Deep Silver has just released its new adrenaline-rush sci-fi FPS, METAL EDEN. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC. For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as … Continue reading METAL EDEN Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis→
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has its long-awaited Patch 10 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. This is the big anniversary update that makes a number of significant changes and additions to Saber Interactive’s explosive third-person action game.
It’s worth noting that while Patch 10 is live now, Season Pass 2 and the Black Templars and Imperial Fists cosmetics do not go live until later today, September 4.
Patch 10.0 adds new game modes and maps, along with the Chaos Armour Pack, Champion Customisation, new weapons, and more.
The Chaos Armour Pack is available for free. You can finally change the armour set of your Heretic Astartes in PvP, but you have to unlock the set first. Each class requires you to score a certain amount of kills per match to unlock the corresponding skin.
The new PvP mode is Helbrute Onslaught, which is playable on all maps. Two teams of Chaos Marines fight to control strategic areas, but also to take control of the Helbrute. The first team to take control of an objective gets to control the Helbrute, until the opposite team takes it down. One player gets to control the Helbrute at a time, and this player is picked randomly among players who participated in securing the control point. For the team that failed to secure the first control point to have the Helbrute on their side, they need to slay their opponents’ Helbrute and secure a new designated control point.
Controlling the Helbrute grants the team a strong advantage, but killing it rewards significant amounts of points to your team. The Helbrute uses a Helbrute Thunder Hammer in melee and a Plasma Cannon in range, and it can unleash a battle cry with its special skill to regenerate its HP.
Stratagems is a new PvE game mode. Unlike classic Operations, there are only two difficulty modes: Normal and Hard. What makes this new game mode different are the various Battlefield Conditions, which change every day and week and make each operation different.
Battlefield Conditions can either help or hinder your progress. Upon successful completion, you receive a new currency called Accolades, which can be exchanged for valuable rewards.
Throughout the year, the Season Pass II will grant players nine new DLCs, with new Champion skins, armour pieces, and heraldry markings. While existing Chapters like the Blood Angels and Salamanders are to receive new cosmetics, fan-favorite Chapters like the Raptors, Iron Hands, and Carcharodons will get their due time in the spotlight.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Update 10.0 Patch Notes:
GAMEPLAY & BALANCING TWEAKS
FIREARMS
Bolt Pistol: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions.
Master-Crafted Bolt Pistol Alpha
Spread reduction increased from 15% to 30%.
Recoil reduction increased from 20% to 40%.
Salvation of Bakka Artificer Bolt Pistol
Spread reduction increased from 30% to 45%.
Recoil reduction increased from 40% to 60%.
Gathalamor Crusade Relic Bolt Pistol
Spread reduction increased from 55% to 70%.
Recoil reduction increased from 60% to 80%.
Auto Bolt Rifle:
The Auto Bolt rifle suffers from that "default" gun syndrome that you swap to something more interesting immediately. The problem is that other guns, like Bolt Rifle, Bolt Carbine, Stalker Bolter and even Heavy Bolt Rifle are always going to be more specialized and more effective at what they do no matter what. Since the gun has a very limited number of versions, its perk tree is also very, very limited and it's difficult to find a gameplay role with it. The correct move would probably be to merge it with Bolt Rifle variants, but the problem is that it would mess up with saves too much and that drastic move is too risky.
With this update we are going to try to make it a mix of all bolters, to make that "default" gun at least more effective, but I fear that this gun will always be outshadowed by more specialized bolters.
Base damage increased by 25%.
Added damage falloff curve from distance. After 20 meters, weapon damage falls by 25%.
Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions.
Heavy Bolt Rifle: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions except Drogos Reclamation and Ophelian Liberation.
Drogos Reclamation Artificer Heavy Bolt Rifle Beta: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.35.
Ophelian Liberation Relic Heavy Bolt Rifle Beta: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.35.
MELEE
Chainsword: Speed increased for all block versions.
Power Sword: Speed increased for all block versions.
