Polygon

Pokémon Go is continuing its hype lead-up to the yearly Go Fest event with the “Instrumental Wonders” event that runs from June 7-11.

This event encourages players to raid, with the main perk of this event being an extra 5,000 XP per finished raid. Just like the last event, there will be bonuses with Max Particles as well. You can grab up to 1,600 per day and 800 from Power Spots — which is timed nicely, as Gigantamax Cinderace will be making its debut during the weekend portion of the event.

Below we list the other perks of Pokémon Go’s “Instrumental Wonders” event, including the premium research, Collection Challenges, spawns, and more.

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ premium Timed Research and reward

Just like the last event, there’s another ticket you can buy for $1.99 to get a Timed Research. If you’re stocking up on raid passes ahead of Go Fest, this ticket is actually a decent buy — so long as you finish the research before the event ends on June 11.

The other thing that may tip the scales in the value of this pass is if you’re shiny hunting for Ferroseed and Falinks, two Pokémon with increased shiny rates during this event. If you want one of those, then this pass ain’t too shabby!

If you complete the research, you’ll also get doubled raid Stardust until the event ends.

Step 1 of 2

Catch 10 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Use 5 berries to help catch Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Transfer 5 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Catch 20 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Use 10 berries to help catch Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Transfer 10 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Spin 3 PokéStops or gyms (Ferroseed encounter)

Rewards: Ferroseed encounter, 2 Premium Battle Passes, 500 Stardust

Step 1 of 2

Catch 10 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Use 5 berries to help catch Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Transfer 5 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Catch 20 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Use 10 berries to help catch Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Transfer 10 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Spin 3 PokéStops or gyms (Falinks encounter)

Rewards: Falinks encounter, 3 Premium Battle Passes, 500 Stardust

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event Collection Challenges

The following Collection Challenges will be live throughout the duration of the event:

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge 1

Catch a TadbulbCatch a HoppipCatch a Galarian StunfiskCatch a Beldum

Rewards: 2,000 XP, Falinks encounter

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge 2

Catch a GolettCatch a FerroseedCatch a ChimechoCatch a Falinks

Rewards: 2,000 XP, Ferroseed encounter

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge31

Catch a FerroseedCatch a Galarian StunfiskCatch a FalinksCatch a Beldum

Rewards: 2,000 XP, 1 Premium Battle Pass

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event Field Research and rewards

Spinning a PokéStop during the event period may yield one of these tasks:

Catch 7 different species of Pokémon (Ferroseed or Falinks encounter)Catch 10 Pokémon (Meowth, Chimecho, Ferroseed, or Falinks encounter)Explore 2 km (Ferroseed or Falinks encounter)Win a raid (2 Rare Candy)

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event boosted spawns

These Pokémon will spawn more frequently during the event period:

MeowthHoppipChimechoBeldumFerroseed*Galarian StunfiskGolettFalinks*Tadbulb

*There is an “increased chance” of finding this shiny in the wild as part of the event.

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders event raid targets

The following changes to the raid schedule will take place as part of the event:

One-star raidsThree-star raidsMeowthGalarian StunfiskBeldumFalinks*Ferroseed*

*These Pokémon have an “increased chance” of being shiny when raided.

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Nintendo replaced a couple of longtime voice actors for Mario Kart World — including an actress who has voiced Princess Peach for the last 18 years. On Friday, voice actress Samantha Kelly uploaded a new Instagram post stating that she is no longer voicing the Mushroom Kingdom’s princess, nor Toad and Toadette, whom she also previously voiced.

In the social media message, she outlined that Nintendo notified her of the business decision on Thursday — the day the Switch 2 and MKW were released.

“Thank you for so many years of friendship and joy,” her post reads. “I’m sad that it’s over, I truly would have wanted to voice Peach and Toad forever. Nintendo let me know yesterday that they decided to recast these roles. I’m grateful that I got to do these voices for so many years. Peach and Toad are such strong and beautiful characters that I pray they live forever no matter who voices them. So much love🩷#princesspeach #toad“

Donkey Kong was also replaced, with the IMDB website for Mario Kart World stating that Koji Takeda is now the voice of the redesigned character. Voice actor Takashi Nagasako has previously been synonymous with DK going back to Nintendo’s Gamecube era, appearing in games like Mario Power Tennis and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.

In 2023, Nintendo opted to make a change away from Charles Martinet, the man who had been Mario since 1991. At the time, Nintendo told Martinet that he would instead become an ambassador for the company. Martinet’s last Nintendo role was an appearance in the Super Mario Bros. Movie as an original character named Giuseppe, Mario and Luigi’s father — a fitting role for a voice that has been with us for over two decades.

Polygon contacted Nintendo for a comment and will update the article with any new information we receive.

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PlaySide Studios and Fumi Games have revealed the big voice behind the bite-sized main character in their upcoming film noir-esque first-person shooter, Mouse: P.I. For Hire. Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Death Stranding) will be voicing the aforementioned mouse, private investigator Jack Pepper. The announcement was made during Summer Game Fest, and was accompanied by a new trailer for the game.

“I have been following the development of Mouse: P.I. For Hire since it was first teased,” Baker said in a press release. “Its art style, gameplay and 1930s film-noir aesthetic continue to win me over.”

Despite channeling a vintage cartoon aesthetic similar to that of Cuphead, PlaySide Studios has made it clear that Mouse: P.I. For Hire isn’t playing things safe, describing the game as “gritty.” Mouse: P.I. For Hire takes place in Mouseburg, a city with a “seedy underbelly” in “a world where danger lurks in the smallest mouse hole.”

As for the character Baker is voicing, Jack Pepper may look cute, but he’s lived a rough life, serving in the military before eventually taking on the role of a private investigator. The game starts off with Jack investigating a damsel in distress, but it quickly becomes clear that things are not as they seem, and the case ultimately drags Jack into a dangerous world of mystery, corruption, and murder.

“I cannot wait to keep working with the team to bring Jack Pepper to life, and hope to have some exciting things to share as we get closer to launch!” Baker said.

Mouse: P.I. For Hire is set to launch on console and PC sometime in 2025, though a specific release date has not yet been announced.

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Australian director Sean Byrne is one of horror’s premiere mixologists. His debut, 2009’s The Loved Ones, meshed teen romance with gruesome Hostel-style extremism. 2015’s The Devil’s Candy put a heavy metal spin on the haunted-house romp. His new film, Dangerous Animals, in theaters now, raises a question no one was asking about a classic B-movie subgenre: When is a killer shark movie not a killer shark movie?

Answer: When the killer shark is just a weapon in a human killer’s hands.

Despite arriving just in time for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, Dangerous Animals has less in common with it (or with The Shallows or 47 Meters Down) and is more in line with Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw (or one of Australia’s modern horror successes, Wolf Creek). Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) stars as Zephyr, an American surfer floating around the Australian coast looking for the perfect waves — and maybe the right romance. She does not find it in Tucker (Jai Courtney of Terminator Genisys), who abducts her off the beach before dawn and locks her up with another tourist, Heather (Ella Newton), on his shark expedition boat. Tucker is a mega-creep who gets off on shark attacks. Zephyr and Heather are his latest chum.

At 90 minutes, Dangerous Animals is lean and mean fun. Zephyr is no damsel in distress, and quickly plots an escape from what looks like an impossible situation. Tucker has driven them out to the middle of the ocean where he can gets wasted on cheap liquor, dance to disco tunes, and prepare to ritualistically dunk his prey into shark-infested waters. He’s an absolute psychopath, and Byrne lets Courtney completely off the possible-Hollywood-leading-man leash. The actor is frothing at the mouth and twitching in his eyes throughout the deranged picture, with a level of egolessness that manifested slightly when he played [checks notes] Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad. This is better.

