Uzzy Gabe’s little helper Member Oct 25, 2017 34,452 Hull, UK More info will be shown on the Warhammer Skulls stream in a moment I'm sure.  Granjinhaa Member Dec 28, 2023 9,642 fuck yes   Count of Monte Sawed-Off Member Oct 27, 2017 5,055 Day 1   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,788 Spain They sold it to me with that Kroot on the thumbnail.   Jubilant Duck Member Oct 21, 2022 9,238 yooooo   Rise2Ragnarok Member Oct 28, 2017 234 Excited for this, I had a pretty fun time with Rogue Trader. Hopefully this is even better then that sort of like how Wrath of the Righteous was better then Kingmaker IMO   hydruxo ▲ Legend ▲ Member Oct 25, 2017 22,729   Burt Fight Sephiroth or end video games Member Oct 28, 2017 9,644 ... still haven't put more than an hour into Rogue Trader...   Saucycarpdog Member Oct 25, 2017 20,315 Might even have full voice acting going by their previous comments   Zebesian-X Member Dec 3, 2018 25,350 fuck man it feels like rogue trader just dropped, I gotta get to that   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,788 Spain Saucycarpdog said: Might even have full voice acting going by their previous comments Click to expand... Click to shrink... Confirmed on the Steam page.   Skittles Member Oct 25, 2017 9,603 Will they put minorities in this one?   SilkySm00th Member Oct 31, 2017 5,188 more inquisition eh? Call me when they make an Ork version of this game! (my SM friend will buy the shit outta this)  General Tso Member Jan 10, 2018 530 crazy how many releases the Warhammer franchise gets every year, very happy for people into these games   Marven Member Oct 25, 2017 708 Northeast Illinois Hell ya! Can't wait. I loved Rogue Trader.   Lord Vatek Avenger Jan 18, 2018 24,740 I hope the romance options here are more varied. Rogue Trader dropped the ball with availability and quality of the same-sex romances compared to Wrath of the Righteous imo.   OP OP Uzzy Gabe’s little helper Member Oct 25, 2017 34,452 Hull, UK Warhammer Skulls stream here.  JoeInky Member Oct 25, 2017 4,058 Doesn't Owlcat have Russian ties? I've been avoiding Rogue Trader and Space Marine 2 because I was under the impression that both developers had ties to Russia, but couldn't remember where I heard it from  Mudcrab Avenger Oct 26, 2017 3,958 Day one baby!   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,788 Spain SilkySm00th said: more inquisition eh? Call me when they make an Ork version of this game! (my SM friend will buy the shit outta this) Click to expand... Click to shrink... Ironically, the Inquisition is one of three viable options for having a party with multiple alien species (Rogue Traders, Tau and the Inquisition).   Lord Vatek Avenger Jan 18, 2018 24,740 JoeInky said: Doesn't Owlcat have Russian ties? I've been avoiding Rogue Trader and Space Marine 2 because I was under the impression that both developers had ties to Russia, but couldn't remember where I heard it from Click to expand... Click to shrink... Owlcat is Russian, yes, but near as far as we can tell they've moved to Cyprus.   Mezoly Jimbo Replacement Member Oct 25, 2017 5,253 Oh we gonna be there. Owlcat games are great. Was worried they won't make a cRPG   GravaGravity Member Oct 27, 2017 4,727 "tough choices" look as far as I can tell the correct choice in everything warhammer is always "KILL EVERYTHING", so I find that hard to believe in a less glib fashion I've been looking forward to playing Rogue Trader once all the DLC and patches are out, if that hits I'll gladly get this as well   Dictator Digital Foundry Verified Oct 26, 2017 5,523 Berlin, 'SCHLAND Lord Vatek said: Owlcat is Russian, yes, but near as far as we can tell they've moved to Cyprus. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Chances are high there is a little Bit of something im Cyprus but actually all dev is in Russia   Gareth Member Oct 25, 2017 6,423 Norn Iron data Member Oct 25, 2017 5,355 Hell yea, looking forward to the inquisitor role   SilkySm00th Member Oct 31, 2017 5,188 Glio said: Ironically, the Inquisition is one of three viable options for having a party with multiple alien species (Rogue Traders, Tau and the Inquisition). Click to expand... Click to shrink... If they did a story with a heavy presence of FreeBootaz i would be there with bells on lol  Cheesetriangles Member Dec 5, 2017 2,504 Can't wait day one.   Aeana Member Oct 25, 2017 7,570 They're doing founder's packs just like Rogue Trader. https://darkheresy.owlcat.games/#founder   CognitiveAtrophy Member Oct 27, 2017 2,522 I love Owlcat, but I can't stand the 40K universe. Wake me up when they announce a new Pathfinder.   Strings Member Oct 27, 2017 34,533 Zebesian-X said: fuck man it feels like rogue trader just dropped, I gotta get to that Click to expand... Click to shrink... It was only a year and a half ago. Crazy fast for a new game announcement. EDIT: Looks like they announced the first about a year and a half before release. Three years is still such a fast turnaround these days.  