Thunder Hammer:
The biggest issue of the Thunder Hammer right now is its contested health recovery, not its overall effectiveness. This will be addressed during contested health recovery rework. But at the moment, we wanted to improve it so it won’t feel like a worse version of other melee weapons.
Speed increased slightly for all balanced and block versions.
AoE radius for heavy and charged melee strikes increased by 50%.
GAMEPLAY QOL
Added a new charged Shield Bash attack for Bulwark class.
With this update we are expanding Bulwark's shield moveset to make shield based perk builds more interesting. We are going to continue doing this for other classes. While we think that overall Classes balance is good, the build variety within class could be improved and this cannot be done by simply tweaking numbers.
BALANCING - FIREARMS
Las Fusil: Charging speed decreased from 1.1 sec to 1 sec.
Stalker Bolt Rifle: Rate Of Fire increased from 150 shots per minute to 170 shots per minute.
Occulus Bolt Carbine: Full damage range increased from 20 meters to 30 meters.
Marksman Bolt Carbine: Headshot damage multiplier increased from 1.6 to 1.8.
Plasma Incinerator: Common Shot damage decreased by 15%.
Plasma damage: Fixed a bug where a player in a roll animation could not receive damage from plasma weapons.
BALANCING - MELEE
Thunder Hammer: Fixed issue that caused the Thunder Hammer to have a longer reach.
BALANCING - ABILITIES
Sniper’s Camo Cloak Ability: Ability cooldown increased from 25 seconds to 35 seconds.
Assault’s Jump Pack Ability
Ground Pound Strike preparation time reduced by 30% for Chainsword and Power Fist. Also the new Power Axe has reduced preparation time.
Minimum height for starting preparation of Ground Pound Strike increased from 6 metres to 9 meters.
Bulwark: Bulwarks can now be knocked out of a shield stance if they take a lot of damage from enemies within 5 seconds.
PROGRESSION
Extended Weapon arsenal in PvP: Added Power Axe to Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark
XP Recalculated: The amount of experience required to earn rewards has been reduced, making progression faster and more rewarding.
New Levels Added: We've expanded the progression system. The new max level is 48.
OTHER PVP CHANGES
Added new announcer events
Large amount of small fixes in level geometry collision.
CUSTOMISATION
Lots of minor customisation fixes.
OPERATIONS
Reliquary
Enemies spawn in the tombs should now be slightly less aggressive.
The ammo crate on the Heldrake's bridge should now always spawn.
All: Lots of minor fixes with level geometry.
SIEGE MODE
Lots of minor fixes with level geometry.
Lots of minor fixes with enemies getting stuck in some places.
Performance improvements.
AI
Carnifex: Fixed an issue causing the Carnifex to be too aggressive and too accurate with its ranged attacks.
All: Lots of minor fixes with animations.
GENERAL FIXES
Fixed a bug preventing Adrenaline Surge from Block-type weapons to not stagger enemies.
Fixed a bug causing the Auspex Scan effect to not apply to enemies after a perfect parry with the class perk "Battle Focus" equipped in some rare cases.
Fixed a bug with Bulwark's "Purity of purpose" perk not dealing damage to Barbed Strangler projectiles.
Fixed a bug causing Assault’s Jump Pack ability to not land properly in some rare cases..
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
LEGO has officially unveiled the heavily rumored LEGO Star Wars Death Star set. It’s an enormous build, comprised of 9,023 pieces, and it comes with a whopping 38 minifigures. The price might be jaw-dropping as well, as it comes in at $999.99, making it the most expensive set you can buy. It will be available October 1 for LEGO Insiders (sign up free here) and October 4 for everyone else.
The official name for the set is LEGO Star Wars Death Star - Ultimate Collector Series (75419). It’s not the full sphere-shaped build you may be expecting, either, but roughly one half of the Death Star. The flat portion is open, revealing a cross-section of the ultimate space weapon.
In the many rooms that comprise the build, you’ll find tons of references to the original Star Wars film trilogy. There’s the garbage compactor room where our heroes get stuck in A New Hope. There’s the room where Vader strikes down Obi Wan, and the communications hub where Han Solo, in Stormtrooper-armor, has a too-casual conversation with a superior officer.