Harrison summons her own power in the face of Courtney’s towering physique in Zephyr’s multiple escape attempts. Byrne takes full advantage of the claustrophobic setting of the boat — and the vast emptiness of the sea surrounding it. It’s a geographically coherent but unsettling maze for a cat shark-and-mouse game that rarely succumbs to contrivances to ratchet up the tension. Getting off a boat surrounded by sharks just seems really tough! And for as blockheaded as Tucker seems, he’s devoted much of his life to building the ultimate floating prison.

While Dangerous Animals never goes full Deep Blue Sea with far-fetched shark kills, Byrne, by way of Tucker’s fetish, still sets up some nightmarish attacks. Tucker doesn’t just like to watch sharks tear his victims to shreds, he also videotapes them on a 1990s-era camera for future VHS viewing. So the deaths are slow and savage, with Courtney’s wide-eyed gaze committing as much violence as the razor-sharp shark teeth. There’s blood in the water, and all over this killer’s hands.

In the days of so-called “elevated horror,” Dangerous Animals delivers earnest thrills with a simple-yet-innovative slasher premise. In my mind, the freshest horror movies find a kernel of specificity in a timeless premise. Byrne’s movie isn’t far off from the Halloween formula — big guy hunts down indomitable woman with scary weapon of choice — but whisking us to Australia, sending us to sea, and the what-if of a sightseeing tour guide with a hard-on for shark attacks is the focused lens a filmmaker needs to deliver something new. Sick, but new.

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If boxing Muppets that look like Crank Yankers wasn’t on your bingo card for Summer Game Fest, you surely missed out! Felt That: Boxing is a comedic boxing game in a world of furry puppets, featuring Ezra “Fuzz-E” Wright, our unlikely hero. It’s up to the player to go the distance with the little guy as he scraps his way through the Tournament of a Million Punches to save an orphanage.

What’s more shocking is that the title will feature music by none other than Flying Lotus, one of the pioneers of the classic Adult Swim bumps. The trailer shows the hilarious but strenuous exercise routine of Ezra as he prepares to get in the ring with a puppet far, far bigger than he is.

Felt That: Boxing comes out of Sans Strings Studio, created by Ryan Corniel and Sébastien Deguy who specialize in bringing “digital puppeteering to new heights.”

Although there is no release date for the sports boxing game, there’s already plenty of excitement around the title and others presented during Summer Game Fest.

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There are 40 karts total in Mario Kart World. You’ll start with 11, and you’ll need to unlock the remaining 29 by playing the game.

While these vehicles don’t have the customization that we saw in Mario Kart 8, they do still have individual stats, so it’s not all about just glitz and glam when it comes to picking a vehicle to drive. (Though, yes, some vehicles are just cuter and better than the others, trust me.)

Below we explain how to unlock all the vehicles in Mario Kart World, along with their stats.

How to unlock more karts/vehicles

As you play, you’ll unlock more karts for every 100 coins you collect. Unfortunately, the order in which you unlock the karts is random, so if you’re really burning for the Dolphin Dasher motorcycle, you may end up unlocking a bunch of other karts first.

If you’re playing a single-player mode, like completing Grand Prix, you’ll see a notice pop-up on the main menu screen after the match ends, noting that you got enough coins to unlock a kart.

If you’re playing in online multiplayer, the kart will unlock for you right away with no notice (which you can see when you opt to change your character by pressing the Plus button).

We found this little coin-dropping buggy looping around the DK Pass area in the Free Roam-like multiplayer lobby that we followed around to collect coins quickly:

Mario Kart World kart/vehicle list

Below, you can see a list of all the vehicles in Mario Kart World, along with their stats:

Standard Pipe (default)Rally Kart (default)Standard Bike (default)Rally Bike (default)Plushbuggy (default)Baby Blooper (default)Cute Scoot (default)Mach Rocket (default)Zoom Buggy (default)Chargin’ Truck (default)Hyper PipeFunky Dorrie (default)Hot RodRibbit RevsterTune ThumperJunkyard HogRoadster RoyaleB DasherW-Twin ChopperLobster RollerBiddybuggyTiny TitanDread SledStellar SledReel RacerBumble VFin TwinR.O.B. H.O.G.Carpet FlyerCloud 9Dolphin DasherBlastronaut IIIBig HornLi’l DumpyLoco MotoMecha TrikePipe FrameBilldozerRallygatorBowser Bruiser

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.

We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

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Light Brick Studio and Annapurna Interactive showed off a new Lego co-op multiplayer game during Summer Game Fest 2025 called Lego Voyagers, and it’s basically a cozy take on Hazelight’s It Takes Two and Split Fiction. Lego Voyagers has you and another player become tiny Lego bricks trying to reach space, working together to solve puzzles and figure out how to navigate a lush Lego brick world. Even climbing a step is tough when you’re just a lil’ brick.

The debut Lego Voyagers trailer showed the blocky duo traveling through jungles, across industrial scrapyards, and down lazy, rambling rivers, piecing together inventive solutions that range from tram cars to rickety-looking rocket ships. Light Brick didn’t say how players will communicate with each other or provide many details about how cooperation will work in-game. However, the studio did say that Lego Voyagers will come with a Friend Pass that, like Split Fiction and It Takes Two, lets a friend join you, even if they don’t own the game. Lego Voyagers will support local, online, and split-screen play.

While Traveler’s Tales maintained a steady stream of Lego games based on popular franchises such as The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars over the last two decades or so, the Lego Company has taken steps to try changing what a Lego game can be recently. The group teamed up with Epic Games on Lego Fortnite, a survival-crafting game inside Fortnite that’s made entirely of Lego bricks, and Guerrilla Games licensed Lego for its Horizon Zero Dawn spinoff, Lego Horizon Adventures, in 2024. Lego Group CEO Niels Christiansen told the Financial Times that Lego is exploring the possibility of creating its own in-house development studio.

“We can definitely say as long as we’re under the Lego brand we can cover experiences for kids of all ages, digital or physical. [Games development in-house] is something we’re building up,” Christiansen said.

Light Brick doesn’t have a Lego Voyagers release date yet, but when it does launch, it’ll be available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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Mario Kart World‘s rewind feature is quietly one of the racing game’s most useful features for learning how its new tricks, jumps, and grinds work. The Nintendo Switch 2 launch game sets you loose to discover rewind on your own, though, with no tutorial or anything explaining how the tool works or when you might want to use it.

Below, we explain how to rewind in Mario Kart World, which modes let you do it, and when you’re better off just taking a mistake on the chin.

How to rewind in Mario Kart World

Press “down” on the direction pad to rewind the previous five seconds and start again. Rewind is useful if you’re trying to learn how to time a jump correctly so you can drive along the wall, if you miss a shortcut, or if you just make a big mistake and would rather not lose eight places after crashing into a wall. It’s handy for evading an incoming obstacle in Battle Mode, too.

GiantBomb’s Jeff Grubb discovered you can even use rewind to escape a blue shell. If you rewind right before the shell makes contact, it’ll explode even without you there to suffer from it.

Bear in mind that rewind doesn’t affect the timer if you’re completing a Free Roam challenge or mode or activity with a timer, such as Time Trials. You’ll start in your previous position, but the timer won’t rewind, and you’ll probably fail the challenge. The better option for fixing a mistake in Free Roam mission scenarios is opening the pause menu and choosing the “retry” option.

Rewind also has no effect on computer-controlled characters, whose positions won’t rewind to match yours. Still, for learning tough courses such as Rainbow Road, it’s worth rewinding and coming in last if only to get the hang of difficult curves without having to start an entire cup over again.

What modes can you use rewind in?

Rewind is only usable in single-player modes and Free Roam, though you can use it in a multiplayer lobby as well – just not in a multiplayer race. The list of modes that let you use rewind is:

Grand PrixBattle ModeVs RaceKnockout TourTime Trials

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.

We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

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The nightmare was real, the situation was not.