Kemono ▲ Legend ▲ Member Oct 27, 2017 8,643 Loved rogue trader. Will be there day 1. But likely will wait for a loooooot of patches. Their games are fantastic but they need 6 months of patches.  xyla Member Oct 27, 2017 9,658 Germany So there's definitely Aliens in the party - no idea who the main guy in the trailer is. Owlcat makes good games, I hope they also have something in a fantasy setting cooking though.  Paroni Member Dec 17, 2020 4,809 Put the OG inquisitor in, you cowards.   xyla Member Oct 27, 2017 9,658 Germany Strings said: It was only a year and a half ago. Crazy fast for a new game announcement. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I bet it's gonna be early access for a year or so - they've had success with that on Rogue Trader too. And they've probably been smart when it comes to assets. They've build a lot for Rogue Trader, would be a waste, not to re-use them.  Cheesetriangles Member Dec 5, 2017 2,504 Please don't take the character that will most obviously be desired for romance and make them not romancable again.   Athrum Member Oct 18, 2019 1,827 Was hoping for Pathfinder 3, Wrath of the Righteous is an amazing game, but I'll bite. Rogue Trader was pretty cool (if buggy, really really buggy)   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,788 Spain xyla said: So there's definitely Aliens in the party - no idea who the main guy in the trailer is. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Probably the inquisitor you work for.   Kalor Resettlement Advisor Member Oct 25, 2017 20,921 Been waiting for support to slow down for Rogue Trader before playing it and they've already announced the sequel.   Fawz Member Oct 28, 2017 3,975 Montreal Looks like a Standalone expansion to Rogue Trader, which I'm fine with as that's a good base to start from with lots of good points to expand towards. Not being shackled to the previous game for the base (namely Save file) likely gives them more freedom, as seen by new Races and the like   Count of Monte Sawed-Off Member Oct 27, 2017 5,055 Aeana said: They're doing founder's packs just like Rogue Trader. https://darkheresy.owlcat.games/#founder Click to expand... Click to shrink... Bought, plus the second season pass for Rogue Trader.  IAmFromSpace Member May 11, 2023 501 Rogue Trader was such a fantastic take on 40k, can't wait to see what they do.   OP OP Uzzy Gabe’s little helper Member Oct 25, 2017 34,452 Hull, UK Cheesetriangles said: Please don't take the character that will most obviously be desired for romance and make them not romancable again. Click to expand... Click to shrink... This is inevitable  Tovarisc Member Oct 25, 2017 25,810 FIN Can't recommend Vaults of Terra and Eisenhorn book series enough if looking to get Inquisition and Inquisitor vibe going. Athrum said: Was hoping for Pathfinder 3, Wrath of the Righteous is an amazing game, but I'll bite. Rogue Trader was pretty cool (if buggy, really really buggy) Click to expand... Click to shrink... Owlcat game being extremely buggy and beyond broken for a year after release is just how Owlcat rolls.  Cheesetriangles Member Dec 5, 2017 2,504 Uzzy said: This is inevitable Click to expand... Click to shrink... Someday I will get to kick the football.   LordGorchnik Member Oct 30, 2017 3,672 Day. Fucking. One. I still need to play past the first act of Rogue Trader. Been way too many good games lately.  7thFloor Member Oct 27, 2017 7,330 U.S. Damn I still haven't played Rogue Trader   Dakkon Member Oct 27, 2017 5,244 JoeInky said: Doesn't Owlcat have Russian ties? I've been avoiding Rogue Trader and Space Marine 2 because I was under the impression that both developers had ties to Russia, but couldn't remember where I heard it from Click to expand... Click to shrink... https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/ubmo1m/comment/i65mozh/ "Our headquarters had always been in Cyprus, with developers working from multiple countries. A lot of developers were located in Moscow until recently, but now many of us are relocating to Cyprus, Armenia and other places. If there was anything good in the pandemic, it is that it gave us a plenty of experience in coordinating and working on our projects online from multiple locations, so we can continue to create games for you guys." Click to expand... Click to shrink... So headquarters in Cyprus, they have a satellite office in Armenia, and most of them left Russia during the pandemic/Russian invasion of Ukraine it looks like. That said since the headquarters and thus operating country of the actual business is Cyprus, I'm pretty sure the Russian government doesn't directly get profits from the games or anything through taxation etc of the company.  Native_Vel Member Jun 5, 2022 2,041 Day one. Rogue Trader is fantastic but staying within the bounds of the Imperium will be exciting take.  Miracle Ache Member Oct 25, 2017 1,589 That's a shame. Rogue Trader was godawful. Wrath of the Righteous, on the other hand, was quite possibly the best CRPG ever made. 