Then there’s the conference room with the table where Vader and his commanders discuss the blowing up of planets. And the Emperor’s throne room, where Luke and Darth Vader have their final battle in Return of the Jedi. In other words, it’s a packed Death Star.
Among the 32 minifigures included in the set are Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, along with Stormtrooper-armored alternates. There’s Princess Leia, R2-D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca, and Obi Wan. There’s the Emperor and Darth Vader, along with various commanders, two Red Guard, six Stormtroopers, and more. You can see the full lineup in below.
This is a non-spoiler review for all seven episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - Season 3. The series premieres Sunday, Sept. 7 on AMC.
Everyone's terse, scraggly-haired zompocalypse outdoorsman Daryl Dixon is back for a new round of European adventures, and -- yup! -- dystopian BFF Carol Peletier is still at his side. Season 3 of this Walking Dead spinoff continues to prove that more interesting things are being done in these new spinoffs -- particularly on this Daryl show -- than were explored in the final few seasons of the original series. There are some typical bumps and bruises, yes -- in the form of annoying characters and outrageous coincidences -- and Season 3 itself doesn't "up the ante" in any significant way, but it's still a solid chapter in Daryl and Carol's odyssey, with some of the best action the Walking Dead saga's ever produced.
Two things at the top here: Firstly, the season takes place in Spain (and was shot in Spain, giving everything a unique feel for the franchise). I know the italicized words above pointed at a spoiler-free review, but this was kind of a given. It's in all the promotional materials. The last we saw of Daryl and Carol, they were headed to England through the Chunnel but... there're in Spain, y'all. The season opener -- which has 28 Days Later vibes -- deals with this, while also gifting us with a fun guest spot for Stephen Merchant. It's why there are seven episodes this year instead of the usual six.
Secondly, the show (still) works well because Daryl is kind of a blank character. Let's put this another way: We know catastrophically little about Daryl given that he's been a main character on a whopping 14 seasons of television. He had an abusive childhood and can hunt and the zombie years have turned him into a near-unstoppable warrior, but that's really it. He was underserved on The Walking Dead, but on his own show he's the perfect character to have traveling to new places, meeting new people, and getting into new adventures. He comes with baggage that makes him the right amount of grumpy, and cautious, but he's a hero at heart. Having him experience other cultures, even in a ruined world setting, is why his series is superior to the back half of the old show.
The Spanish town at the center of this season is nestled inside a gorgeous, fortified medieval city. It's got it all, but of course there's always a catch.
This year, Daryl is reeling from the loss of Isabelle, even if they barely had any time at all as an established "thing." While the trippy Chunnel experience seemed to heal Carol, giving her final closure with Sofia, it sort of hardened Daryl, to the point where he and Carol now disagree about helping folks. Carol is more charitable and Daryl is even more closed off, singularly driven to getting back home. It's a simple, effective dynamic for Season 3 that nicely steers away from the dangerous waters of "are they actually gonna make 'Caryl' happen?" from Season 2.
And to Daryl's point, maybe these two should butt out of certain affairs because, as we know, things are tough all over. Even the most thriving communities tend to have dark secrets, so Season 3 is very much about "okay, what's wrong about THIS place?" Like how basically, for better or worse, The Walking Dead franchise is one long Woodbury, with each new locale having it's own Governor-style obstacle to overcome. The Spanish town at the center of this season is Solaz Del Mar, a survivor faction nestled inside a gorgeous, fortified medieval city. It's got it all, but of course there's always a catch.
Daryl and Carol find a temporary home with these fine folks after inadvertently saving the right people... and killing the wrong people. Which is to say that, by hook or by crook, our heroes will manifest a necessary violent confrontation between citizens and governing bodies that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't stumbled into town. Presiding over Solaz Del Mar is Óscar Jaenada's suave Federico, a ruler who definitely doesn't take to outsiders, but also a man who's under the thumb of an even bigger despot, seated in the historic El Alcazar in Seville.