Revenge of the Savage Planet, an adventure spread across a number of distant — and quite savage! — planets, invites nonlinear exploration. To complete its missions and discover all of its secrets, you must leap into an unknown where the otherworldly flora, fauna, and even the inorganic material are primed to kill you. So, shortly after assembling an underwater scooter that allowed my robot sidekick to whisk me through the depths of alien oceans, I descended into a series of caverns under the Zenithian Rift to see what was going on down there. The specters of death I encountered below weren’t even designed to haunt me.

In Raccoon Logic’s sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, players are tasked with scanning every object in every nook and cranny to assemble an exhaustive log of materials located on each planet. At first, the task is a walk in the (overgrown killer) park: find a tree, scan a tree. Find a slobbering beastie, scan a slobbering beastie. But a counter on the map charting your scannables becomes the most daunting subtask — can I really find every single micro scannable? I found myself longing after completing the core missions. To really 100% this, there was even more reason to venture into the most uninviting spaces, including a dark underwater cave on Zenithian Rift that absolutely did not look like it contained any scannable items. But I couldn’t not go in there.

It took about two seconds for me to realize… I had made a horrible mistake. While the cave was easily accessible from the water, there were no enemy or collectible breadcrumbs to suggest this was a place the folks at Raccoon Logic intended for me to. I was lured in by curiosity, but the joy of discovery in Revenge of the Savage Planet got the best of me. Now I was stuck. I had stumbled into a graphical anomaly, an in-game black hole that had an entrance but no apparent exit.

In Revenge of the Savage Planet, you can’t beam back to starting locations on the fly or off yourself in order to respawn from your last save. In a clever but likely divisive design choice, the game forces you to navigate to transporters spread across the worlds in order to beam off to your next desired location, which forces traversal and new encounters. But it meant that while bumbling around in the dark, hoping to find a way out of my watery grave, I couldn’t simply die and move on. I was actually trapped, and in a scenario I haven’t experienced in quite some time, feeling IRL like I was actually trapped.

I already don’t do well with underwater levels out of an intense fear of drowning. Luckily for me, most games will throw me the lifeline of a visual countdown to illustrate oxygen levels, ensuring (1) I surface in time and (2) I don’t hyperventilate over the stress of surfacing in time. Revenge of the Savage Planet doesn’t need that because there’s no punishment for enjoying the waters; you’re already in a spacesuit and the challenges you encounter via underwater scooter require a bunch of time-intensive back and forth. Doing it all on limited air would simply not be fun. But that meant, stuck in this tight underwater cave, I would never die. I was in limbo. Or maybe I was in hell.

I spent far too long searching for a route out. Streaks of light bled in from a theoretical escape that I could never reach — any time I thought I was close, I bumped into a new rock and found myself jetting in the opposite direction. Not since I watched The Rescue, the riveting-yet-terrifying documentary about the team of divers who squeezed through cave passageways to free 12 trapped Thai soccer players, had my apparent claustrophobia had its way with my nerves. I can’t quite explain why I pushed myself over the edge to find an in-game solution to this unintentional challenge, except to say that I really wanted to do a good job at Revenge of the Savage Planet.

Most glitches are considered errors by programmers, annoyances by players, and occasionally shortcuts for the speedrunner crowd. Revenge of the Savage Planet’s death cave might fall into the first two categories, but it’s a harrowing experience I ultimately appreciated, a unique screw up that could only happen in a game. I have never felt truly trapped in a film, despite the best efforts of 3D stereoscopic effects and 4DX rumble seats. After finally rebooting Revenge of the Savage Planet, I had to give myself a few minutes to let my heart rate die down before I grabbed the controller. But I got right back to it. Sure, this was a glitch, but in a game where exploration is everything, leaping into a true unknown — one that the creators of the game clearly didn’t intend me to find — was its own form of success.

Revenge of the Savage Planetis currently available for PC, Playstation, and Xbox, and it’s currently on Game Pass.

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Without an E3 to preview new games and premiere trailers, Geoff Keighley’s annual video game event, Summer Game Fest, returns for 2025 with the usual batch of world premiere-exclusive game reveals, special guest appearances, and other surprises. (Not a surprise, though: Hideo Kojima will be there.)

For every big announcement at Summer Game Fest 2025, including new trailers and major game announcements, check out Polygon’s StoryStream below. You can also watch Summer Game Fest 2025 live right here.

Summer games fest 2025 schedule: All conference dates and timesUbisoft teasing a big Splinter Cell announcement ahead of Summer Game Fest

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USA/Syfy’s Resident Alienstarted as a quirky mashup of Northern Exposure and Invader Zim, a fish-out-of-water comedy where Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk of Firefly, Rogue One, and Andor), the new doctor in the small town of Patience, Colorado, is actually an alien who wants to take over Earth. Harry’s secret was originally only known to Max Hawthorne (Judah Prehn) — a kid with the rare genetic ability to see through alien disguises, who devotes himself to trying to stop Harry’s plans — and health-clinic worker Asta Twelvetrees (Sara Tomko), who teaches Harry the value of humanity.

Though the series’ protagonist is an alien, the show’s science fiction elements were relatively subtle in the early seasons. Harry spends as much time investigating the murder of the town’s last doctor as he does trying to fix his ship and get his mission back on track. The locals write off his weirdness because they’re dealing with their own challenges: Asta confronting her abusive ex, her best friend D’arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund) dealing with opioid addiction, Max’s parents Ben (Levi Fiehler) and Kate (Meredith Garretson) winding up on opposites sides of a debate about bringing a fancy ski resort to Patience.

“I think it was a nice way to be introduced to the sci-fi world for people who don’t normally like [the genre],” Tomko told Polygon in a video interview.

But as the series went on, more characters wound up uncovering the show’s secrets. Deputy Sheriff Liv Baker (Elizabeth Bowen) began looking for unconventional explanations for the odd crimes Patience experienced. Ben and Kate were abducted by aliens who stole their baby. Asta shared Harry’s true identity with D’arcy so she could stop lying about it. Even skeptical Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds) had a close encounter with an extraterrestrial. The science fiction elements are fully on display in season 4, which premieres on June 6.

“What I love about our show is there’s Harry’s world, which is the world of aliens, and there’s people in town who haven’t know about that, and you care about them because the writing is so strong that everyone is really well developed,” Garretson told Polygon in a video interview. “What’s cool about season 4 is that more and more of Harry’s world is bleeding into the town, so I think it’s an opportunity for the characters to become even more three-dimensional. When are people going to find out what’s going on, and then how do they handle that?”

D’arcy was quick to embrace the chance to help Harry, who is now focused on saving humanity from other aliens. She’s gone on several dangerous missions, including sneaking into the home of a human-alien hybrid and infiltrating a gray alien base on the moon, where she rescued the Hawthornes’ daughter. This season, she even travels back in time with Harry to recover alien technology. Wetterlund, who’s also the co-host of the “Treks and the City” Star Trek: The Next Generation podcast, is very enthusiastic about the way Resident Alien has evolved.

“I think that science fiction is a perfect slate on which to examine the human experience, because it removes the historical context that humanity is in and puts it in this imagined world,” she told Polygon in a video interview. “How would these humans in a small town deal with the exploding of their worldview? That is exciting for me. I’ve always wanted to be part of a sci-fi project like this. The more I can run around on spaceships, the better.”

Reynolds said he grew up watching the Aliensfranchise and RoboCop,and he’s excited about the chance to get more involved in Resident Alien’s science fiction elements.

“I’m proudly a nerd, so this fits my wheelhouse perfectly,” he told Polygon.

Acknowledging the existence of aliens has fundamentally shifted the dynamics in Patience’s sheriff’s office, where Mike has often been dismissive of Liv’s ideas. Now they’re working together to uncover a dangerous conspiracy and help an alien tracking cyborg played by Lost’s Peter Bach.

“I think we’ve really stepped into the realm of them being partners, and out of the shadow of the subordinate aspect of things,” Reynolds said. “Mike understands Liv was right. You don’t earn any more credibility in Mike’s world faster than being right. She was right the whole time. That dynamic fused with what they’ve been through personally has created a bond that is everything.”

