recoup health in the midst of combat. However, actually doing it is a bit clunky; keeping one eye on an enemy and the other on the particles around Remi is distracting, and timing the pulse is a challenge — you can only activate it during a brief window, and you’ll likely be in the middle of a combo when a pulse opportunity presents itself. While Hell is Us’ combat has surface similarities to Soulslikes — like parrying blows from creepy enemies — it felt less punishing and more forgiving than what you’d expect from a FromSoftware title. I only died once in the demo, compared to countless deaths in the opening hours of Soulslikes such as Lies of P or Elden Ring. Notably, enemies don’t respawn when you save your game, so you don’t have to worry about repeatedly striking down the same foes. Because dead enemies remain dead, exploration is encouraged in Hell is Us. Developer Rogue Factor boasts that the game has “no map, no compass, no quest markers,” so you’re free to wander around the game’s world without a guiding hand and discover its secrets. For example, that farmer I mentioned earlier told Remi about how three of his sons died in this war. Later on, when exploring the World War I-like trenches outside of the ruins, I found a note from a soldier on the other side of the conflict bragging about killing three brothers “cowering in a farmhouse.” The note also mentioned taking a gold watch from one of the boys, which I grabbed and returned to the farmer — without a quest marker to guide me or a journal entry saying “give this item to the farmer.” This completed a “Good Deed” and I was told a reward may come from it later in the game; I’m curious how these types of quests will play out in the full release. The prospect of doing good deeds in this torn-asunder country is especially appealing. A Soulslike-adjacent game placing greater emphasis on user-guided exploration than combat sounds enticing, and Hell is Us is delivering on that promise so far. Its demo is available on Steam through June 16 before the full game launches Sept. 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.
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  • The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Announced by Owlcat Games

    Owlcat Games’ countdown led to an announcement at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase for a brand new title, one completely unlike its previous games. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is in development on Unreal Engine 5 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out the first trailer below.

    It starts with a space crew attacking a fortified asteroid, using zero gravity to take out threats. During one firefight, they deploy a droneand a riot shield, which can soak up damage and base threats. Eventually, they happen upon some people contaminated by crystals.

    The trailer then cuts to some pre-alpha gameplay, showcasing third-person, cover-based shooting. Some set pieces involve traversing zero gravity outside of space stations and futuristic settlements.

    Stay tuned for more details on The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in the coming months. Owlcat is also working on a new Warhammer 40,000 CRPG called Dark Heresy. Head here for more details.
    #expanse #osiris #reborn #announced #owlcat
    The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Announced by Owlcat Games
    Owlcat Games’ countdown led to an announcement at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase for a brand new title, one completely unlike its previous games. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is in development on Unreal Engine 5 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out the first trailer below. It starts with a space crew attacking a fortified asteroid, using zero gravity to take out threats. During one firefight, they deploy a droneand a riot shield, which can soak up damage and base threats. Eventually, they happen upon some people contaminated by crystals. The trailer then cuts to some pre-alpha gameplay, showcasing third-person, cover-based shooting. Some set pieces involve traversing zero gravity outside of space stations and futuristic settlements. Stay tuned for more details on The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in the coming months. Owlcat is also working on a new Warhammer 40,000 CRPG called Dark Heresy. Head here for more details. #expanse #osiris #reborn #announced #owlcat
    GAMINGBOLT.COM
    The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Announced by Owlcat Games
    Owlcat Games’ countdown led to an announcement at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase for a brand new title, one completely unlike its previous games. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is in development on Unreal Engine 5 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out the first trailer below. It starts with a space crew attacking a fortified asteroid, using zero gravity to take out threats. During one firefight, they deploy a drone (which targets an explosive barrel to eliminate enemies) and a riot shield, which can soak up damage and base threats. Eventually, they happen upon some people contaminated by crystals. The trailer then cuts to some pre-alpha gameplay, showcasing third-person, cover-based shooting. Some set pieces involve traversing zero gravity outside of space stations and futuristic settlements. Stay tuned for more details on The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in the coming months. Owlcat is also working on a new Warhammer 40,000 CRPG called Dark Heresy. Head here for more details.
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  • Starlink Deal in Canada Still Dead, Despite Musk's Breakup With Trump