So there are many fish for Daryl and Carol to fry, and at the heart of it all? The gateway call to action? Young lovers Roberto (Hugo Arbués) and Justina (Candela Saitta) -- a couple that gives metaphoric hope to Carol, who now just might be open to finding actual love herself. Also, a couple that gives Daryl heartburn, as he's temporarily taken himself out of the crusader business. And even though, you know Daryl and Carol are ultimately going to help these desperate people defeat their oppressors, it's easy to side with Daryl at the outset because Roberto can be quite grating. While Daryl exists to rarely speak his mind, Roberto is the antithesis, just a swirling combo of impetuous TV tropes that lead to him making rash decisions, getting captured (more than once), and generally causing more trouble than the visiting buttinski Americans here.
Does Roberto have reason to be reckless? Sure. His town isn't ideal and the cruel patriarchy has other designs for Justina other than letting her be with Roberto, but on a fairly decent season of a franchise that's been around for 15 years, he comes off as a lazy catalyst. Fortunately, in the plus column for Season 3 is a massively impressive city siege that brings together the best elements of Walking Dead stunt work. Plus, Season 3 even splits up Daryl and Carol for a time, pairing them with others -- like Alexandra Masangkay's Paz and Eduardo Noriega's Antonio, respectively -- giving this Daryl Dixon series some breathing room.
Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are still a great pair, as you'd expect. Their bond runs so deep now that they can just exist in the same space and you feel the characters' history together. In a different decade of TV these two could just have new adventures each week, going all over the globe, A-Team/Kung Fu/Incredible Hulk style. The Walking Dead began as something intensely serialized and then sort of melted into a show reminiscent of a bygone era. Bottom line: If you're still locked into Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon remains the best of these last gasps.
IGN has shared a new gameplay video for Nioh 3, showcasing a boss battle featuring the Tiger of Kai, Takeda Shingen. So, if you are a Nioh fan, you should definitely check it out. Nioh 3 takes place in a large open world where players can explore freely. Just like in the older Nioh games, … Continue reading Nioh 3 gameplay video shows off the Takeda Shingen Boss Fight→
This article contains spoilers for Alien: Earth through Episode 5, “In Space, No One…”
Up until now, Kumi Morrow (Babou Ceesay) has been painted as the villain, or at least a main antagonist, of FX’s Alien: Earth. He’s a cyborg with a knife that pops out of his arm like some sort of futuristic Wolverine, he’s mercilessly focused on his goals, and when we first meet him, he’s locking Zaveri (Richa Moorjani), a crew member of the doomed spaceship Maginot, out of the Mother interface room on the ship, allowing the xenomorph to kill her. We’ve watched him manipulate children and threaten to kill families, and he will seemingly stop at nothing to retrieve the xenomorph eggs and other assorted “monsters” that are the property of Weyland-Yutani and are currently stuck in Boy Kavalier’s (Samuel Blenkin) science playground/private island called Neverland.
Episode 5, however, flips the script by showing us that Morrow isn’t the villain; he’s just as doomed and complicated as everyone else on the series. Not only that, it does this by turning him into none other than Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).
To be clear, the show doesn’t literally do that, though given that we’ve gotten some serious weirdness with the xenomorphs and synth/human hybrids already, we wouldn’t put it past show creator Noah Hawley to somehow turn Morrow into Ripley, despite her currently being somewhere out in space on the Nostromo on her own doomed voyage in the continuity of the franchise (depending on what month Alien: Earth takes place). Instead, the episode, written and directed by Hawley, flashes back to the opening scenes of the series to show what went on between the crew of the Maginot waking up from cryosleep and that scene of Morrow locking Zaveri out of the interface room.
The short version is what you probably could have intuited from the flashes in the series premiere, albeit with some variations. A saboteur named Petrovich (Enzo Cilenti) who’s working for Boy Kavalier is breaking parts of the ship, turning it into a “missile,” as the ship’s senior engineer, Shmuel (Michael Smiley), refers to it. In the process, Petrovich releases two facehuggers, which take down the ship’s captain and one other crewmember. One xenomorph hatches and escapes, while the other, thanks to an attempted removal, dies and melts the dude’s neck. Gross!