Scenes involving alien spaceships and time portals cost a lot more than ones set in Patience’s bar or city hall, and showrunner Chris Sheridan has had to get creative as the show’s science fiction elements have expanded — especially since the series had its budget significantly cut going into season 4. One of the main ways the show is saving time and money is by having the gray aliens remove Harry’s ability to transform into his alien form.

“That saves us Alan getting in and out of makeup,” Sheridan told Polygon. “Whenever he walks by a mirror, we see a reflection, and that takes time and money animating him.”

Among all the ideas Sheridan had for hiding the budget cuts, that one stuck with him because it fit so well with the show’s themes and plot, where Harry has slowly gained more emotional awareness and attachments as he’s come to appreciate humans.

“What if he’s in this place where he’s just human for a while?” Sheridan asked. “What does that do to the character? There’s a challenge every year to try to mix things up and add something new, so we were looking to bring out something new in Harry.”

Resident Alien season 4 premieres on Syfy and USA at 11 p.m. ET on Friday, June 6. Episodes will be available to stream on Peacock one week later.

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The tracks in Mario Kart Word are the real stars in the game and the shiniest one is the Rainbow Road track. The mesmerizingly colorful track is something out of this world — literally. Unlike all the other tracks in the game, Rainbow Road is a secret one, but luckily the path to find it is pretty straightforward.

Below, you find all you need to know to unlock the Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World.

How to unlock the Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World

The Rainbow Road becomes available only after you have unlocked the Special Cup in the Grand Prix mode. It appears as an option for you after completing all the other seven cups. Here’s a list of all cups you need to finish:

Mushroom CupFlower CupStar CupShell CupBanana CupLeaf CupLightning Cup

It doesn’t matter what CC you play the cup on, and it doesn’t matter if you even place in the race. You just need to play each cup.

Like the other cups, the Special Cup has four tracks: Acorn Heights, Mario Circuit, Peach Stadium, with Rainbow Road being the last one.

How to play Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World

Once you have raced through Rainbow Road once and beat the Special Cup, you might want to give the course another try. We have tested and can confirm that you can enjoy this track by replaying the Special Cup in the Grand Prix mode or selecting it in VS Race mode.

According to some Reddit users, Rainbow Road can also appear in online play if you’re lucky. In online races, you can vote for one between three tracks randomly selected by the game, or you can pick “random.” If Rainbow Road comes among the first options, you can just select that — but the track may not be picked, since the game chooses randomly from what the players voted for.

If you are really burning to race Rainbow Road in an online lobby, your best bet is to vote “random” if Rainbow Road doesn’t come up as an actual option, since this can roll maps that weren’t among the initial voting options.

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

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Scott Pilgrim, all his friends, and the many of the creators who have brought his world to life over the years, are all back for a new game set for release in 2026.

As revealed at Summer Game Fest on Friday, Scott Pilgrim EX is a “time-warped brawling adventure” that sends Scott, Ramona Flowers, and five other playable characters battling across a Toronto ravaged by robots and demons. The new title comes from Tribute Games, the retro-minded studio formed by members of the original Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game team, and comic creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, who worked closely on crafting the new story. The chiptune group Anamanaguchi also returns for the soundtrack.

“In a way it’s kind of natural, and the genesis of Tribute, to go back to that IP,” Tribute marketing and publishing manager Eric Lafontaine told Polygon at a press briefing before the SGF stream. “It’s in our DNA in a way, and it’s just coming back through those roots and doing a great different game. It’s just natural.”

Tribute’s “games that play like you remember them” philosophy worked wonders for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and the studio’s upcoming Marvel Cosmic Invasion, set for later this year, looks just as promising. And while Scott Pilgrim EX shares some creative energy with those games — detailed pixel art, high-impact combat — producer Remi Lavoie says Scott Pilgrim EX is slightly different than those more straightforward brawlers thanks to a non-linear play style.

“This game happens in a really big world of interconnected areas, which you’ll explore at your own pace,” he said. The map, which is fully unlocked when players begin the game, is inspired by the classic NES beat-’em-up River City Ransom, which broke ground with an “open-world” approach to staging. While the quests in Scott Pilgrim EX will have linear progression, players will be able to jump around and get right down to business, as all of their moves and combos will be available from the get go too.

“Scott Pilgrim is really more of an adventure game where you progress through the world and complete quests, [while] Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a bit more similar to the traditional beat-’em-ups with completing stage after stage,” Lavoie said. “So they’re both very different, even in the combat mechanics: [Scott Pilgrim EX] features a lot of weapons, everyday objects that you can pick up and use as weapons.”

Lavoie said the team really leaned in on the chaos of the experience for Scott Pilgrim EX, which also counts Scott Pilgrim Takes Off writer BenDavid Grabinski as a creative partner and is technically set after the events of the anime. “Part of it is embracing that wacky timeline,” he said. “It’s a story written with Bryan and it’s really its own thing, but technically it happens after the events of the animated series.” And the loopy quality of the story is reflected in the art and play; the stages in EX are overflowing with classic game references while the number of objects that can be deployed as weapons should make the game’s four-player co-op (in person or online) a total circus.

Both Lavoie and Lafontaine agreed that there were very few hurdles that Tribute had to clear to make their dream version of Scott Pilgrim EX. The history of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game isn’t just a legacy, but a foundation on how to produce a top-quality installment of this unlikely franchise.

“The fact that the team is so small and we’re so close with Bryan and Universal, it’s such a quick environment for us to be creative, balance ideas, get things approved, make things happen,” Lafontaine said.

Scott Pilgrim EX is currently on track for a 2026 release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation platforms, Windows PC, and Xbox platforms.

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Lies of P: Overture is available now, after a new trailer was showcased during the 2025 Summer Game Fest.

The new trailer shows P using new weapons the DLC introduces, like his Wolverine-like claws. We see more new locations as well and the enemies they’ll bring, like a giant crocodile boss P will go up against.

Lies of P: Overture is a prequel that sends protagonist P back in time to before Puppet Frenzy overtook Krat. It includes new weapons, additional enemy types, and 15-20 hours worth of content to the main game.

A patch for all players is on the way as well that adds in new difficulty options, allowing Lies of P to be easier while opening it up to those who were put off by the difficulty of the Soulslike. Also added is a new boss rush mode, Death March, and a mode to replay boss fights, Battle Memories.

Overture is out now across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The original Lies of P was released in fall 2023 and was a hit with fans and critics alike; our review said it “breath[ed] new life into an overcrowded genre by allowing you to fabricate your own truth with the characters you meet, shaping the world with your choices.”

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With Mario Kart World as the flagship launch game for Switch 2 this year, it’s an unusual time for Sega to be working on its own kart racer starring its iconic blue blur. But Takashi Iyazuka, head of the Sonic Team at Sega, not only acknowledged the elephant in the room during this year’s Summer Game Fest — he also tried flexing on the Nintendo franchise.

Following a trailer featuring new characters for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Iyazuka took the SGF stage to highlight one major difference between his game and Mario Kart World.

“Unlike the another kart racing game, this game will have online cross-platform matchmaking so you can race against all your friends across all of the platforms,” Iyazuka said amid a roaring cheer. As fans know, Mario Kart is a first-party Nintendo franchise that’s exclusive on the Japanese publisher’s own console, so there’s no way to enjoy it with people who own other modern consoles. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, on the other hand, will be on all major platforms when it releases on September 25 — including, ironically enough, the Nintendo Switch.

In addition to unveiling Sega-owned characters like Persona 5’s Joker, the latest trailer for Sonic Racing also revealed that the game will see none other than Minecraft Steve as a playable racer. That’s a major get for Sega, and also highlights another difference between the two racing games. Where Mario Kart only includes major Nintendo characters, Sonic Racing features some rad crossovers, like Hatsune Miku.

Not Iyazuka reviving the beef between Sega and Nintendo. It’s all in good fun, of course.

