Weird Mind News Room Episode 78: August 19th - 25th

*Music for the gathering of Crows*

Welcome everyone once again to the newest weekly episode of Weird Mind News Room where we will be delving into some of the new releases of the week, a small amount of trailers and some news stories with varying outcomes and topics, so let us not waste too much more time and let us get into what came out this week.

New Releases of the Undead

Movies

The Crow (2024)

We start off this week with the release of a new take on a film that has stood the test of time as a legacy film of the passing of the original star while filming and will see a revenge story all in the name of love and restless spirits with the new release of the reboot / remake / sequel of The Crow. The film will follow Eric Draven who see him and his soulmate being brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save her by sacrificing himself, Eric returns to seek bloody revenge against the killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right. Reception to the film have not been the best as it has been critiqued for its poor pacing, dreary story and not much personality to the plot, though some performances and bits of action have some praise but not that much to it in general and if you want to check it out for yourself, you can catch it now in cinemas.

Cuckoo

Now for another option in the form of a new film where seeing is believing with a bump on the head and a setting of tranquil uncertainty as we have the new thriller from Neon in the form of Cuckoo. The film follows 17 year old Gretchen who decides to reluctantly leave America to live with her father at a remote resort in the German Alps. Once she starts to become plagued by strange noises and bloody visions, she soon discovers a shocking secret of her own family. Reception for the film has been decently well recieved with praise to the concept and performances of the main leads of Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, though some elements like the outcome and aspects can fall a little flat and if you want to check this film out you can catch this one out now in cinemas. 

Blink Twice

Looking for an island getaway with a bit of a weird sinister twist to it all, well you may be in luck as we have a new film with feature directorial debut for actress Zoe Kravitz with her new black comedy thriller of Blink Twice. The film follows Frida, a cocktail waitress who ends up working a massive gala event for the massive tech Billionaire Slater King who soon invites her and her friend for a dream vacation on his private island. Wild nights and sun soaked day pass by in a breeze but when strange things start to happen, Frida must uncover the truth if she hopes to make it out alive. Reception on the film has been well recieved with praise to the story, performances and concept, though it has also sparked a response from Warner Bros itself about some comparisons to someone in the past  but I will not get too much into it and if you want to check it out for yourself then you can catch this new film out now in cinemas. 

Games:

Black Myth Wu Kong

On the start of the games for this week is with a new game that will bring us to the realm of the challenging battle games with a setting of ancient myths and legends with the new game of Black Myth Wukong. The plot is set across the span of six chapter as you play as The Destined One as you set out on a journey to obtain some lost relics while also hacking, clashing and battling your way through enemies and massive bosses in a souls like experience. The reception to said game has been very well recieved with its praise to the visuals, narrative and challenge of said game, though the game has also spawned a little bit of a "controversy" in the basis of people's opinion of the studio that made it and their work ethic, as well as an email that went around that gave a list of do's and don'ts as to what streamers should not talk about while playing it. But besides all of that if you want to play it for yourself then you can play it now on PS5 and PC with an Xbox version coming soon.

Concord

The last of the releases for the week is taking us into the realm once again of the 5v5 battle arena games for sci-fi exhilaration as we have the newest game of Concord. This new game will have you set out across the vast galaxies as you assemble a crew of freegunner space outlaws and team up with friends for online battles to prove who is the best crew in the vast galaxies. Reception on the game has been mixed to modest with praise on the visuals and gameplay mechanics, though it has some critiques to the likes of progressions systems and some technical output in the online aspects in most case, but if you are looking for something new to play with friends then you can play it now on PS5 and PC. 

Trailers of love and passion

Megalopolis

The first of the trailers for this week is with the release of a trailer for a film that I will have to see if it is useful as of writing they took down the trailer due to some drama at the start of said trailer but I will at least talk on it as after working on it for a long time since around the time of his masterpiece of the Godfather, Francis Ford Copola is back with his new big film of Megalopolis. The film will follow a conflict between Cesar, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future (and also has the power to control some flow of time) and his opposition of Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. So the likes of the drama for the trailer came down to the likes of the reviews used at the start of the trailer turned out to be altered and done with AI and was called out by the reviewers who reviewed some of these films. Besides all of that mess I think that the film looks interesting, looks a bit like a fever dream from how they are presenting the footage and from what I have heard from the film festivals of the past it is a bit of a middle ground mixed opinion (and some other elements about misconduct from the director as well) but I guess we will have to see what the film turns out like when it releases into cinemas in just over a months time on September 27th.

Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

As for the only other trailer that I can bring up at least that is not some of the selection of games from this weeks Gamescon, as we are heading back into the realm of Middle earth both next week and with the release of a new film this upcoming Christmas (the first in 10 years since battle of the 5 armies) being shown in a new unique form as we have recieved a trailer for the new animated / anime based film of the Lord of the Rings with the War of the Rohirrim. Set 183 years before the events of the original trilogy, the film tells the legend of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary king of Rohan, and his family as they defend their kingdom against an army of Dunlendings and will have a focus on the unnamed daughter of the king. So I had heard small tidbits about this film and then I saw the art and was immediately invested in it as it gave off the look of the excellent Castlevania series and I for one m intrigued to see a new Lord of the Rings film on the big screen and it will not be long for that as the film will be releasing into cinemas on December 13th.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

The last of the trailer for this week is seeing us teaming up with a new take of the badass treasure hunter who takes things into her own hands as we recieved a new trailer for the upcoming animated adaptation of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Taking place after the events of the recent reboot trilogy, the series follows Lara Croft (voiced by Hayley Atwell) as she continues her journey of discovering ancient treasures and other legends of the past that will bridge the prequel trilogy with the original series and becoming the badass she is known to be. So I have enjoyed the series of games when I can and I have to get back to finish the most recent entries when I can but this new series does look great and stylized (and in a case that Lara in this looks like someone very important to me and I will support that self insert) and will be worth to check it out when the series drop onto Netflix from the 10th of October.