Touch, I remember touch Power Sink (Winterwire Games, 22nd May, $14.99) - Set in the ruins of a submerged power station, Power Sink blends classic platforming with clever logic-based puzzles as players take on the role of a Diver sent to restore power to a fading underwater colony. Project Zombie (XenoXeno, 24th May, $12.99) - Project Zombie is a survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world, where players must push their physical and mental limits in a constant fight for life. In a world overrun by zombies, quick decisions, clever strategies, and cooperation with other survivors make the difference between life and death. Sauna of the DEAD (KAMIICHI DIGITAL, 22nd May, $7.99) - Step into the world's most unusual sauna game and become a legendary Aufguss Maestro. We believe you have what it takes to be the best heat-bringer in the underworld! Purify zombies in a sauna from hell! Soccer Golf! (Ratalaika Games, 23rd May, $4.99) - Do you love soccer? Do you love golf? Tee off and kickoff in SoccerGolf, a brilliant and challenging new physics game which seamlessly combines your two favorite sports. Choose from 54 challenging levels with 3 unique themes, and get ready for increased obstacles, hazards, and difficulty. Starlight Legacy (eastasiasoft, 28th May, $12.99) - Return to the style of 16-bit JRPGs in Starlight Legacy, a non-linear adventure inspired by genre classics! Set in a post-medieval world in the Evaria Kingdom, explore a vast kingdom created with lush 2D pixel art, a nostalgic turn-based battle system and non-linear story where the four provinces of the kingdom can be explored in any order of your choosing. STEAM-HEART’S Saturn Tribute (City Connection, 28th May, $19.99) - The return of a hardcore and sexy sci-fi vertical scrolling shooter! Players can obtain and power up two types of main shots and six types of sub-weapons. Utilize special techniques such as the "Weapon Crash", which temporarily boosts sub-weapons, and the "Boost" ability, which lets you momentarily accelerate to dodge enemy attacks. Master these skills to suppress the oncoming enemies! Super Waifu Ball (JanduSoft, 22nd May, $5.99) - Super Waifu Ball is an arcade-style adventure where you roll through colorful, obstacle-filled worlds as a cast of adorable waifus. Complete levels, collect stars, and unlock collectible waifu figurines from the gacha machine! Tavern Owner Simulator (GBTUI, 17th May, $12.99) - Welcome to Tavern Owner Simulator, where your dream of managing a medieval pub becomes reality. Step into the shoes of a tavern proprietor and transform a modest establishment into the most popular spot in town. With a mix of strategic planning, creative design, and savvy management, you’ll turn your tiny tavern into a bustling hub of activity. The Operator (Bureau 81, 22nd May, $13.99) - Welcome to the FDI. As our newest Operator, your role is to use your detective skills to assist our field agents and investigate mysterious crimes. Use cutting-edge FDI software to dig for clues, solve puzzles, and uncover the truth. The Town of Nie Iromusubi (HuneX, 22nd May, $39.19) - "The Town of Nie Iromusubi", a fan-disc of the strange and eerie otherworldly BL fantasy "The Town of Nie. "Weaving together extraordinary colors. Trident’s Tale (3DClouds, 22nd May, $24.99) - Set sail for an epic action-packed adventure in Trident’s Tale, where you’ll become Ocean, a bold young captain on a quest to reclaim the legendary Storm Trident—a mythical artifact that grants power over the seas. But beware the ocean is vast, treacherous, and crawling with danger at every turn! Weirdo (CASCHA GAMES, 22nd May, $10.99) - Parallel-Weirdo is a Japanese manga-style visual novel set in DYL High School. It follows Wang Zhe, an ordinary and frail boy, who tries to win the hearts of girls and complete What will you be downloading this week? (63 votes) A Bibelot: Tiret sur Will  0%ADVANCED V.G. Saturn Tribute2%Arcade Archives NebulasRay5%Casual Sport Series: Badminton  0%Cats Visiting Fairy Tales  0%Cattle Country3%Cipheur  0%Cookie Clicker8%Cozy Winter  0%Digger Simulator: Gold Rush  0%Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping8%Eggconsole Hydlide Ii Msx2%Extreme! 2-Choice Flag Quiz  0%Food Truck Business Simulator  0%Genopanic  0%Ghost Room Deep  0%Knight's Night!  0%Legends Aligned: Minis in Conflict  0%Merge Numbers  0%Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Battle Destiny Remastered3%Monster Train 28%Mudness Offroad Car Simulator Runner  0%Not Not 2 - A Brain Challenge2%Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny6%Pancho's Mission  0%Pick Race 3D  0%Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo19%Planeta 55  0%Please, Touch The Artwork 25%Power Sink3%Project Zombie  0%Sauna of the DEAD  0%Soccer Golf!  0%Starlight Legacy3%STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute2%Super Waifu Ball2%Tavern Owner Simulator  0%The Operator  0%The Town of Nie Iromusubi  0%Trident's Tale  0%Weirdo  0%Nothing for me this week21% So that's your lot for this week's North American Nintendo Download. Go on, be a sport and drop a vote in the poll above, and comment below with your hot picks! Related Games See Also

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own. I’m nearly positive the first biscuit iteration I ever ate was a Bisquick drop biscuit. While my mom was a well-practiced savory cook, she usually baked from boxes. That was just fine by me and my brothers. But as I grew fond of baking myself, I was pretty surprised when I learned that baking biscuits from scratch was not quite like Bisquick. Simple? Sure. But only where the ingredient list is concerned. In fact, the simpler the ingredient list, the more difficult some types of foods are to make. Biscuits are a great example of the illusion of ease in baking. There’s a balance to strike between shortening gluten and strengthening gluten, adding richness and maximizing lift, and then there’s the question of what to eat it with. This week’s cookbook spotlight shines onto Still We Rise, a cookbook that contains every type of biscuit—from those that can suffice as a butter-slathered side dish to others that are a vital source of comfort.A bit about the bookStill We Rise dropped in 2023 from the owner and chef of Bomb Biscuit Company, Erika Council. You might think to yourself: How many recipes for biscuits could there possibly be? A lot, in fact. There are over 70 recipes in this book—yes, for different types of biscuits, but also for jams and spreads, as well as recipes for savory, stacked biscuit sandwiches.  