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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s beloved LAN Mode feature is available in Mario Kart World for Nintendo Switch 2, bringing 16-24 player mayhem to one household. Polygon can confirm that players must hold L+R (NOT ZL+ ZR) and then click the left joystick, to transform the wireless play option into LAN Mode.

In this mode, players connect the consoles to the same access point via ethernet connection to get a complete 24-player LAN Party. This option differs from the wireless play’s room max of 8 players. So, if you want to, MKW can easily be used in an awesome LAN tournament.

LAN tournaments/parties were popularized in the late 1990s and went strong into the 2000s. These events saw players bring over their computers or consoles to their homie’s houses (or established venues) to game together. The tournaments and parties required players to wire their consoles together on a shared network, reducing latency in whatever competitive game they were playing, like Halo, for example.

So, who knows, with the LAN Mode returning as a feature, we may see some wacky Mario Kart World local parties with chaotic 24-player Knockout Tour competitions. Ah, the possibilities.

Mario Kart World was released on June 5 alongside the Nintendo Switch 2. Be sure to read more on how to unlock characters and their dope outfits across the site — to get you ready for those hypothetical LAN parties, of course.

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On June 6, A24 launched the promotional website Black Angel Tapes, meant as an artifact from the shared world of Danny and Michael Philippou’s horror movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back. Both movies feature creepy artifacts that lead characters to communicate with otherworldly spiritual entities, and Black Angel Tapes is meant to be the website where the characters found those items.

In an interview with Polygon, the Philippous confirmed that Bring Her Back and Talk to Me take place in the same universe, and said they’re probably going to set all their horror movies there. (Though they are taking on unconnected projects: their next film is a documentary about deathmatch wrestling, due out later in 2025.)

“It’s a website you can visit where [Bring Her Back character] Laura purchased this tape from,” Danny Philippou told Polygon via video. “It’s sort of like a dark-web-feeling marketplace where they sell all these fucked-up occult items. That’s something we’re working on now, in between press stuff.”

The site is fairly simple — it’s mostly mock sale listings for items like “Trapped Soul,” or videotapes like “SLEEP WATCHING DEMON SLOWLY EATS GIRL,” with grainy images or short video clips. Some of these items have the kinds of comment threads you might see on a sales site, with people discussing the item, asking questions, arguing with each other, bidding, or complaining about scams. One buyer is looking for the possession-inducing plaster hand — supposedly the mummified hand of a medium — at the center of Talk to Me. (A24’s merch shop sells a version of the hand that doubles as a “smoking device.”) The Bring Her Back tapes, detailing a creepy occult ritual that figures into the movie’s plot, are listed as “Tari Resurrection Tapes,” and the listing includes footage seen in the movie.

Notably, you can’t actually buy any of these items through the site. Why? The site FAQ — by far the most detailed part of the website, laced with a straight-faced humor that makes it worth the visit — explains:

Because you’re too early — or exactly on time. The marketplace breathes in phases. Right now, it watches. The “make offer” links are placeholders. Empty doors. They will remain broken until certain signals align. We are not open for commerce. We are open for attention. Browse. Study. Obsess. The items are real. The energy is already leaking. When the system awakens, those who paid attention will be first through the gate. The offer is not yours to make — yet.

If you do visit the site, be sure to check out the listing for “Evil Blood.” Humor doesn’t play a huge part in the Philippous’ dark, grim, extremely gory movies, but the promise of blood from “the world’s worst” convicts —“the bigger the offer the more evil the blood” — is pretty funny. If the Philippous intend to tie their future horror movies together through this website, here’s hoping the evil blood plays a part at some point.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

Following the reveal of Project Century during The Game Awards 2024, Sega and Like A Dragon developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio showed up to Summer Game Fest 2025 with a new trailer, a new era, and a new name: Stranger Than Heaven. Where the initial trailer looked like early-20th century Judgment, where a detective wandered around a rain-soaked, 1914’s Japanese city, Stranger Than Heaven‘s latest trailer is more like RGG Studio’s take on L.A. Noire.

A detective named Mako Daito moodily searches for clues to an unknown mystery in a glitzy city filled with people lost in their pursuit of excess, glamorous nightclubs, rowdy street fights, seedy tenements, and neon-soaked high streets. It looks like RGG Studio is digging more into survival and simulation elements than usual as well. In one brief shot, Mako holds a cigarette as an on-screen tooltip pops up that reads “Draws immense hostility when smoking.” He has hunger and thirst meters, a first for the studio, and makes split-second decisions about what to do in fraught situations, like whether to show a dangerous opponent mercy.

The trailer ends as Mako meets up with an American who’s surprised to find that Mako is Japanese and ends with a dramatic declaration from the detective about how he’s lost sight of himself. The action and setting might be unusual for RGG Studio, but the Yakuza-like melodrama remains the same.

Given the Project Century codename and the fact that the new trailer jumped forward in time by three decades, it seems like a safe bet to assume the story unfolds across, well, the century. RGG had little else to say about Stranger Than Heaven and previously recommended that no one even try to figure out what the game is about.

Stranger Than Heaven is planned for launch in 2026.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

Summer Game Fest kicked off on Friday with a tw0-hour extravaganza, in the old-fashioned E3 style. Host Geoff Keighley brought out tons of game updates, new reveals, and a few surprises — including the long-awaited release date of some of gaming’s white whales. As promised, Summer Game Fest featured games like Mafia: The Old Country, Dying Light: The Beast, and Fortnite — but the surprises were BIG. A new Resident Evil. A new Scott Pilgrim game. And Deadpool VR?

If you couldn’t watch Summer Game Fest 2025 live, here’s a recap of all the game announcements, release dates, trailers, and other highlights from Keighley’s big games showcase.

Resident Evil Requiem

The next mainline Resident Evil game is a BIG shift for the franchise, and it’s coming in 2026. Resident Evil Requiem sends players back to Raccoon City when launches on Feb. 27, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

Stranger Than Heaven

Like A Dragon and Virtua Fighter developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio announced the title of its next game, which was previously teased as Project Century. It’s called Stranger Than Heaven now, and it’s set in the early 20th century.

Scott Pilgrim EX

Scott Pilgrim is back, in video game form, in a new project from Tribute Games, the developer behind beloved beat-’em-up Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Scott Pilgrim EX will be out in 2026.

Mina the Hollower

Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games revealed the release date for its next big adventure: Mina the Hollower will be out Oct. 31.

Lego Voyagers

From publisher Annapurna Interactive comes Lego Voyagers, a new 2-player co-op adventure “that’s all about building spaceships, excitement and friendships.”

Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Capcom dropped a new look at next year’s Onimusha sequel, Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

Mafia: The Old Country

Here’s a new look at Mafia: The Old Country, specifically it’s story. Spoiler alert!

Lies of P: Overture

Soulslike Lies of P gets new DLC Overture… today!

Dying Light: The Beast

Check out the first gameplay footage for Dying Light: The Beast, which arrives Aug. 22 on PS5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

Code Vein 2

Bandai Namco has a sequel to Code Vein in the works, and this one looks slightly less vampiric.

Mortal Shell 2

A sequel to 2020’s action role-playing game Mortal Shell is coming, and it looks metal AF. Mortal Shell 2 is coming in 2026.

Atomic Heart 2

Developer Mundfish revealed a sequel to its sci-fi first-person shooter Atomic Heart. Atomic Heart 2 will feature a “living world rich with possibilities and places a heavy emphasis on story, role-playing elements, and player freedom. The story unfolds in an alternate-history world, with events now expanding to a global scale,” the developer says.“

The Cube

Mundfish ALSO has a separate “MMO RPG shooter” set in the Atomic Heart universe, called The Cube.

ILL

One of the more… intense games to show up at Summer Game Fest was Ill, a story-driven survival horror game that promises “intense body horror, grotesque monsters, [and] relentless fear.” Sure looks like it!

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds

Sonic the Hedgehog’s next kart-racing game is getting some cross-world guests, including Ichiban Kasuga from the Like A Dragon series, Joker from Persona 5, and Steve from Minecraft. Sonic Racing CrossWorlds will have crossplay when it launches on Sept. 25.