    Elon Musk’s sudden breakup with President Trump took over social media on Thursday. But the escalating feud won’t be enough to salvage a Starlink contract with Canada’s Ontario province, which canceled the deal to hit back at Trump’s trade war. Ontario Premier Doug Ford today confirmed to reporters that the Starlink deal is still dead, even though Musk is on the outs with Trump. Ford also couldn’t help but take a shot at the very public demise of the Musk-Trump partnership.“Yes, Starlink is done,” he said. “Are we surprised that they’re not seeing eye-to-eye? I predicted that as soon as that marriage happened. I thought that there would be a divorce real quick.”As for why Ontario won’t revive the deal, Ford indicated that Musk’s past support of Trump and his trade war against Canada went too far. This included Musk tweeting “Canada is not a real country" in response to a petition urging the Canadian government to rescind his citizenship.Recommended by Our Editors“I don’t want to deal with someone who’s attacking our country. And he was one of the number one culprits, Elon Musk. And that’s unacceptable. I can’t do business with someone that’s doing that,” Ford said. SpaceX’s Starlink business was originally supposed to receive a million CADcontract to deploy satellite internet dishes that would connect 15,000 underserved homes and businesses. But in March, Ontario killed the deal to retaliate against Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. The decision caused anti-Starlink sentiment skyrocketed in the country, but it also undermined Ontario's effort to bring high-speed broadband to rural and remote areas. Still, some Canadian consumers continue to subscribe to and sign up for the satellite internet service, which has been pushing Starlink promotions in the country. In the meantime, Musk’s emerging feud with Trump could trigger some harsh consequences for SpaceX, which receives numerous federal contracts. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the President said: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”
    #starlink #deal #canada #still #dead
    Starlink Deal in Canada Still Dead, Despite Musk's Breakup With Trump
    Elon Musk’s sudden breakup with President Trump took over social media on Thursday. But the escalating feud won’t be enough to salvage a Starlink contract with Canada’s Ontario province, which canceled the deal to hit back at Trump’s trade war. Ontario Premier Doug Ford today confirmed to reporters that the Starlink deal is still dead, even though Musk is on the outs with Trump. Ford also couldn’t help but take a shot at the very public demise of the Musk-Trump partnership.“Yes, Starlink is done,” he said. “Are we surprised that they’re not seeing eye-to-eye? I predicted that as soon as that marriage happened. I thought that there would be a divorce real quick.”As for why Ontario won’t revive the deal, Ford indicated that Musk’s past support of Trump and his trade war against Canada went too far. This included Musk tweeting “Canada is not a real country" in response to a petition urging the Canadian government to rescind his citizenship.Recommended by Our Editors“I don’t want to deal with someone who’s attacking our country. And he was one of the number one culprits, Elon Musk. And that’s unacceptable. I can’t do business with someone that’s doing that,” Ford said. SpaceX’s Starlink business was originally supposed to receive a million CADcontract to deploy satellite internet dishes that would connect 15,000 underserved homes and businesses. But in March, Ontario killed the deal to retaliate against Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. The decision caused anti-Starlink sentiment skyrocketed in the country, but it also undermined Ontario's effort to bring high-speed broadband to rural and remote areas. Still, some Canadian consumers continue to subscribe to and sign up for the satellite internet service, which has been pushing Starlink promotions in the country. In the meantime, Musk’s emerging feud with Trump could trigger some harsh consequences for SpaceX, which receives numerous federal contracts. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the President said: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.” #starlink #deal #canada #still #dead
    ME.PCMAG.COM
    Starlink Deal in Canada Still Dead, Despite Musk's Breakup With Trump
    Elon Musk’s sudden breakup with President Trump took over social media on Thursday. But the escalating feud won’t be enough to salvage a Starlink contract with Canada’s Ontario province, which canceled the deal to hit back at Trump’s trade war. Ontario Premier Doug Ford today confirmed to reporters that the Starlink deal is still dead, even though Musk is on the outs with Trump. Ford also couldn’t help but take a shot at the very public demise of the Musk-Trump partnership.“Yes, Starlink is done,” he said. “Are we surprised that they’re not seeing eye-to-eye? I predicted that as soon as that marriage happened. I thought that there would be a divorce real quick.”As for why Ontario won’t revive the deal, Ford indicated that Musk’s past support of Trump and his trade war against Canada went too far. This included Musk tweeting “Canada is not a real country" in response to a petition urging the Canadian government to rescind his citizenship.Recommended by Our Editors“I don’t want to deal with someone who’s attacking our country. And he was one of the number one culprits, Elon Musk. And that’s unacceptable. I can’t do business with someone that’s doing that,” Ford said. SpaceX’s Starlink business was originally supposed to receive a $100 million CAD ($73 million) contract to deploy satellite internet dishes that would connect 15,000 underserved homes and businesses. But in March, Ontario killed the deal to retaliate against Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. The decision caused anti-Starlink sentiment skyrocketed in the country, but it also undermined Ontario's effort to bring high-speed broadband to rural and remote areas. Still, some Canadian consumers continue to subscribe to and sign up for the satellite internet service, which has been pushing Starlink promotions in the country. In the meantime, Musk’s emerging feud with Trump could trigger some harsh consequences for SpaceX, which receives numerous federal contracts. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the President said: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”
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  • SpaceX may retire Dragon amidst Musk and Trump feud