Aside from serving as a collection of easy-to-follow biscuit recipes for you to enjoy, you’ll find anecdotes and one-page personal stories related to the recipes that follow. Council uses this cookbook as a place to tell the stories of accomplished female chefs, of her family, their experiences as Black people living in America in the 1940s and onward, and how the food cooked and shared by Council's family members has played a crucial role in how she connects to her past and present. The recipe I made this weekWhen I first chose the recipe I wanted to make this week, I was expecting a routine biscuit preparation. I chose the Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits, so I made sure to have flour ready, sour cream, green onions, and plenty of cold butter. I stretched my hands and prepared myself for several minutes of “cutting in” butter. That’s a process where you break cold butter into tiny pieces to eventually flatten them so they bake into flaky layers. You’ll see it often in pie crusts too. It’s like a hyper-lazy version of laminating dough, which you see in croissants and puff pastry. To put it bluntly, it’s pretty annoying, but biscuits taste good, so it’s worth it.  Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann I started mixing the dry ingredients in a bowl and scanned the page for the butter sequence. I scanned again. Where was the butter? Oh, there’s no butter—there’s no butter? (Well there was, but only a couple tablespoons for brushing on at the end.) This recipe uses sour cream and a splash of full-fat buttermilk to lend richness to the dough, and that’s it. No breaking up butter or shredding it with a grater? For those who don’t know off-hand what this news means in a practical sense, this recipe would potentially only take about 10 minutes to prepare. And it did. It was so easy to make. Too easy to make? I was suspicious at first, but the smell wafting from the oven dispelled my fears. The first thing I noticed when I bit into one was the hydration. This biscuit wasn’t your typical towering, flaky specimen, but instead a fluffed and tender oniony morsel. It wasn't wet or cake-y by any means, but it was nowhere near in danger of being a dry biscuit. I should have made a double batch because the sour cream prevented the biscuits from becoming hard or stale even after they had been sitting out for a day. A great cookbook for biscuits that fit your situationIt’s obvious that this is a biscuit cookbook; don’t come here looking for a pizza recipe (though there are pancakes in here). What’s special about this book is that there seems to be a biscuit for every possible need, limitation, or random craving. It speaks to more than simply a variety of toppings or mix-ins.There are recipes that don’t have butter in them, ones that use alternative fats like duck fat, biscuits with regular milk and some with buttermilk, recipes for sweet occasions, savory needs, quick and low-lift recipes, and more complex ones. I can easily see myself thinking, today I don’t have buttermilk and I need savory biscuits ready in 1 hour, so what can I make?—and finding a biscuit that matches my current pantry inventory and time needs.How to buy itI always recommend a jaunt to the local bookstore, but seeing as I couldn’t do it this week, I can’t blame you for ordering online either. I selected the hardcover this week, but if your cookbook bookshelf is getting tight, you can download the ebook for a steal. I’ll be keeping my copy right in the kitchen for strawberry and peach season. (There’s a Honey Roasted Peach Biscuit recipe in here that I have my eye on.)  Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes $4.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $4.99 at Amazon

Job SummaryChipcolate is looking for an experienced Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to own the reliability, scalability and performance of our agent-oriented financial platform. You’ll design and automate resilient cloud infrastructure, keep latency low and uptime high, and equip our product team with the tooling they need to ship confidently at scale.Salary: €65 000 – €85 000 gross / yearLocation: Work from anywhere within ± 4 hours of Central European TimeEmployment type: Full-time, permanentAbout UsChipcolate is a small Italian company of craftsman-engineers who believe great software should be as elegant as it is robust. Historically we worked on embedded systems, web applications and 3D printing. At this time, we are working with a customer to build high-throughput financial services that power thousands of autonomous agents. We operate in a quite unstructured and flexible way, that’s the only way to get speed and quality.Mission: Empower our customer to be set for success from the get goLearn more: chipcolate.com · LinkedIn (@chipcolate) · GitHub (https://github.com/chipcolate)ResponsibilitiesArchitect, provision and maintain a distributed multi-provider cloud infrastructure to meet strict availability and latency.Implement long term solutions to support thousands of concurrently executing agents.Postgres database performance and reliability, including OLAP applicationDevelop scalable observability stacks (Grafana / OpenTelemetry) with actionable SLOs.Implement automated reliability measures: blue/green deploys, canary roll-outs, chaos testing and game days.Partner with backend teams to profile services, eliminate bottlenecks and design for horizontal scaling.Drive cost-efficient capacity planning and security best practices.Experience & QualificationsMust-have:3+ years in SRE, DevOps or Production EngineeringDeep knowledge of Linux and containersDeep knowledge of PostgresProficiency in at least one programming language (Node, Python, Go, or Rust)Infrastructure-as-Code mastery (Ansible and Terraform)Strong monitoring/alerting chops; you think in RED/USE metricsNice-to-have:Experience with Grafana observability stackExperience with event-driven or agent-based architecturesExperience running multi-region, active-active setupsExperience with SupabaseExperience with DuckDBExperience managing a Kubernetes cluster at scaleNo formal degree required—show us how you’ve built and kept complex systems alive.BenefitsFlexible hours & fully remoteFast growing environmentFun and innovative application domain20 days paid leave + local public holidaysCompetitive salaryApplication ProcessApply online with a CV (or GitHub profile) and a short note on your proudest “save-the-day” incident.Skill test.Cultural chat and Technical deep-dive with our CTO (60 min, system-design & live problem-solving).Offer within 7 working days or final interview.Ready to make high-stakes infrastructure feel effortless? Apply today—let’s