Nicktoons and the Dice of Destiny

SpongeBob Squarepants is about to get medieval in Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny, a “universe-spanning mashup that brings iconic Nickelodeon heroes into a world of fantasy-style tropes and real-time RPG action.”

End of Abyss

End of Abyss is a new sci-fi action-RPG from Section 9 Interactive. End of Abyss is set to launch in 2026 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion

She-Hulk and Rocket Raccoon join the roster of Tribute Games’ Marvel superhero-themed beat-’em-up, Marvel Cosmic Invasion.

Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver

To save their home of Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan must pass on their fantastical powers to a new generation of warriors, developer Brass Lion Entertainment says of its debut title, Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver.

Chrono Odyssey

Here’s a new look at Chrono Odyssey, Kakao Games’ action-packed MMORPG.

Felt That Boxing

Muppets-inspired boxing? Hell yes. One of the cooler looking games at Summer Game Fest finally pays off Geoff Keighley’s love of puppets.

Out of Words

Another cool looking game is Out of Words, a co-op platformer adventure “about the doubt and confusion that comes with communicating first-time love,” according to its creators. Out of Words is coming to PS5, Windows PC via the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Series in 2026.

Infinitesimals

In this Grounded-scale adventure, you’ll join Captain Awkney in his search for a new home for his people in Infinitesimals from Cubit Studios. It’s coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via the Epic Game Store in 2026.

Casino Royale’s LeChiffre comes to Hitman

Mads Mikkelsen reprises his role as James Bond villain LeChiffre as a new elusive target in Hitman: World of Assassination.

Wildgate

Dreamhaven and developer Moonshot Games announced that the crew-based space FPS, Wildgate, will launch on July 22.

ARC Raiders

Embark Studios’ long-awaited ARC Raiders is almost here. It’s coming out Oct. 30.

Deadpool VR

Yep, Deadpool is getting his own virtual reality game, with Neil Patrick Harris taking on the role of Wade Wilson himself.

Killer Inn

Square Enix and Tactic Studios announced a new social deduction game called Killer Inn.

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Capcom revealed the next installment in the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil Requiem, on Friday at Summer Game Fest as the livestream’s closing announcement, following a swerve by the dev team earlier in the show.

The game follows Grace Ashcroft (related to Alyssa Ashcroft from Resident Evil Outbreak) also as an FBI agent tasked to look into an incident at a hotel where her mother was previously murdered (although Alyssa is mentioned, there’s no telling if she’s Grace’s mom). In the game’s trailer, Grace’s boss says it’s time for her to confront her past before the scene cuts to her bound upside down in a dark room.

From there we see corridors familiar to the Raccoon City mansion before getting ominous words from a shadowy figure in a chair insisting Grace is special, a “chosen one.” We also see the remnants of Raccoon City with the bomb mark that took it out and a destroyed Raccoon City police department. Needless to say, although the franchise will continue its long-running story, this title looks to be very much a return to form for RE’s survival horror origins.

Survival horror fans have been anticipating news on the next Resident Evil for a while now. The most recent new mainline Resident Evil entry was 2021’s Resident Evil Village, a direct sequel to 2017’s Resident Evil 7 biohazard. Shifting further into action, Village emphasized combat against relentless waves of undead creatures. Since then, Capcom has released its ambitious remake of Resident Evil 4.

Similar to the rumor mill reports, Requiem looks to be a reimagining of the series with an evolution of concepts first introduced in the original Resident Evil, with more focus on horror over action. Rumors also suggest it will serve as both a conclusion to current story arcs and a fresh starting point for the franchise’s future, and the teaser certainly enforces this notion.

Resident Evil Requiem is slated for a February 27, 2026 release date, with more info to be revealed the closer we get to the launch date.

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Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, you can invite Ryan Coogler’s sexy horror movie Sinners into your home for the first time through VOD demand services. Also available for rent is The Surfer, a psychological thriller where Nicolas Cage loses his mind while trying to surf with his son. Preydirector Dan Trachtenberg continues sending aliens to hunt people across time in the animated film Predator: Killer of Killers, which premieres on Hulu. The streaming service is also launching Steven Soderbergh’s haunted house film Presence, following its January theatrical release.

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

K.O.

Genre: Martial arts dramaRun time: 1h 26mDirector: Antoine BlossierCast: Ciryl Gane, Maleaume Paquin, Alice Belaïdi

In this brawl-packed French movie, a disgraced MMA fighter who accidentally killed his opponent in a match gets a chance at redemption when the dead man’s widow asks for his help tracking down her missing teenage son. He teams up with a young cop to take on a Marseille gang.

Straw

Genre: ThrillerRun time: 1h 48mDirector: Tyler PerryCast: Taraji P. Henson, Sherri Shepherd, Teyana Taylor

A single mother played by Golden Globe winner Taraji P. Henson (Empire, Hidden Figures) is having a really bad day after being evicted and robbed. She just needs to cash a check to get medicine for her daughter, but winds up being accused of holding up a bank in this thriller written and directed by Tyler Perry, and exploring the impact of social inequity.

New on AMC+

Neighborhood Watch

Genre: Crime thrillerRun time: 1h 32mDirector: Duncan SkilesCast: Jack Quaid, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman

A man (The Boys’ Jack Quaid) with a history of mental illness sees a woman get abducted. When authorities won’t believe him, he turns to his cranky retired security-guard neighbor (Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Walking Dead) for help investigating. They team up for a fast-paced mystery driven by a strong dynamic between the duo.

New on HBO Max

The Alto Knights

Genre: Crime dramaRun time: 2hDirector: Barry LevinsonCast: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Kathrine Narducci

Robert De Niro has played plenty of mob bosses, in films like The Godfather and The Untouchables. Now he’s playing two in the same movie: Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, who are fighting for control of New York. Academy Award winner Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Wag the Dog) directs with a script from Goodfellas and Casino writer Nicholas Pileggi.

Mountainhead

Genre: SatireRun time: 1h 49Director: Jesse ArmstrongCast: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith

Successioncreator Jesse Armstrong takes another spin at skewering the ultra-rich in Mountainhead, where a group of tech bros played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Ramy Youssef have gathered to flaunt their success and go skiing. But when the combination of AI and social media leads to global turmoil, their ulterior motives and long-simmering tensions come to the forefront.

Parthenope

Genre: Coming-of-age dramaRun time: 2h 17mDirector: Paolo SorrentinoCast: Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman

Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta) seduces everyone who encounters her, including a writer played by Gary Oldman, in this sultry A24 film from Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, The Hand of God). Spread over the decades from Parthenope’s Venus-like birth in the waters of Naples to her work as an anthropologist, the film is filled with sex and luscious scenery.

New on Hulu

Predator: Killer of Killers

Genre: Animated science fictionRun time: 1h 30mDirector: Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua WassungCast: Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Rick Gonzalez

Predators hunt a Viking family bent on revenge, a ninja battling his samurai brother, and a World War II pilot in this era-hopping animated film from Prey director Dan Trachtenberg. While the disparate plots aren’t created equal, the animated action is impressive, and the film builds on series lore in a way that might invite a series return for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trachtenberg presumably plans to further flesh out his lore expansions in Predator: Badlandslater this year.

Presence

Genre: Supernatural horrorRun time: 1h 25mDirector: Steven SoderberghCast: Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan

Ocean’s Eleven and Contagion director Steven Soderbergh plays with the found-footage horror genre with a tale of a fractured family who become convinced something is lurking in their new suburban home. It’s a far sleeker experience than The Blair Witch Project, eschewing shaky camera footage while providing the feeling of an alien perspective intruding on the family’s most intimate moments.