Morrow is woken out of cryosleep and is trying to investigate who the saboteur is while also keeping the crew focused on the only thing that matters: the cargo. But they’re all steadily losing it as more and more creatures get loose. Ultimately, everyone on the crew is killed except Morrow, who puts himself in the safe area under Mother’s interface room, looping us back to where we began.
The first and simplest trick Hawley uses to get us to sympathize with Morrow is to make him the point-of-view character for the episode. It’s somewhat shared by Zaveri, but she’s such a spiraling mess thanks to the fact that she was “fucking Bronski,” the other crew member who got facehugged, not to mention her whole “having morals” thing, that it’s hard to get on board with her general lack of action. In a crew meeting after things have already gone seriously sideways, it’s Morrow, not Zaveri, who gets them under control, with Ceesay’s deep, commanding voice shutting everyone down immediately by conveying the dire nature of the situation.
Another trick? Hawley makes Morrow’s arc a detective story. Fiction is littered with complicated, morally grey detectives who are in too deep. They make tough choices when they have to, and we don’t always agree with them, but we love them anyway. That’s the slot Morrow neatly fits into in the episode, thanks to his investigation into the saboteur. He interrogates suspects, combs through footage, and is the thematic missile inside the ship, razor-focused on the cargo they’re hauling for Weyland-Yutani. “Nothing matters,” Morrow explains. “Not you. Not me. Not the fucking cat.”
Bummer for the cat, but to keep diving into this particular aspect of the episode, Morrow is dark and complicated, with tragedy in his past that motivates him. Add in Zaveri as the doomed dame who hands him the mystery, Mother as the police chief who puts him on the case, and Petrovich as the corporate patsy who opposes him, and this is one step away from being Space Chinatown (queue up someone saying “she’s my chestburster” SLAP “she’s my facehugger” SLAP “she’s my chestburster AND my facehugger”). Even in the midst of vicious alien attacks and the inevitability of the Maginot crashing into New Siam, it’s easy to see the one-to-one Hawley set up here with classic detective tales in order to help us understand where Morrow is coming from.
Then there’s his essential tragedy. To the tune of “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn, we discover Morrow’s heart-wrenching backstory. He’s looking through photos and documents from Earth, and as we discover, he left his 11-year-old daughter Estelle behind. A lovely scene on the beach shows Morrow pointing to the sky and telling her, “There. See that? I’m going there. When you miss me, or you want to talk. Look straight up. I’ll always be there, looking back at you. So be good because I’ll be watching.” This is followed by an absolute gut-punch, a document from year eight in the Maginot’s 65-year mission stating, “Mr. Morrow, this is to inform you that your daughter Estelle, 19, died in a fire that destroyed her home on the 12th April. Her effects have been placed in storage for you on your return in 53 years.”
Could Morrow have saved Estelle if he had stayed home? We don’t know, and neither of course does Morrow. There’s a clear parallel between his inability to stop the random event of a house fire and Morrow purposefully using a blowtorch to seal Zaveri out of the Mother interface room later in the episode, figuratively sealing the deal that whatever human part of him exists was left behind on Earth, on the beach with his daughter. While Morrow is a cyborg, he might as well be a synth, because there’s no pity or humanity left in him other than in those private moments looking at old documents in his cabin. Even given this, we feel for him anyway, and it’s manipulative for sure: How can you hate a man who mourns his daughter? But history is littered with men who have tragic backstories and use that to motivate nihilistic and destructive impulses. Morrow is no different.
History is littered with men who have tragic backstories and use that to motivate nihilistic and destructive impulses.
