Until Dawn (4K Blu-ray + Blu-ray + Digital) $50 | Releases July 8 Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Until Dawn on Prime Video Buy for $25 / Rent for $20 | Available Now See at Amazon While movie adaptations of video games can be very hit or miss, Until Dawn was one of the more memorable projects thanks to the film putting its own spin on the game's choose-your-own-design mechanics. In case you missed it on the big screen, Until Dawn is now available to watch from the comfort of your own couch. You can rent or buy the digital release from Prime Video for $20-$25. If you prefer physical media and don't mind waiting, Until Dawn's 4K Blu-ray combo pack is up for preorder at Amazon and Walmart ahead of its July 8 release date.Until Dawn is the third video game film adaptation from PlayStation Productions following Uncharted and Gran Turismo. The production company, which was founded in 2019, is also credited with the TV adaptations of Twisted Metal and the critically acclaimed HBO series The Last of Us. Until Dawn (4K Blu-ray + Blu-ray + Digital) $50 | Releases July 8 Until Dawn's 4K Blu-ray edition also comes a 1080p Blu-ray disc and digital copy of the film. Along with native 4K resolution, Until Dawn will support Dolby Atmos audio on supported devices.Amazon and Walmart have the 4K Blu-ray combo pack priced at $50 at the moment. That said, we expect the price to drop prior to launch. Both retailers offer preorder price guarantees, so you'll be eligible for any future discounts from the moment you place your order until your Blu-ray ships.Until Dawn is also getting a DVD release, in case you want to experience the horror film in spine-tingling 480p resolution. Amazon has the DVD version priced at $28.60, while Walmart listed it for $35.Here's the full list of Until Dawn special features:Adapting a Nightmare - Director David F. Sandberg and writer Gary Dauberman discuss the inspirations of the film and how they built off of the game world from the hit PlayStation game.Death-Defying Cast - Meet the castPractical Terrors - A look at the practical effects and props used to garner realistic reactions from the actors and actresses.pAudio Commentary with director David F. Sandberg and producer Lotta LostenDeleted and extended scenes Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Until Dawn on Prime Video Buy for $25 / Rent for $20 | Available Now If you don't want to wait, you can rent Until Dawn for $20 or buy a digital copy for $25. If you buy the film, you can watch it whenever you want, but rentals on Prime Video have a couple of rules to keep in mind. You'll have 30 days to start watching the movie after making your purchase. Once the movie begins, it will be returned to Amazon in 48 hours. Your rental/purchase grants access to the 4K and standard definition versions of Until Dawn. See at Amazon In case you missed it, Until Dawn tells an original story and is set within the same universe as the game. Connecting the video game and the film is Stormare's character, Dr. Hill, who appeared in both mediums. Another nod to the game is that the movie has the same tone and vibe, as the main characters find themselves caught in a time-loop where they frequently die due to a variety of grisly means. The only way to break this vicious cycle is to survive…until dawn. The film has received mixed reviews, but if you're in the mood for a cheesy horror-comedy with slick direction, Until Dawn is an enjoyable watch.Continue Reading at GameSpot

May 22, 20255 min readHypervelocity Stars Hint at a Supermassive Black Hole Right Next DoorSome stars streaking through the Milky Way at millions of kilometers per hour probably trace back to a supermassive black hole in a neighboring galaxyBy Phil Plait edited by Lee BillingsAn artist’s concept of a hypervelocity star streaking through the Milky Way, surrounded by slower-moving stars. NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)An astonishing fact only known for the past few decades is that every big galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its heart. This was suspected in the 1980s, and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, which has peered deep into the cores of galaxies all across the sky, confirmed it. The “normal” kinds of black holes made when stars explode range from five to about 100 times the mass of the sun, more or less. But these central galactic monsters are millions of times more massive, and some have grown to the Brobdingnagian heft of billions of solar masses.A lot of mysteries still remain, of course, such as how they formed early in the history of the universe, how they grew so humongous so fast and what role they played in their host galaxy’s formation. But one odd question still nagging at astronomers is: What’s the galaxy size cutoff where this trend stops? In other words, is there some lower limit to how massive a galaxy can be and still harbor one of these beasts?The inklings of an answer are emerging from a surprising place: studies of rare stars moving through our own galaxy at truly ludicrous speeds.