From our review:

Soderbergh’s approach taps into the found-footage horror idea of a story being experienced by whoever’s behind the camera, except in this case, the question of who’s behind the camera is part of the horror. From the start, Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp (who also wrote Soderbergh’s simple, efficient 2022 action-thriller Kimi) imply that the presence is a ghost — but until the action fully plays out, the audience is left to wonder whether it’s something else entirely, along with what it wants and how and whether it will eventually make its needs known. The filmmakers inevitably build in a few small jump scares, but for the most part, Presence is about low-key, slow-burn curiosity rather than lurking terror.

New on MUBI

Magic Farm

Genre: Absurdist comedyRun time: 1h 33mDirector: Amalia UlmanCast: Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, Joe Apollonio

The crew of a documentary show looking to profile a musician winds up in the wrong country in South America in Magic Farm, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Trying to make the best of the situation, the team — including Golden Globe winner Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry, Big Love) — tries to find new subjects in rural Argentina while grappling with the exploitative nature of their work.

New on Peacock

The Ballad of Wallis Island

Genre: Comedy-dramaRun time: 1h 39mDirector: James GriffithsCast: Tom Basden, Tim Key, Carey Mulligan

A widower who won the lottery twice hatches a plan to reunite his favorite folk duo by hiring them for a concert on his private island, where he turns out to be the only audience. The scheme pushes the musicians, played by Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan (An Education, Promising Young Woman), and Tom Basden, to confront their shared professional and romantic history and decide how to move forward.

New on Prime

The Accountant 2

Genre: Crime thrillerRun time: 2h 4mDirector: Gavin O’ConnorCast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson

The sequel to Gavin O’Connor’s 2016 action movie The Accountant, which became a cult classic in spite of its unimpressive box office performance, sees Ben Affleck’s brilliant criminal bookkeeper teaming up with his estranged assassin brother, played by The Punisher’s Jon Bernthal. A third film in the series involving lots of gunfights and financial crimes is already in the works.

New to rent

Hurry Up Tomorrow

Genre: Psychological thrillerRun time: 1h 56mDirector: Trey Edward ShultsCast: Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan

A companion piece to Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye’s 2025 album of the same name, the thriller written and directed by Trey Edwards Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves) follows a fictional version of Tesfaye as he struggles with insomnia and depression. Things get increasingly surreal when he encounters an obsessive fan played by Wednesdayand Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Jen Ortega.

Sinners

Genre: Supernatural horrorRun time: 2h 18mDirector: Ryan CooglerCast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton

Black Pantherand Creed director Ryan Coogler reunites with Michael B. Jordan, who plays identical twin gangsters Smoke and Stack. Set in 1932, the movie follows the brothers as they return home to Mississippi with the goal of using their ill-gotten money and booze to open a juke joint. But more is waiting for them than old flames and the Ku Klux Klan. Their blues music attracts the attention of dark creatures, and the partygoers have to fight to survive until dawn.

From our review:

Coogler’s last three films have been part of major franchises — after the indie biopic Fruitvale Station, he directed the seventh Rocky movie, Creed, and the two Black Panthers. Here, though, he pivots toward a wholly original piece of pop-horror, with B-movie influences befitting of grindhouse cinemas (and with one particularly amusing nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing). It’s a spiritual splatter film, with intimate dilemmas concerning greed and temptation giving way to spurts of practical, orange-brown blood, the kind you’d likely find in a George Romero film. Sinners is a vampire movie, but it’s practically structured like a zombie feature, with a compact cast of characters trying to survive the night as ghouls overtly embodying deep societal malaise creep toward them.

The Surfer

Genre: Psychological thrillerRun time: 1h 39mDirector: Lorcan FinneganCast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn LittleYet another film where Nicolas Cage portrays a character whose grasp on sanity is tenuous at best, The Surfer sees the Face/Off  and Longlegsstar playing a man who returns to his childhood home in Australia and finds his simple desire to go surfing with his son stymied by a group of locals who consider him an interloper. Unwilling to accept defeat, the surfer refuses to leave and loses almost everything.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung’s animated movie Predator: Killer of Killers introduces many new elements to the decades-old science fiction franchise, just like Trachtenberg’s Prey did back in 2022. There are dramatic new Predator designs and places Predator-vs.-human fights in eras where we’ve never seen them before. Most startlingly, it brings in some inspiration from Christopher Guest’s dog-pageant comedy Best In Show.

But for Predator fans, the real revelation comes right at the end of the story, with a final reveal that opens up all kinds of Predator sequel possibilities. For one, it suggests a perfect return path for Dutch, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character from the 1987 movie that kicked off the entire series.

Obviously, we had to ask Trachtenberg whether he’s planning a Killer of Killers sequel, whether he wants to see Dutch back in action, and more questions about that big reveal. Just as obviously, we had to put his answers after a spoiler break.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead about one small detail from the end of Predator: Killer of Killers.]

In the movie, three humans from far-flung eras — a Viking raider, a Japanese ninja, and a World War II pilot — each face a Predator… and survive. All three are then captured and cryogenically preserved by other Predators, who eventually thaw them out, dump them in an arena with explosive collars around their necks, and order them to fight to the death. The survivor is expected to face a massive leader credited as “Warlord Predator.”

The end of the film spends a few short moments traveling through a facility where other captives are being kept on ice. including Naru, Amber Midthunder’s protagonist from Prey. The implication is that anyone who kills a Predator is collected for further battles — a huge change to existing Predator lore, and also a major opportunity for Trachtenberg, Wassung, and anyone else playing around in this canon to bring back any Predator-movie survivor, including Dutch.

“So the movie was made under the code name Warehouse, as that end moment was in the original idea pitch to the studio, and it felt like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Trachtenberg told Polygon in a video interview. “Certainly Arnold, like many others, was a survivor of his story, and one could easily imagine him up there in cryo, along with any other Earth champion or champion from other planets.”

Sure, one could imagine that, just as one could imagine the 77-year-old Schwarzenegger voicing an animated version of Dutch who’s fresh from the fight in the 1987 movie, instead of getting called back into battle as a septuagenarian. The animation medium and the cryo-storage facility both seem like a perfect way to bring back old characters without considering the actors’ ages, or their ability to perform the kinds of acrobatic, dramatic action sequences seen throughout Killer of Killers.

But the actual question is whether Trachtenberg himself is actively planning a sequel. His response? “Yeah, certainly. The cool [part] of this movie is that it opens up the door to tell these kinds of stories in different eras, in different places, in different planets — but also, the further adventures of these heroes that we bonded with in a very unique way.”

But he wouldn’t confirm or deny whether he or 20th Century Studios have reached out to Schwarzenegger about the possibility. For one thing, the actor has repeatedly turned down chances to return to the role of Dutch. According to Den of Geek, talks to feature him in 1990’s Predator 2 fell apart over money, with the added factor that James Cameron wanted to preserve Schwarzenegger’s sequel mystique for Terminator 2. The actor turned down a cameo in 2010’s Predators because he was serving as governor of California at the time, and rejected a cameo in 2018’s The Predator because he didn’t like the script or the minor role. So his possible involvement in a Killer of Killers sequel might depend on a lot of factors besides Trachtenberg’s interest, or fans’ fantasies about seeing Dutch in action again.

For the moment, Trachtenberg says it’s true that his Predator projects — including the live-action movie Predator: Badlands, coming to theaters in November — may suggest the possibility of sequel stories, even before any follow-up projects have been green-lit. He points to the closing credits of Prey, where a single animated frame foreshadows a battle to come, as a group of Predator ships emerge from the clouds above Naru’s village.

When Prey came out, that shot felt like a promise that Prey 2 was on the way. Now, it looks like a teaser for Killer of Killers, with the understanding that those ships were arriving to abduct Naru. In the same way, that final shot of her in Killer of Killers could tease a future animated or live-action animated story with her. But Trachtenberg says he can’t plan around sequel projects just yet.

“Certainly [each of my movies] are being made as if this was my only shot,” Trachtenberg told Polygon. “Everything was thrown into it. Should we be able to do more… Certainly Killer of Killers seizes something, and Badlands [does too]. Hopefully there will be something more, but they don’t rely on the something more. Hopefully they are both cool within their own merits.”