    Elon Musk is contemplating decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, responding to President Donald Trump's apparent intent to terminate government subsidies and contracts with the billionaire's companies. It looks like the feud between the former allies has quickly turned vicious.SpaceX's CEO initially announced that the company would retire its Dragon spacecraft in an X post on Thursday, with Musk sharing a screenshot of a post published on Trump's Truth Social account earlier in the day."The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," said Trump in the screenshotted post. "I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!"

    You May Also Like

    "In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately," Musk wrote on X.SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft are a family of vehicles designed to carry passengers and cargo. The National Aeronautics and Space Administrationhas previously relied upon them to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Mere hours prior to Musk's announcement, SpaceX posted on X that it was preparing to launch a Dragon next Tuesday.For a few hours, it seemed reasonable to assume that this launch would now not go ahead. However, Musk then appeared to quickly walk back his decision. Responding to an X user advising him to "cool off and take a step back for a couple days," the billionaire subsequently stated that Dragon will not be decommissioned after all.It's unclear whether Musk's initial announcement was sincere, or whether his apparent about-face might be sarcastic. Musk has a history of making flippant comments online with no apparent regard to their consequences. What is clear is that Musk and Trump's relationship is well past the honeymoon phase, and now looks much more like an ugly divorce.If Trump does terminate government contracts with Musk's companies, it would deal a significant blow to the billionaire. According to a Washington Post investigation, NASA has invested over billion in SpaceX alone. When put together with Musk's other companies such as EV automaker Tesla, his various businesses have received at least billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits.

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    Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means.
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    Musk and Trump go through messy public breakup

    Credit: Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images

    Musk's relationship with Trump has significantly deteriorated in recent days. The billionaire announced that he was leaving his position as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiencylast Wednesday, just one day after he criticised Trump's tax bill as undermining its work. The split was presented as amicable at the time, with Trump presenting Musk with a golden key and words of praise. However, their love affair has quickly turned sour.Musk continued to lambast Trump's bill after his departure from DOGE, arguing that it will increase government debt by trillions of dollars. Strongly disagreeing with the president's characterisation of the proposed legislation as a "Big Beautiful Bill," Musk labelled it a "disgusting abomination" and has been calling for lawmakers to crush it.For his part, Trump has claimed that Musk is simply throwing a tantrum because the bill supposedly cut an alleged "EV mandate." The president stated on Thursday that he had asked the billionaire to leave his administration, and that Musk had been "wearing thin.""I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted, and he just went CRAZY!" Trump claimed. Despite Trump's assertions, he did not abolish any EV mandate as there has never been any U.S. law which makes switching to an electric car mandatory. However, Trump has taken several anti-EV measures since his inauguration, including abolishing incentives encouraging EV adoption, pausing billion in funding for a U.S. charging network, and introducing a annual fee for EV users in his recent tax bill.