engineer reliability together.Apply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote DevOps and Sysadmin JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie $14 (was $27) | Releases May 27 Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart The first fully animated, feature-length Looney Tunes movie releases on Blu-ray next week, and preorders are up for grabs for a ridiculously low price. Amazon and Walmart have The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie for just $14, which is nearly 50% off the Blu-ray's $27 list price. The Day the Earth Blew Up will be added to HBO's Max streaming service on June 27, but the Blu-ray edition currently costs less than the price of one month of Max's standard ad-free plan ($17). The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie $14 (was $27) | Releases May 27 Since the current preorder deal at Amazon and Walmart already saves you nearly 50% compared to the film's MSRP, we'd be surprised to see it drop even lower. That said, you will be eligible for additional discounts at either retailer thanks to preorder price guarantees.The Day the Earth Blew Up is also releasing on DVD on the same day. The DVD edition is on sale for $13 (was $25). Considering Looney Tunes was created in 1930, it's rather remarkable that The Day the Earth Blew Up became the first animated, full-length movie starring the zany cast of cartoon icons. Prior to its theatrical debut last year, the most notable Looney Tunes feature films mixed live action with animation (Space Jam and Space Jam: A New Legacy). Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart The Day the Earth Blew Up follows Daffy Duck and Porky Pig on a quest to stop aliens from taking over the world. It earned mostly positive reviews from critics and fans. After its limited theatrical debut last year, the film released in theaters across the US in March.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Back in 2010, when Cartoon Network first announced its plan to reboot the beloved 1985 animated TV series Thundercats, the first thought that went through my mind was, “That’s great! Do Blackstar next!” In 2014, when Boat Rocker Media announced its reboot of 1981’s Danger Mouse, same thing: “Huh, interesting, but do Blackstar next.” 2016’s Disney reveal about its reboot of 1987’s Duck Tales? “Rad. But… Blackstar?” And so it went, year after year, with the announcements about 2018’s Netflix reboot of She-Ra: Princess of Power, 2021’s He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the CG version of Inspector Gadget, the American Voltron update Voltron: Legendary Defender, half a dozen new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers projects, a little-loved second Thundercats series, and every single Smurfs movie. I get it — the kids of the ’80s are producers and writers and showrunners now, with enough clout to get their childhood memories turned into new shows. But apparently none of them watched Blackstar, easily one of the coolest animated series of the 1980s, built around the coolest sword. There’s a direct genetic line between the success of 1977’s Star Wars and the wave of space-set, fantasy-themed Saturday morning cartoons that closely followed. Star Wars beget ABC’s popular Thundarr the Barbarian, a post-apocalyptic dystopian-future fantasy about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and more or less carrying a lightsaber and traveling with a Wookiee. Thundarr helped inspire Blackstar, CBS’ equivalent show, about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and carrying his own form of laser sword. (No Wookiee, though — instead, series hero Blackstar got to ride a dragon.) Both shows were on the leading edge of the post-Star Wars dark fantasy wave, leading to movies like Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, and Dragonslayer. But unlike most of those ’80s fantasies — Flash Gordon aside — Thundarr and Blackstar kept a foot in Star Wars’ science fiction roots, hanging onto the idea of worlds where technology and mysticism met and clashed. Thundarr was more popular, but Blackstar was more compelling: a weirder, darker, richer world with a lot more going on, and a much more imaginative sword that wasn’t just a lightly reskinned lightsaber. Though the show only managed a single season and 13 episodes (compared with Thundarr’s two-year, 21-episode stint), Blackstar’s potential still sticks with me decades later. The story in brief: An astronaut from a future Earth, John Blackstar, enters a black hole in his experimental timeship, and winds up trapped on an ancient alien world, full of magic and monsters. (It’s essentially an isekai series, decades before isekai was the hottest trend in anime and manga.) The local Sauron equivalent, the Overlord, dominates the planet Sagar with an artifact called the Powerstar, a huge two-handed crystalline energy sword. Somehow, the Powerstar gets broken into identical halves, producing two badass weapons: the Power Sword, which the Overlord still holds, and the Star Sword, which falls into Blackstar’s hands. Blackstar winds up as the figurehead in a growing rebellion against the Overlord’s. Meanwhile, the Overlord wants not just to squash this budding rebellion, but to reclaim the Star Sword and take up the Powerstar again. In a series of interviews for Blackstar’s 2006 DVD release, the creators and writers cop to some of their influences in writing the show: The protagonist is a little bit John Carter of Mars (the original Edgar Rice Burroughs version, not the 2012 fantasy-movie version) and a little bit Flash Gordon, though he also closely resembles the protagonist of the 1979 live-action series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The Trobbits — tiny comedy-relief people who find and rescue Blackstar after his timeship crashes — take a little inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits, and a lot more from Disney’s seven dwarfs, complete with the “one personality trait apiece” dynamic, and a youngest member who never speaks. (There are also seven of them.)  