To loop back to what we said at the top, the last layer Hawley puts on Morrow is to connect him with Ellen Ripley in an episode that almost parallels the original 1979 Alien. It’s not exact, but there are clear notes present. In the original, Warrant Officer Ripley was the member of the crew of the Nostromo telling them to stick with the quarantine protocols, just as Morrow does in this episode. Morrow also has a complicated relationship with the antagonistic (and possibly perverted) Teng, a riff on the similarly complicated relationship between Ripley and Ash (Ian Holm) in the original film*. The dinner scene in the first episode of Alien: Earth is almost a direct analogue to the one that opens the original film, while the crew member meeting parallels the famous chestburster scene from Alien, albeit with the bloodsucking Species 19 instead of the xenomorph and the blood spurting coming a little later.
(*Not to muddy this up, but Hawley does give Morrow elements of Ash as well through Morrow’s devotion to Mother and the xenomorph.)
But there are two elements of the episode that most clearly parallel Morrow with Ripley, one sort of funny, the other tragic. The kind of silly one? Morrow is noticeably in his underwear when he’s woken from cryosleep, something that Zaveri calls out to him. Similarly, there are several famous scenes of Ripley wandering around in her underwear in Alien; nobody calls her out, but the scene in Alien: Earth is too pointed to not be a parallel. As for the second, Ripley also had a daughter who died while she was in space. Amanda Ripley isn’t established until Aliens, but the star character of the beloved video game Alien: Isolation was 10 years old when Ripley left Earth on the Nostromo, and after searching for her mother, Amanda died by the time Ripley was brought back home in the first sequel. There was no dying in a fire for Amanda; she passed away at age 66 of unknown causes. But it is a tragedy that spurs Ripley on in Aliens.
That’s actually where Morrow and Ripley differ, because finding out her daughter died is what motivates Ripley to become a de facto mother to Newt (Carrie Henn), thus becoming more human, not less, because of the experience. Morrow goes in the other direction, cutting off his humanity so he can’t feel the overwhelming heartache of a child dying. And as we’ve seen, he has no compunctions about using another child, in this case Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), to get what he wants.
Midway through the episode, Shmuel complains to his assistant about the mission: “It’s 65 years of your life. Equals a quarter share. And then you go, ‘oh, yes, please sir, send me on another mission.’” For Morrow, that’s exactly what happens, not because he loves killing or working for Weyland-Yutani, but because it’s the only thing he has left.
While we may have spent an hour and change getting to understand Morrow, he’s not ultimately Ripley; he’s the xenomorph.
We discover in the final scene of the episode that Yutani (the grandmother of the current Yutani, played by Sandra Yi Sencindiver) essentially adopted Morrow as a child. “I’m very grateful,” he tells Yutani the younger. “She had no reason to take me in. A feral boy with a palsied arm begging in the street.” Again, we feel sympathy for him because of his condition, as well as everything mentioned above: the point of view, the detective story elements, the similarities to Ripley. But the final shot of the episode, set to the tune of “Cherub Rock” by the Smashing Pumpkins, dissuades us from any notion that Morrow will be the hero going forward. The whole city lay ahead of him, and he will stop at nothing to achieve his goal of getting Yutani what she wants. He is the most fearsome thing she’s ever seen, and while we may have spent an hour and change getting to understand Morrow, he’s not ultimately Ripley; he’s the xenomorph.
Be sure to stay up-to-date with all the latest from IGN by clicking here and setting IGN as a preferred source in Google.
NACON will release later today its latest third-person action adventure game, Hell is Us. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC. For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well … Continue reading Hell is Us Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis→
Looking for an aggressive, combat-heavy deck? This is a great choice, albeit one thats not discounted.
What is discounted are both the Food and Fellowship deck and the Elven Council one. The first, which stars Frodo and Sam and has a life gain theme from sacrificing food tokens, is now $48.59.
Finally, Elven Council has Galadriel, Legolas, and Arwen, and is now just $45.87. It has a nice reprint of Heroic Intervention in there, too, while Raise the Palisade still fetches a decent price.
Each pack comes with a couple of cards in a ‘Collector Booster Sample Pack’, too, meaning you can find some nifty foils and borderless treatments, too.