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Orbiting our Milky Way galaxy is a menagerie of smaller “dwarf” galaxies, some so tiny and faint you need huge telescopes to see them at all. But two are so large and close that they’re visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the bigger and closer of the two, and it’s not clear if it harbors a supermassive black hole (SMBH). If such an SMBH exists there, it must be quiescent, meaning it’s not actively feeding on matter. As material falls toward such a black hole, it forms a swirling disk of superheated plasma that can glow so brightly it outshines all the stars in the galaxy combined. No such fierce luminescence is seen in the LMC, so we don’t know if an SMBH is there and not actively feeding or if the LMC is simply SMBH-free.But a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal offers strong evidence that an SMBH does lie at the center of the LMC—based on measurements of stellar motions in our own Milky Way!The study looked at hypervelocity stars, ones that are screaming through space at speeds far higher than stars around them. Some of these stars are moving so rapidly that they have reached galactic escape velocity; the Milky Way’s gravity can’t hold them. In the coming eons, they’ll flee the galaxy entirely. And we have good reason to believe these runaway stars were launched by SMBHs—but how?Such a situation starts with a binary system, two stars orbiting each other. These systems contain a substantial amount of orbital energy, the sum of the kinetic energy of the two stars—their energy of motion—and their gravitational potential energy, the amount of energy released if they were to move closer together.If the binary star approaches a third object, some of that energy can be swapped around. One star can become bound to the third object, for example, while the other star can get a kick in its kinetic energy, flinging it away. The amount of the kick depends in part on the gravity of the third object. A massive black hole, of course, has an incredibly strong gravitational field that can fling the star away at high speed.And I do mean high speed; such a star can be flung away from the black hole at a velocity greater than 1,000 kilometers per second. S5-HVS1, for example, was the first confirmed such hypervelocity star, and it’s moving at more than 1,700 kilometers per second. Feel free to take a moment to absorb that fact: an entire star has been ejected away from a black hole at more than six million kilometers per hour. The energies involved are terrifying.We have seen a few of these stars in our galaxy, and careful measurements suggest they’re moving away from the center of the Milky Way, which is pretty convincing evidence that Sagittarius A*, our own Milky Way’s SMBH, is to blame.But not all of the high-velocity stars that have been detected appear to come from our galactic center. Fortunately, Gaia, the sadly now decommissioned European Space Agency astronomical observatory, was designed to obtain extremely accurate measurements of the positions, distances, colors and other characteristics of well more than a billion stars—including their velocity.There are 21 known hypervelocity stars at the outskirts of the Milky Way. Using the phenomenally high-precision Gaia measurements, the astronomers behind the new research examined the stars’ 3D velocities through space. They found that five of them have ambiguous origins, while two definitely come from the Milky Way center. Of the 14 still left, three clearly come from the direction of the LMC.The trajectories of these stars effectively point back to their origin, and based on our current knowledge, that origin must be a supermassive black hole. Even better, although the remaining 11 stars have trajectories that are consistent with both Milky Way and LMC origins, the researchers found that five are more likely to have come from our home galaxy and the other six are more likely to have come from the LMC.So there could be nine known hypervelocity stars plunging through our galaxy that were ejected by a supermassive black hole in another galaxy.Using some sophisticated math, the team found that the most likely mass of the black hole is 600,000 or so times the mass of the sun. This isn’t huge for an SMBH—it’s very much on the low end of the scale, in fact—but then, the LMC is a small galaxy, only 1 percent or so the mass of the Milky Way. We know that the mass of a black hole tends to scale with its host galaxy’s mass (because they form together and affect each other’s growth), so this lower mass is consistent with that.If this is true, then our satellite galaxy is shooting stars at us! And there may be more of them yet to be found, hurtling through space unseen on the other side of our galaxy, or so far out that they’re difficult to spot and even harder to study. And all this helps us get a clearer—but still quite hazy!—sense of just how far down the galactic scale we can expect to find big black holes.Black holes are funny. Most people would worry about falling into one, as well as a host of other terrors, but now you can add “having to dodge intergalactic stellar bullets” to that list.