The Overlord is somewhere between Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless, while Blackstar’s sorceress companion, Mara, is basically just a reskin of Thundarr’s Princess Ariel, with very similar powers, a similar elegant, educated personality and role as party historian, and similar obvious crush on the oblivious hero. Although these characters rarely feel unique, the mythology and setting of Blackstar’s world very much do, and the central plot device of the Powerstar is unique in fantasy animation. The symmetry of the central villain and hero each having half of the world’s most legendary weapon — which is to say, half of the power left in a world struggling to define itself — is a clever riff on the idea that heroes and villains should mirror each other for maximum thematic impact. Their connection through the sundered Powerstar gives the protagonist and antagonist an intimate personal connection, a reason to clash again and again. It also helps define their characters, and what they do with power. It’s no coincidence that in the Overlord’s hands, the Power Sword is all blunt force, used solely to blast or slash, while Blackstar uses the Star Sword as a finesse weapon with flexible magical abilities. (Too flexible, really: Its magic is ill-defined, and the show’s writers invented new Star Sword powers in nearly every episode.) The idea of these two swords as yin and yang, perfect halves that assemble into a greater whole, is unusually elegant for an ’80s cartoon — and one of the series’ many ideas that was never really explored to full advantage. For modern viewers Blackstar is fairly close to unwatchable. Its production company, Filmation, emerged from a series of commercial jobs in the 1960s, but by the 1980s, it specialized in budget-priced television animated entirely in America, rather than in cheaper overseas production houses. That necessitated a lot of cost-saving devices, like recycling the same hand-drawn sequences many times over, often within the same episode, and using a hilariously limited library of sound effects. Blackstar’s sound design is garish and repetitive, with vocal work that sounds like almost everyone is shouting. The scripts are clunky: Blackstar is conceived as a quippy hero who peppers his foes with snarky one-liners, but his jokes are cataclysmically stiff. About the best he can muster is a jaunty “Putting on a little weight, aren’t you, Rocko?” when hefting one rock elemental to toss it onto another during a battle. And the series is designed for the syndication of the era, meaning that episodes might re-air in any order. So there’s no story development, no character arcs, not even an opening episode to establish Blackstar’s origins. Continuity glitches, inconsistent design and storytelling, and budget-saving slow pans across paintings abound. But the world it’s set in is fascinating. There are hints here and there of ancient technologies and centuries-old civilizations buried under what’s become a verdant forest, centered on the magic of the gigantic central Sagar tree, a mystic font of power the Trobbits live in and tend to. Sagar is a world full of weird creatures that seem either like evolutions of familiar animals, or like magical constructs — shark-bats and frog-rabbits and monkey-birds, long before Avatar: The Last Airbender made these kinds of amalgams a running joke. Those slow-pan, cash-saving painting backgrounds are rich, elaborate, and colorful, suggesting a world with the darkness and detail of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal.  While so much of 1980s animation was about the clear line between good and evil, there’s a sense throughout Blackstar that most of the world of Sagar isn’t aspected in such a black-and-white way. It’s just a chaotic ruin, where hungry monsters, prim but weary civilizations, and barbaric enclaves all exist side by side, divided by lethal geography. Every scattered outpost and wandering monster is equally dangerous to Blackstar and the Overlord, but ripe for either of them to exploit for an advantage in their ongoing war. There are even hints at a nuanced system for magic, where the mental power of sorcery and the elemental power of nature magic are different things that work in different ways. After Blackstar’s single season ended, Filmation immediately followed it with the Mattel-backed and far better funded He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a series based on an existing toy line, but just as clearly based on elements borrowed from Blackstar. Once again, there’s a muscular hero in a fur skirt with a magic sword, battling a sorcerous villain in a chaotic technofantasy world packed with environmental hazards and weird, wildly diverse humanoids. Filmation regular Alan Oppenheimer voiced both Blackstar’s Overlord and He-Man’s Skeletor; similarly, Linda Gary voiced Blackstar’s leading lady Mara and He-Man’s Teela. Filmation staff writer Tom Ruegger developed the series bible for both shows, and it shows, in everything from the similar heroes’ and rogues’ galleries to the sprawling high-and-low-tech world where magic and robots co-exist. One He-Man episode, “The Remedy,” even reused several Blackstar sequences, reintroducing Blackstar’s dragon-horse Warlock as a beast He-Man saves from a giant spider, then rides around. While He-Man had many of the same budgetary and aesthetic limitations as Blackstar — frequently recycled animation, obnoxious sound design, goofy and often ineffectual comedy relief — He-Man was immediately more popular. So popular, in fact that toy maker Galoob tried to nab some of Mattel’s sales success by putting out a weirdly modeled toy line for Blackstar, two full years after the show was canceled. (Those toys did not do well.) Now, we’re in an era where He-Man gets reboot after reboot — an all-ages animated version, a CG version for kids, a new live-action movie scheduled for 2026 — while Blackstar is all but forgotten. And I find that so strange. The bid to reboot and update every hit cartoon of the 1980s seems like a natural enough progression for an era of media fueled by nostalgia, but I’ve never understood why there isn’t more of it for Blackstar, a series that was more imaginative and ambitious than either the predecessor it was trying to outdo or the follower that got all the glory. In the way of so many other ’80s cartoons, my interest in a reboot is much less about re-creating an often janky, limited, cheaply made TV series, and much more about realizing the potential these characters and this world couldn’t take advantage of in the 1980s. A modern version with up-to-date animation could give John Blackstar a proper backstory, and actually make some sense of the biggest hero/villain themes the ’80s version lightly touched on. It could take advantage of the retro-future magic setting and the sprawling original world of Sagar in ways Filmation never dreamed of.  And most importantly, a proper modern update could finally dig into the event that split the Powerstar and turned its two halves into thematic weapons. There are so many story possibilities for that particular cool sword, just waiting to be discovered by a new generation.