For more on Magic: The Gathering, check out what Wizards of the Coast had to say about rumors that the Spidey set will only see a single print run.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
Demon Slayer changed the game for anime movies based on TV shows when studio ufotable decided to adapt the Mugen Train storyline into a feature film rather than a season of TV. Not only did that movie go on to become a monumental hit, but it remains a high point of anime, a self-contained story with a good balance of action and character development.
Now it seems the promise made by that movie — that Demon Slayer was not restrained by its medium and could deliver the best adaptation in the best medium for it — has fallen completely flat. That's because Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle is a major step down from what Mugen Train achieved, a movie that feels like an unedited compilation film, a poorly stitched-together series of episodes with horrendous pacing and a never-ending series of flashbacks in what is obviously a very incomplete story. Not all is lost, however, because we do get some cool character moments, some nice visuals, and arguably the best back story the franchise has done.
The movie starts right where Season 4 ended, with the Demon Slayer Corps now scattered and surrounded by hordes of demons inside Muzan's ever-shifting demonic castle dominion after an attempt to kill the king of demons failed. It goes without saying that this movie is not for newcomers, and the plot is virtually incomprehensible if you have never seen the previous seasons — much like Infinity War is not meant to be your first MCU movie. Be warned, however, that Infinity Castle is not just a continuation of Season 4 (Hashira Training Arc), but it also connects to storylines going as far back as Mugen Train. This is the start of the grand finale, after all, so we're beginning to see payoffs to several storylines.
Indeed, Infinity Castle (the first part of a trilogy) raises the stakes and makes it clear from the get-go that even if Tanjiro is probably going to make it out of this fine, the same can't be said of his fellow warriors. Whether it's in the big fights against high-ranking demons or even just in the many small skirmishes against dozens of small demons, the Demon Slayer Corps members are overwhelmed and in grave danger, which adds to the tension of the film.
The story is essentially divided into three fights. First off, we have Shinobu encountering the Upper Rank Two demon, followed by Zenitsu fighting his own personal demons, and finally Tanjiro getting his rematch against Akaza. The first two parts reach a satisfying climax to the respective character arcs, while Tanjiro also clears a big stepping stone in his story. The biggest compliment one can give this movie is that Zenitsu is finally no longer annoying, but rather gets a compelling dramatic story in Infinity Castle. The standout part of the film, however, is the back story to arguably the biggest non-Muzan villain in the franchise — Akaza. Though Demon Slayer has presented plenty of demon flashbacks in the past, this is by far the most effective one in what it says about the allure of demons, and the cruelty of humanity, all without actually excusing or condoning the actions of Akaza.
Visually, studio ufotable gets great mileage out of the Infinity Castle location, with the ever-shifting scenery adding to the danger and the stakes as characters constantly get blocked by a randomly appearing building, or transported elsewhere by a disappearing hallway. It's a creative way of breaking up the repetitive fight scenes — of which there are many. Elsewhere, the fight animation is about what you'd expect from Demon Slayer, not particularly better with the higher budget, which is more of a testament to the animators and VFX artists at ufotable than anything else in that they already deliver big-screen spectacle on a weekly basis.
A lot of the emotional pay-offs are undercut by the film's overuse of flashbacks.
That being said, a lot of the emotional pay-offs are undercut by the film's overuse of flashbacks. This is a pattern that the anime has been guilty of for a few years now, but when presented in a single feature film the flaws are more glaring. The 155-minute runtime introduces a good dozen flashbacks that intercut the fight scenes at critical moments and severely slow down the pacing while also making the runtime feel longer. This is not necessarily a dealbreaker when watching a series on TV, because you at least have a week to digest the flashbacks and the information they deliver. In a feature film, however, they get no time to breathe. It is jarring to see the huge tonal shifts the movie goes through on a scene-by-scene basis when you cut from a fight to a flashback every few minutes. Perhaps this problem will be fixed when we get the inevitable TV edit of Infinity Castle, but as it stands this is simply lacking.
Connexion
PC Gamer
IGN