    Related Stories

    Trump's claim about Musk is an interesting contrast to his statements in March, when he praised the billionaire for not complaining about the supposed end of the non-existent EV mandate. The president made the comments while he and Musk co-hosted a Tesla ad on the White House lawn in an effort to boost the company's cratering stock prices.Tesla's struggling share value has now fallen again amidst Musk's feud with Trump, plummeting more than 14 percent on Thursday to wipe out over billion in value."I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago," Trump wrote on Thursday.Meanwhile, Musk went all-in attacking Trump on Thursday, claiming that the president is linked to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and sharing posts calling for him to be impeached. Musk has also hit out at Trump's tariffs on international trade, predicting that they will "cause a recession in the second half of the year.""Without me, Trump would have lost the election," Musk alleged on X. "Such ingratitude."
    #spacex #retire #dragon #amidst #musk
    SpaceX may retire Dragon amidst Musk and Trump feud
    Elon Musk is contemplating decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, responding to President Donald Trump's apparent intent to terminate government subsidies and contracts with the billionaire's companies. It looks like the feud between the former allies has quickly turned vicious.SpaceX's CEO initially announced that the company would retire its Dragon spacecraft in an X post on Thursday, with Musk sharing a screenshot of a post published on Trump's Truth Social account earlier in the day."The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," said Trump in the screenshotted post. "I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!" You May Also Like "In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately," Musk wrote on X.SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft are a family of vehicles designed to carry passengers and cargo. The National Aeronautics and Space Administrationhas previously relied upon them to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Mere hours prior to Musk's announcement, SpaceX posted on X that it was preparing to launch a Dragon next Tuesday.For a few hours, it seemed reasonable to assume that this launch would now not go ahead. However, Musk then appeared to quickly walk back his decision. Responding to an X user advising him to "cool off and take a step back for a couple days," the billionaire subsequently stated that Dragon will not be decommissioned after all.It's unclear whether Musk's initial announcement was sincere, or whether his apparent about-face might be sarcastic. Musk has a history of making flippant comments online with no apparent regard to their consequences. What is clear is that Musk and Trump's relationship is well past the honeymoon phase, and now looks much more like an ugly divorce.If Trump does terminate government contracts with Musk's companies, it would deal a significant blow to the billionaire. According to a Washington Post investigation, NASA has invested over billion in SpaceX alone. When put together with Musk's other companies such as EV automaker Tesla, his various businesses have received at least billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits. Mashable Trend Report: Coming Soon! Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Musk and Trump go through messy public breakup Credit: Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images Musk's relationship with Trump has significantly deteriorated in recent days. The billionaire announced that he was leaving his position as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiencylast Wednesday, just one day after he criticised Trump's tax bill as undermining its work. The split was presented as amicable at the time, with Trump presenting Musk with a golden key and words of praise. However, their love affair has quickly turned sour.Musk continued to lambast Trump's bill after his departure from DOGE, arguing that it will increase government debt by trillions of dollars. Strongly disagreeing with the president's characterisation of the proposed legislation as a "Big Beautiful Bill," Musk labelled it a "disgusting abomination" and has been calling for lawmakers to crush it.For his part, Trump has claimed that Musk is simply throwing a tantrum because the bill supposedly cut an alleged "EV mandate." The president stated on Thursday that he had asked the billionaire to leave his administration, and that Musk had been "wearing thin.""I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted, and he just went CRAZY!" Trump claimed. Despite Trump's assertions, he did not abolish any EV mandate as there has never been any U.S. law which makes switching to an electric car mandatory. However, Trump has taken several anti-EV measures since his inauguration, including abolishing incentives encouraging EV adoption, pausing billion in funding for a U.S. charging network, and introducing a annual fee for EV users in his recent tax bill. Related Stories Trump's claim about Musk is an interesting contrast to his statements in March, when he praised the billionaire for not complaining about the supposed end of the non-existent EV mandate. The president made the comments while he and Musk co-hosted a Tesla ad on the White House lawn in an effort to boost the company's cratering stock prices.Tesla's struggling share value has now fallen again amidst Musk's feud with Trump, plummeting more than 14 percent on Thursday to wipe out over billion in value."I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago," Trump wrote on Thursday.Meanwhile, Musk went all-in attacking Trump on Thursday, claiming that the president is linked to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and sharing posts calling for him to be impeached. Musk has also hit out at Trump's tariffs on international trade, predicting that they will "cause a recession in the second half of the year.""Without me, Trump would have lost the election," Musk alleged on X. "Such ingratitude." #spacex #retire #dragon #amidst #musk
    MASHABLE.COM
    SpaceX may retire Dragon amidst Musk and Trump feud
    Elon Musk is contemplating decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, responding to President Donald Trump's apparent intent to terminate government subsidies and contracts with the billionaire's companies. It looks like the feud between the former allies has quickly turned vicious.SpaceX's CEO initially announced that the company would retire its Dragon spacecraft in an X post on Thursday, with Musk sharing a screenshot of a post published on Trump's Truth Social account earlier in the day."The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," said Trump in the screenshotted post. "I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!" You May Also Like "In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately," Musk wrote on X.SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft are a family of vehicles designed to carry passengers and cargo. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has previously relied upon them to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Mere hours prior to Musk's announcement, SpaceX posted on X that it was preparing to launch a Dragon next Tuesday.For a few hours, it seemed reasonable to assume that this launch would now not go ahead. However, Musk then appeared to quickly walk back his decision. Responding to an X user advising him to "cool off and take a step back for a couple days," the billionaire subsequently stated that Dragon will not be decommissioned after all.It's unclear whether Musk's initial announcement was sincere, or whether his apparent about-face might be sarcastic. Musk has a history of making flippant comments online with no apparent regard to their consequences. What is clear is that Musk and Trump's relationship is well past the honeymoon phase, and now looks much more like an ugly divorce.If Trump does terminate government contracts with Musk's companies, it would deal a significant blow to the billionaire. According to a Washington Post investigation, NASA has invested over $15 billion in SpaceX alone. When put together with Musk's other companies such as EV automaker Tesla, his various businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits. Mashable Trend Report: Coming Soon! Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Musk and Trump go through messy public breakup Credit: Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images Musk's relationship with Trump has significantly deteriorated in recent days. The billionaire announced that he was leaving his position as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last Wednesday, just one day after he criticised Trump's tax bill as undermining its work. The split was presented as amicable at the time, with Trump presenting Musk with a golden key and words of praise. However, their love affair has quickly turned sour.Musk continued to lambast Trump's bill after his departure from DOGE, arguing that it will increase government debt by trillions of dollars. Strongly disagreeing with the president's characterisation of the proposed legislation as a "Big Beautiful Bill," Musk labelled it a "disgusting abomination" and has been calling for lawmakers to crush it.For his part, Trump has claimed that Musk is simply throwing a tantrum because the bill supposedly cut an alleged "EV mandate." The president stated on Thursday that he had asked the billionaire to leave his administration, and that Musk had been "wearing thin.""I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!" Trump claimed. Despite Trump's assertions, he did not abolish any EV mandate as there has never been any U.S. law which makes switching to an electric car mandatory. However, Trump has taken several anti-EV measures since his inauguration, including abolishing incentives encouraging EV adoption, pausing $3 billion in funding for a U.S. charging network, and introducing a $250 annual fee for EV users in his recent tax bill. Related Stories Trump's claim about Musk is an interesting contrast to his statements in March, when he praised the billionaire for not complaining about the supposed end of the non-existent EV mandate. The president made the comments while he and Musk co-hosted a Tesla ad on the White House lawn in an effort to boost the company's cratering stock prices.Tesla's struggling share value has now fallen again amidst Musk's feud with Trump, plummeting more than 14 percent on Thursday to wipe out over $150 billion in value."I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago," Trump wrote on Thursday.Meanwhile, Musk went all-in attacking Trump on Thursday, claiming that the president is linked to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and sharing posts calling for him to be impeached. Musk has also hit out at Trump's tariffs on international trade, predicting that they will "cause a recession in the second half of the year.""Without me, Trump would have lost the election," Musk alleged on X. "Such ingratitude."
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  • Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix

    We’re delighted to reveal Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road, the next game from Ludogram, is being published by Raw Fury! 
    Just announced during The Mix Summer Game Showcase with a rip-roaring trailer, Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road is what we’re describing as a ‘Tower-Survivor’ game, mashing up tower defense with a horde survivor.  
    If you’re already liking what you’re seeing and hearing, you can sign up to the Closed Beta test which we’re aiming to start later this month. Just fill out the form here. 
    But let’s break this down and give you a grander overview of what the game is all about 
    Monsters are Coming: Rock & Road is an action rogue-lite where you begin each run controlling a peon, tasked with fighting back hordes and hordesof monsters attacking from all sides! 
    But the peon’s true objective is to protect a moving city – even at the expense of their own life – all while making sure its path isn’t obstructed by the environment, gathering enough resources to expand its potential. So where peons can respawn if they fall in battle, it’s only when the city is destroyed that your run is over! 
    Fortunately, the city can also protect itself through archery outposts, necromancy towers and even fire-breathing dragons. As long as you’ve got the coin, wood, gems and stone to fulfil the requirements, you can build a real fortress of destruction! Resources, by the way, you’ll have to gather while fighting and protecting the city, balancing risk versus reward. 
    Defeated monsters drop gems which you use to power up. And off the beaten path you can find even more, unexpected ways to give your Peon an edge in battle.  
    But despite the fast and furious pace of MaC: R&R, you will be able to find some respite at shelters. Here, you can take some time to decide what to spend your newfound wealth on and add even rarer buildings to your arsenal. Some of which affect your gold in-take or damage output, but you can also build towers that freeze monsters or spawn additional minions to repel the continued invasion.  
    Should you be defeated, at the end of each run you can also use your built up experience and resources to add permanent upgrades to your peon and city.  
    As you try to fight through four biomes, finding the right city build, selecting integral attributes to help you reach the Arch, you’ve definitely got your work cut out for you against some of the deadliest creatures you’ve had the misfortune to encounter.  
    Join the hordes