‘Deck of Haunts’ Plays Cards to Create Terrors in a Creepy Manor Posted on May 16, 2025May 13, 2025 by Joel Couture Deck of Haunts sees you expanding the horrifying influence of a haunted house, playing cards to frighten your victims. Reminding me more than a little bit of Ghost Master (a game where you would drop ghosts with specific placements rules around various locales to terrify the people inside), this game gives you the ability to set up a haunted house as you see fit. Built around the mansion’s sickening heart, you will steadily create an array of murderous and confounding rooms meant to keep nighttime explorers from sneaking a peak at your pulsating core. Since they’re all so terribly curious, though, you can attack their sanity or physical health with an array of effects on each turn to stop them from getting there. That said, you may have a handful of great things that will scare them off – say by creating fires or frightening images – but you only have enough energies to play a handful of cards each turn. Given the amount of people that are snooping about, you will have to carefully plan out your scary tactics in order to maximize how much fear, pain, and madness you can sow among the group. The various explorers also have specific rules in play as well – a priest isn’t as easy to frighten as a bored teenager. Sometimes you need to separate people from their allies to have the greatest effect. So, do you play cards that will break the group apart or do you try to whittle them down with frightening events? While many roguelike card games require this tactical play, something about taking on the role of a haunted house and using your abilities to frighten people to death just made it far more fun for the horror fan in me. Keeping your heart from being found too many times can be a steep challenge, but something about managing all of the creative ways the developers have put into the game to unnerve your opponents kept a smile on my face even if I was losing. Deck of Haunts is available now on Steam. About The Author

Helldivers 2's Illuminate faction unleashes deadly new enemy terrors as latest update lands Plus new Warbond coming soon. Image credit: Eurogamer/Arrowhead Game Studios News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on May 13, 2025 It's all go on the Illuminate front in Helldivers 2, with the co-op sci-fi shooter's powerful third faction having now set a course for Super Earth - and it's bringing "new terrors" along too. All this arrives as part of Helldivers 2's latest update which - in lore terms at least - sees the squid-like Iluminate emerging from the Meridian singularity in order to bring the never-ending fight for Democracy to Super Earth itself. In more specific terms, that means a wave of brand-new Illuminate enemies. There's the Stingray - jetfighters that unleash devastating strafing runs from above - and the Crescent Overseer, which "has the ability to lay barrages on Helldivers in cover". Helldivers 2 - Galactic Emergency trailer.Watch on YouTube Worse still are the Fleshmob; failed Illuminate experiments assembled from Voteless parts and let loose on the battlefield. Developer Arrowhead is also teasing "even larger ships", but is leaving players to discover these on their own. Elsewhere, Arrowhead has introduced a new load-out customisation feature it says will work with "the bulk of" Helldivers 2's weapon offerings. "Most primary weapons now have levels that are achievable by completing missions," it explains on the PlayStation Blog, "which then in turn unlock new attachments obtainable through Requisition." Players can also unlock patterns and apply them to their weapons, and a variety of patterns tied to previous Warbonds - specifically Viper Commandos, Freedom's Flame, Chemical Agents, and Truth Enforcers Warbonds - will be made available on 15th May. That's the same day the new Masters of Ceremony Warbond arrives. And finally for Helldivers 2's latest update, item rotation has been removed from the Superstore, meaning players can purchase any item they want anytime they want, no waiting required. It launches today on PS5 and PC.