Russell Adler didn’t eliminate Vikhor “Stitch” Kuzmin after all, instead confining the villain to an Icelandic black site prison as insurance for a rainy day. That day has come as Adler and crew free their former foe, their only chance to finally crack the Pantheon codenames. Witness the return of Stitch in the massive Season 04 update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone, bringing new maps, modes, weapons, and more. Season 04 launches May 29 on PS5 and PS4. Play Video Multiplayer overview New Core 6v6 Maps Shutdown (Launch): Shut off the power to the prison with an attack on a hydroelectric dam in Iceland. Fight over the rugged terrain, dive into the lake, and battle around the damaged turbine. Fugitive (Launch): With the power cut, it’s time to break Stitch out of the black site prison. Infiltrate the frozen compound, climbing, ziplining, and battling over the grounds and in the cell block where alarms warn of the jailbreak. New 2v2/6v6 Strike Maps Blitz (Launch): Traffic comes to a halt as Pantheon agents race towards the prison but get ambushed by the Rogue team. Duck under the bridge for quick cover or trek the cliffside seeking enemy targets. Eclipse (Mid-Season): Stitch arrives in Avalon, slipping into an underground nightclub to discuss business. Battle in the neon lights down the halls and over the dance stage. Remaster, Core 6v6 Map Fringe (Mid-Season): Revisit Fringe, originally featured in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and coming to Black Ops 6 reimagined as the grand opening of the Rolling Hills distillery. New Multiplayer Modes Team Elimination (Launch): This twist on Kill Confirmed gives both teams a limited number of lives each round. Eliminated players drop a dog tag on death that can be picked up by the enemy to confirm the kill and drain the opposing team’s remaining lives, or by a teammate to prevent the action. One in the Chamber (Launch Window): One pistol, one bullet, a knife, and three lives. Eliminate enemies to earn more bullets in this Black Ops classic. Party Ops (In-Season): Get the party started in a new Limited-Time Mode arriving later in the season dropping players into a randomized set of themed minigames. Now launching: The Grim Reaper Scorestreak: Grim Reaper (Event Reward): The quad-tube loaded Launcher returns from the original Black Ops, inflicting heavy explosive damage on enemy Operators and Scorestreaks alike.   Zombies overview Returning Mode: Grief (Launch) The fan-favorite competitive Zombies mode returns! This 4v4 indirect PvP mode pits S.A.M. against Director Richtofen as teams pledge their support for one or the other, receiving handler comms guiding them throughout the match. Secure Capture Zones to thwart the enemy with modifiers including reduced damage, drained ammo, slowed movements, and more.  Put your Zombies talents to the test in this mode while competing against real players attempting to survive longer than you and your squad.  New Ammo Mod, GobbleGums, Grim Reaper  Ammo Mod: Shatter Blast: Modify your ammo to explode on contact, dealing armor-piercing damage in a blast radius. Research Major and Minor Augments to specialize Shatter Blast’s abilities in all-new ways. Three New GobbleGums: Chew on Explosive Flourish to trigger an area-of-effect explosion around your Operator when reloading. Pop Flavor Hex to activate a random Ultra GobbleGum, and force eliminated zombies to belch sparkly rainbow bubbles via Rainburps. Grim Reaper: Build the new Support weapon at the Crafting Table and blast those zombies to bits! New Challenges and LTMs Expect an influx of Dark Ops Challenges awarding Calling Cards and bounteous amounts of XP for those able to complete the secret challenges. Play new Limited-Time Modes, including the Starting Room LTM and Abomination Challenge LTM later in the season. Call of Duty: Warzone Overview New Point of Interest: The Overlook Battle up and down The Overlook, a new skyscraper under construction in Downtown. Burger Town and the SKN Comm tower have been demolished to make way for the building. Two cranes flank the dominant POI and checkpoints line the entrances. Work your way from ground level including the relocated Burger Town up to the Penthouse and Roof, or latch onto an ascender and get some serious height. New Limited-Time Modes Clash (Launch): Two teams of 52 drop into a specific POI within Verdansk. With no Circle Collapse and instant access to your Loadouts, be the first team to earn 500 points by eliminating enemies, completing contracts, and participating in Public Events. Earn upgrades like the new Door Barricade Field Upgrade and the Hand Cannon, spend cash to activate SAM Turrets, and earn powerups that alter the course of the match. Havoc Royale (Mid-Season): Compete in a Resurgence mode where modifiers bend the rules in game-changing ways. Survive the havoc, be the last team standing, and claim victory! Resurgence Casual (Mid-Season): Drop into a Resurgence match mixing human players and bots. A great mode for warming up, teaching new players about the game, or just chilling out. Mid-Season Loadout Items  Care Package: Deploy this rare throwable to summon an aerial drop with the chance to obtain rare equipment, the Specialist Perk, and more. Perk: Loot Master: Available only in Resurgence and Plunder, gear up faster by increasing the amount of loot you find while opening caches, including an increased drop rate for equipped weapon ammo, Tacticals and Lethals, cash, Field Upgrades, Killstreaks, and other high-tier gear. General Overview New Weapons: In the Battle Pass, unlock two rapid fire weapons in the LC10 SMG and the FFAR 1 Assault Rifle. Earn more across multiple seasonal events including the lever-action Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle, Olympia Special weapon, and the Pickaxe Melee weapon. New Attachments: Lock in with the G-Grip Tactical Foregrip available on most SMGs and Assault Rifles. Get three weapon conversions, including a burst conversion for the Stryder. 22 Pistol and full-auto conversions for the SVD Sniper Rifle and TR2 Marksman Rifle. Events & Ranked Play Earn additional rewards across several in-season events, including coveted items like the Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle, Stryder .22 3-Round Burst Mod, and the Grim Reaper Scorestreak. Plus, compete in a new season of Ranked Play for Multiplayer and Call of Duty: Warzone, including Ranked Play: Battle Royale and, in Mid-Season, Ranked Play: Resurgence. Play using a competitive ruleset and earn new seasonal rewards based on the highest Rank obtained in the season. Season 04 Battle Pass & Store Content Purchase the Battle Pass to immediately unlock rewards including a seasonal 10% Battle Pass XP Boost, the new “Supermax” Stitch Operator Skin, and more, providing access to over 110 pieces of unlockable content. Plus, earn up to 1,100 COD Points as you progress through the Battle Pass Pages. Get even more with BlackCell. Look for exciting new Store Bundles including the cel-shaded Tracer Pack: Ink and Smoke plus the Tracer Pack: System Breach, Tracer Pack: Olympus Bolt, and much more. Season 04 launches May 29 Black Ops 6 is available now on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Experience the spy action thriller Campaign, the in-depth tactical chaos of Multiplayer, and soak in the gory glory of round-based Zombies.

A duck stands in a fedora and a trench coat, delivering a noir-style monologue about how his recent divorce has fueled his bread addiction. If this image doesn't tickle you, then you'd better give Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping a miss. If it does, oh boy, do we have the recommendation for you. Much like developer Happy Broccoli's predecessor, The Secret Salami, Ghost of Glamping sees you thrown into the petty crime-ridden world of Eugene "The Duck Detective" McQuacklin, a grizzled PI who serves as both the game's protagonist and narrator. Reluctantly accompanying his reptilian roommate on a holiday to a nearby haunted glamping site (yes, really), McQuacklin is once again left to face Lady Crime, as a seemingly minor mystery surrounding some stolen camping chairs soon spirals into something much bigger. This time around, there's a blackmailed influencer, stolen state secrets, a kidnapping, and a run-in with the supernatural to contend with, all of which can only be solved by interviewing suspects, hunting for clues, and then plugging the right bits of information into the 'Deducktions' page of McQuacklin's trusty journal. It's a simple gameplay loop, and while some of the 'fill in the blank' investigations turn to a bit of trial and error as you fill the prompt sentence with a list of accumulated nouns to finally find the right answer, Ghost of Glamping manages to walk the fine line between predictability and surprise. We saw some plot twists coming from a mile off, but we appreciated how other threads were gradually pulled over the ~two-hour runtime. There's a hint system standing by, in case the evidence has really stumped you, and the game can be flipped between 'Story' and 'Sleuth' modes at any time (the former flags your incorrect Deducktions to nudge you in the right direction), but anyone familiar with the likes of Ace Attorney or Professor Layton shouldn't have too much trouble cracking the case. And that's okay! Ghost of Glamping isn't the kind of mystery that'll get under your skin and refuse to let you go until you unmask its villain. In fact, its plot is almost secondary to its presentation. McQuacklin's melodramatic monologues (all fully voice-acted, we should add), the adorable Paper Mario-style cutout sprites, the toe-tapping jazz soundtrack, and the laugh-out-loud loading screens that boast such 'facts' as "Most ducks live in houses because they are filthy rich" all add up to a bitesized mystery that oozes charm. Come on, there's even a dedicated quack button! You'll easily polish it off in an evening, and you'll feel all the better for it. Happy Broccoli has once again pulled together a simple yet satisfying mystery that brings plenty of smiles and a handful of surprises. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got to don our fedoras and go deliver a brooding speech in the rain.