    BlueSky
    Twitter
    Discord

    The post Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix appeared first on Raw Fury.
    #monsters #are #coming #rock #ampamp
    Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix
    We’re delighted to reveal Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road, the next game from Ludogram, is being published by Raw Fury!  Just announced during The Mix Summer Game Showcase with a rip-roaring trailer, Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road is what we’re describing as a ‘Tower-Survivor’ game, mashing up tower defense with a horde survivor.   If you’re already liking what you’re seeing and hearing, you can sign up to the Closed Beta test which we’re aiming to start later this month. Just fill out the form here.  But let’s break this down and give you a grander overview of what the game is all about  Monsters are Coming: Rock & Road is an action rogue-lite where you begin each run controlling a peon, tasked with fighting back hordes and hordesof monsters attacking from all sides!  But the peon’s true objective is to protect a moving city – even at the expense of their own life – all while making sure its path isn’t obstructed by the environment, gathering enough resources to expand its potential. So where peons can respawn if they fall in battle, it’s only when the city is destroyed that your run is over!  Fortunately, the city can also protect itself through archery outposts, necromancy towers and even fire-breathing dragons. As long as you’ve got the coin, wood, gems and stone to fulfil the requirements, you can build a real fortress of destruction! Resources, by the way, you’ll have to gather while fighting and protecting the city, balancing risk versus reward.  Defeated monsters drop gems which you use to power up. And off the beaten path you can find even more, unexpected ways to give your Peon an edge in battle.   But despite the fast and furious pace of MaC: R&R, you will be able to find some respite at shelters. Here, you can take some time to decide what to spend your newfound wealth on and add even rarer buildings to your arsenal. Some of which affect your gold in-take or damage output, but you can also build towers that freeze monsters or spawn additional minions to repel the continued invasion.   Should you be defeated, at the end of each run you can also use your built up experience and resources to add permanent upgrades to your peon and city.   As you try to fight through four biomes, finding the right city build, selecting integral attributes to help you reach the Arch, you’ve definitely got your work cut out for you against some of the deadliest creatures you’ve had the misfortune to encounter.   Join the hordes BlueSky Twitter Discord The post Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix appeared first on Raw Fury. #monsters #are #coming #rock #ampamp
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    Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix
    We’re delighted to reveal Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road, the next game from Ludogram, is being published by Raw Fury!  Just announced during The Mix Summer Game Showcase with a rip-roaring trailer, Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road is what we’re describing as a ‘Tower-Survivor’ game, mashing up tower defense with a horde survivor.   If you’re already liking what you’re seeing and hearing, you can sign up to the Closed Beta test which we’re aiming to start later this month. Just fill out the form here.  But let’s break this down and give you a grander overview of what the game is all about  Monsters are Coming: Rock & Road is an action rogue-lite where you begin each run controlling a peon, tasked with fighting back hordes and hordes (and hordes) of monsters attacking from all sides!  But the peon’s true objective is to protect a moving city – even at the expense of their own life – all while making sure its path isn’t obstructed by the environment, gathering enough resources to expand its potential. So where peons can respawn if they fall in battle, it’s only when the city is destroyed that your run is over!  Fortunately, the city can also protect itself through archery outposts, necromancy towers and even fire-breathing dragons. As long as you’ve got the coin, wood, gems and stone to fulfil the requirements, you can build a real fortress of destruction! Resources, by the way, you’ll have to gather while fighting and protecting the city, balancing risk versus reward.  Defeated monsters drop gems which you use to power up. And off the beaten path you can find even more, unexpected ways to give your Peon an edge in battle.   But despite the fast and furious pace of MaC: R&R, you will be able to find some respite at shelters. Here, you can take some time to decide what to spend your newfound wealth on and add even rarer buildings to your arsenal. Some of which affect your gold in-take or damage output, but you can also build towers that freeze monsters or spawn additional minions to repel the continued invasion.   Should you be defeated, at the end of each run you can also use your built up experience and resources to add permanent upgrades to your peon and city.   As you try to fight through four biomes, finding the right city build, selecting integral attributes to help you reach the Arch, you’ve definitely got your work cut out for you against some of the deadliest creatures you’ve had the misfortune to encounter.   Join the hordes BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/monsterscoming.bsky.social Twitter https://x.com/_MonstersComing Discord https://discord.gg/mqnTkZBf The post Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Announced at The Mix appeared first on Raw Fury.
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