Tamrielnator Uh oh Jauffre, this Oblivion Remastered mod turns the main story into a terrifying race against a time-travelling level 70 terminator laser-focused on slaughtering Martin Septim "It will hunt you to the ends of the world for a chance to end the Septims' reign forever." Image credit: VG247Bethesda/NaiadGirl News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on May 13, 2025 What's the one extra bit of spice OG Oblivion's main story needed to take it to the next level? An invincible terminator relentlessly hunting you and Sean Bean across Cyrodiil in an effort to massacre you both before you can save the world, you say? Wait, you didn't say that? Well, too bad, an Oblivion Remastered modder has already made it happen, and it sounds so intense I'm a bit scared to try it out for myself. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. When I wrote about NaiadGirl enhancing Oblivion Remastered's goblin wars the other day, I didn't think I'd end up writing about another of their mods so soon - but then I stumbled across their latest work. It's called 'Martin Septim and the Terminator Gambit', and the description certainly delivers on the hype that name stirs up. I'll let the modder set the scene. "On the cusp of defeat, Mehrunes Dagon has reached his iron claws backwards in time during the final hours of the Oblivion Crisis," they explain, "He has sent back an invincible enemy to end Martin Septim's life: a Terminator. "There is nowhere to truly hide from this machine-man. It will hunt you to the ends of the world for a chance to end the Septims' reign forever. You are the final bulwark against the Terrors of Oblivion." Phwoar. Hell of premise. This relentless level 70 pursuer, bedecked in Dwarven armour, will start hunting you down the moment you - poor Martin's saviour - exit the Imperial City's sewers, beginning its hunt from Kvatch's Oblivion Gate. It's invincible until you successfully complete the main quest, meaning that until that point, it'll be right behind you ever step of the way, and all you can do is run away. If you can manage to get all the way to the end and CLOSE SHUT THE JAWS OF OBLIVION, only then will the terminator become mortal, giving you a chance to finally deal with it if you've got the gear, skills, or sheer confidence required to take on a foe that - I repeat - is level 70. If you can pull off that miracle, NaiadGirl's teased that you'll be "rewarded greatly". Now, it probably won't surprise you to note that its creator says this mod's more aimed at challenge runs than it is general playthroughs, and there are a couple of extra things to bear in mind with it. The terminator can't follow you into Oblivion Gates themselves, so you'll be safest in what's canonically about the most dangerous place an Oblivion playthrough takes you. If you want a less risky ride, there's the optional plugin for letting Martin keep his essential status, so it's only your character's life on the line, though the modder insists: "no matter what you do, people will die". Their advice for surviving? Well, they do point out that "this is still Oblivion; You can cheese anything in this game." Words to live by, be sure to recite them if you decide to grab its requirements - Oblivion Remastered's UE4SS and UE4SS TesSyncMapInjector - to give it a try. Also, make sure to check out the rest of our ongoing Oblivion Remastered mod coverage, which includes an interview with the modder who managed to make the first ever tweak to its world just one day after release.

Helldivers, get to your Super Destroyers! In a surprise turn of events that even our top researchers couldn’t predict, the Illuminate have finally revealed their intentions, emerging from the Meridian singularity, and setting a course for Super Earth. It’s now more important than ever that we band together and stop this salvo from destroying our liberty. Play Video New enemies The Illuminate threat has grown, unleashing new terrors on our citizens across the galaxy. Reports indicate the Illuminate have deployed larger, more powerful enemies within their fleet, among them are the Stingray: jetfighters that provide Illuminate support from the sky, targeting Helldivers and lining up devastating strafing runs. Another new foe is the Crescent Overseer, which has the ability to lay barrages on Helldivers in cover. But perhaps most terrifying are the reports of a failed Illuminate experiment called the Fleshmob: a Frankenstein’s monster of Voteless parts turned into a brute battlefield force that the Helldivers must work hard to destroy. There have been sightings of other, even larger ships, though details remain unclear on their abilities. But we can’t underestimate the squids, divers, and that’s why we’re assembling our best and brightest to push them back into oblivion where they belong. We have to gather all our resources to face this incursion and, fortunately, Super Earth’s R&D department has unlocked some powerful tools for our Helldivers, in the hopes that they will help crush the onslaught of Illuminate invaders. Customize your loadout Helldivers are being given access to a robust new weapon customization feature for the bulk of our primary weapon offerings. Most primary weapons now have levels that are achievable by completing missions, which then in turn unlock new attachments obtainable through Requisition. In addition to attachments, players can also unlock patterns for their weapons. Whether it’s tweaking sights for precision, changing color patterns, adjusting magazines for ammo capacity, muzzles to optimize weapon performance characteristics or adjusting under-barrel attachments for the handling you want, you’re in command of how your weaponry performs on the battlefield. This level of individual attunement is sure to make your favorite primary best in its class. Old Warbonds, new patterns We have unlocked and deployed a stash of patterns for the FRV themed on our Viper Commandos, Freedom’s Flame, Chemical Agents, and Truth Enforcers Warbonds. These will help your squad stand out to aid in battlefield coordination and collaboration. This backlog of patterns will unlock for Helldivers on May 15, with the launch of the Masters of Ceremony Warbond! Expanded Surplus The Superstore is also getting an emergency expansion to boost your arsenals for the fight. No more waiting for items to come back into rotation–now the items you want are always available, ready to stock your ship and armor your Helldivers with items you might have missed the first time around. This is the moment of truth, Helldivers. Everyone to the front lines and fight for our right to spread Managed Democracy! *Requires base game, paid purchase of Super Credits, and game progression to unlock.