Predator: Killer of Killers is on Hulu now.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

On top of being the upgraded version of the Nintendo Switch, the Switch 2 might be the best way to experience some of the previous generation’s most critically acclaimed titles.

Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom already stole our hearts with their scale, presentation, and gameplay when they were released in 2017 and 2023, respectively. Whether it’s your first time playing or your 50th, the Switch 2 editions of these titles are an absolute dream experience. Nintendo’s modern masterpieces didn’t suffer despite relatively low resolution and frame rates and slow loading times — one of the most common gripes with the games when they were released. But the Switch 2 Edition of each game feels like the upgrade the titles deserve, especially when it comes to reduced loading times. And I mean significantly reduced.

During our testing, we ran five different test cases five times, then calculated an average for each of the five trials. For the original versions of the games, we used a Switch OLED. For the Switch 2 editions of the games, we used a Switch 2.

We tested the time it takes to boot up the game from the Switch 2 home screen, a load a save file from the title screen, reload a save file, fast travel across the map, and enter a shrine. I picked these test cases because they are actions you repeat many times in a given play session, and those load times add up.

Here are the results:

TestBoTW SwitchBoTW Switch 2 EditionToTK SwitchToTK Switch 2 EditionBooting up the game13.15s7.26s18.26s8.51sLoading a save file from the title screen23.40s14.14s11.04s8.19sReloading a save file14.78s9.11s16.31s9.49sFast travel22.62s14.47s12.04s5.08sEntering a shrine9.21s6.87s8.58s4.68s

To no one’s surprise, the Switch 2 dominates the performance of the Nintendo Switch. The Switch 2 takes the load times of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and cuts them roughly in half. In some cases, the load time has been reduced by more than half, specifically in Tears of the Kingdom. Overall, Tears of the Kingdom saw bigger performance increases on average compared to Breath of the Wild, probably because the game is just better optimized.

The Nintendo Switch 2, paired with the Switch 2 Edition of each title, offers a significant improvement to the modern Zelda experience. You can also play the original versions on Switch 2, in theory, though we have yet to test those load times.

Nonetheless, the Switch 2 editions feel more fluid and responsive. If you have yet to lose yourself in the most recent iteration of Hyrule Kingdom, there’s no better time than now — that is, if you’re willing to pay the extra $10 per game, or for a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion membership, to upgrade to the Switch 2 Edition, which is only available on Switch 2.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

Microsoft’s annual Xbox Games Showcase is a double header this year: It’s directly followed by the Outer Worlds 2 Direct, a livestream focused on Obsidian Entertainment’s forthcoming space-faring RPG.

Here’s everything we know about the two events, including where to watch Xbox Games Showcase 2025 (and the Outer Worlds 2 Direct), what time the shows start, and what to expect from the streams.

Xbox Showcase 2025 and Outer Worlds 2 Direct start times

As announced on Xbox Wire, the show will begin on June 8 at 1 p.m. ET. Translated to different time zones, here’s when the livestream starts:

10 a.m. PDT for the West Coast of North America1 p.m. EDT for the East Coast of North America6 p.m. BST for the U.K.7 p.m. CEST for western mainland Europe2 a.m. JST in Japan (June 9)

Where to watch Xbox Games Showcase 2025

You can watch the Xbox Showcase livestream on the official Xbox YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook channels, or via the YouTube embed at the top of this post. Note that the Xbox Showcase is immediately followed by an Outer Worlds 2 showcase, so if you’re fond of outer space adventures, you might want to stay tuned for that one.

A countdown timer will likely start shortly before the show. No worries if you miss it though; you can always watch the archived stream after the event, or catch up with all of the biggest announcements on Polygon after the show.

What to expect from Xbox Games Showcase 2025

The Xbox Games Showcase, befitting the name, will largely focus on with previews of upcoming games from Xbox Game Studios.

It’s hard to predict which games you will see, but since they’re set to release in the upcoming months, it’s a good bet Ninja Gaiden 4 and Gears of War: Reloaded will appear in some capacity. It would also make sense to get another update on Perfect Dark, which got a gameplay reveal in 2024’s Xbox Games Showcase and is now scheduled for a 2026 release. Fable, which was recently delayed to 2026, could also get a showing.

Many of you will undoubtedly hope for an update on The Elder Scrolls 6 too — given the renewed focus on the series in light of April 2025’s surprise release of the Oblivion Remake — but besides “it’s been a while,” we don’t have any evidence that points to an Xbox Showcase appearance this year.

The one thing that has been confirmed is a deep dive into The Outer Worlds 2, the sequel to Obsidian’s sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds.

For more big events, here’s the full Summer Game Fest 2025 and not-E3 schedule!

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

If you picked up Mario Kart World alongside a Nintendo Switch 2, then you may be wondering where to even start. The game is massive and more chaotic than ever with more racers in each round and the super-fun Knockout Mode, which treats the game like a battle royale.

Below, you’ll find a list of tips and tricks that will help you get started in Mario Kart World. Whether this is your first Mario Kart game or if you’re just a veteran who hasn’t played in a while, you’re bound to find something helpful.

1. Check your kart stats before choosing a main. Karts with low acceleration take longer to reach their max speed, and low handling means you’ll have to slow down more when you turn. You don’t want to learn which stats your kart struggles with in the middle of a race.

2. Tricks matter more than ever in Mario Kart World. Courses are built with the expectation that you’ll take as many opportunities for drifts, rail grinds, jumps, and other special moves as much as possible, so make sure you’re getting those boosts!

3. Mario Kart World has dozens of character costumes to unlock, but don’t stress yourself out too much with unlocking them all at once. Most will unlock from naturally playing the game, anyway.

4. Speaking of costumes, don’t go too out of your way to grab food during a race unless the drive-thru is empty. It’s easier to unlock costumes in Free Roam mode, so don’t throw a race just to get an outfit.

5. Be aware of your surroundings! Mario Kart World has so many shortcuts, spots for jump boosts and rail grinding, or ways to mess up your opponents (like detonating bomb cars). It’s easy to miss them if you aren’t looking around.

6. Some cars even drop coins and food, so definitely keep your eyes peeled.

7. Practice makes perfect. Take your time learning the tracks. Each track has its own secrets and it’s going to take a while to learn them all, so don’t be surprised if after a dozen runs you’re still finding new ways to get around.

8. Don’t hold on to items for too long. Spend the ones you have so you can keep getting more. More shells and coins are better than just quietly holding on to one!

9. Drafting is back in Mario Kart World, so if you’re lagging behind an opponent, stay directly behind them for a few seconds to get a little speed boost.

10. Drift boosting has several levels. The final, strongest one happens after you hold the second-stage blue drift for a few seconds, so hold out as long as you can before boosting.

11. Those mushrooms are valuable, as you will need a speed boosting item (mushrooms or takeout food) to get through some of those secret paths around the courses.

12. Turn that smart steering off! It’s on by default, but you won’t want to keep it on for long, as it’ll prevent you from exploring the courses.

13. Yes, take the time to explore Free Roam for unlockables. Some of the stickers can only be unlocked via Free Roam, so if you want to catch them all, you’ll need to explore the whole map.

14. Speaking of, you can open the map in Free Roam to both fast travel and have the game tell you how many costumes you’re missing.

15. You can also hover over locations to see how many question mark tiles you’re missing in that area!

16. Those P-Switch missions aren’t just easy-peasy “drive through rings.” Some of them are tough and working on them will help improve your skills when it comes from jumping from obstacle to obstacle and aiming.

17. Don’t forget that you can rewind! Rewind your position by pressing Down on the d-pad if you made a mistake, though know that if you do this in a race, the people will continue passing you by. This is super useful for grabbing those collectables you just miss in Free Roam.

18. Remember there are other game modes! While Knockout Mode and Free Roam are heavily featured, you can play traditional three-lap races if you choose the VS Mode.

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.

We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

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