News of games and other important elements

Some of the highlights of Gamescon 2024

Its another week of news stories and another week where we have some news from a big old gaming convention with this one being in the form of the yearly event of Gamescom that takes place in Cologne, Germany. Now there is a lot of games and announcements that were shown off at the event but there was not a lot of them that I have really looked into and for this one instance, I will be focusing on the games that stuck out to me and will give a quick thought and opinion of those that were discussed and can provide a link to all the of the big announcements from the few days this week in Germany so let me delve into the announcements by the days they were revealed.

we start off the event with a bang (in a sense) as they came out with the announcement of the 4th entry in the Borderlands series with a confirmed release date (for the moment) in 2025. Now a part of me feels like this is a bit of a reactionary announcement as it comes just 2 weeks after the Borderlands film adaptation released and bombed hard (to the point the film is releasing on digital next week) both critically and Financially and this was made in the post release of this, but I feel that the game was probably in the works for the last year or so after Tina Tina Wonderlands and new tales games so I am sure they have this planned out and will be worth seeing if the appeal of the games is still there after the film appeal was not.

one of the games that was announced was the unveiling of the remaster to the original Goat Simulator with the game mocking all other forms of remasters including the Batman Arkham games, the rain affect of the GTA trilogy, the countless Skyrim rereleases, Assassins Creed 2's weird NPC textures and many more in this goofy take on a game where you play as a goat and cause weird chaos all in the name of being the Greatest Of All Time. I get the likes of this series has seen a lot of jabs at itself and really popped off with a successful franchise as in most case will be releasing within the next year and I may check it out when it does.

The next unveiling was some new focus on one of the campaign levels for the upcoming Call of Duty Black Ops game and it does look like it is all action, unique settings and bullets will be flying as they battle their way through a charity gala to get their targets. I always enjoy the campaigns (and most case I only play from the COD games as Multiplayer I can take or leave and the case I do not have many people to play with in general) but I will be intrigued to try it out when it drops in October.

besides some new unveilment of the next entry of Civilization 7, they finally showed some gameplay for the VR exclusive Batman Arkham Shadows with you being in the cowl of the caped crusader between the events of Origins and Asylum as you stop the Rat King and his army of rogues and creatures from destroying Gotham and honestly it actually looks really fun and cool to try out and may be a build on the VR game from the original PlayStation VR with combat, stealth and so much more and it looks cool as hell. Hopefully I can play this on the Quest 2 but will see when it comes out sometime in October.

After the success of the 2nd part of the film saga earlier this year, we are heading back to Arrakis with them unveiling the first look at some gameplay for the upcoming Dune Awakening game that see it in a 3rd person perspective of you fighting against your enemies, travel across the vast sands of the planet and become the saviour of all that is good and just and will be interesting to try it out when it comes out in the new year.

One of the non interactive based pieces we got was more in the vain of a new tv series from the creator of Love, Death and Robots with a new series known as Secret Level which will be a new Anthology series that focuses on stories based on different properties such as God of War, Destiny, Mega Man, Pac-Man and many more all in this new stylized series that will be coming along to the streamer of Amazon Prime on December 10th. Sure it would've been great to see something from the Blue Blurs next film outing but I guess that may be now next week instead.

Now about a week or 2 ago there was some weird new game being teased by the studio that made Little Nightmares and after a bit of a mystery it has now been unveiled in the form of Reanimal which has a vibe of the original LN games and will have you surviving against creepy animal creations and other strange anomalies in a creped and rundown city and it has the vibe and creepiness of those 2 games and am looking forward to trying this out when this comes out in the near future.

speaking of Little Nightmares, they finally unveiled some new look and gameplay at the 3rd game in the series and will be seeing your new protagonists working together in making your way through a forgotten town with unique puzzles and monsters and gimmicks and it looks like it is going bigger, tenser and scarier as the first 2 excellent entries. Now it has seen a delay into the new year but in all sense I can be fine with a wait to create another scary new adventure in the new year. 

connecting to one of the new releases earlier, we have the newest unveiling of another 5v5 based multiplayer game on the way as it was also unveiled this week with the release date announcement confirmed for the upcoming Marvel Rivals game which now has a launch date of December 6th after a successful beta test from a few weeks ago and it looks very stylish and high octane fun and I may give it a try down the line if I am interested.

After the last entry was a little over 8 years ago at this point, Hanger 13 has finally unveiled their newest entry in the long popular Mafia series with the Old Country that will be taking us out of the US and taking us back to the early 1900s and follow the Mafia in 20th Century Sicily. Not much else has been shown of the game besides a teaser announcement but we will be getting more info about the game in December at the Game Awards and will be confirmed at the moment for a release in 2025 so I am looking forward to return to a series of organized crime real soon.

the 2nd last piece I will bring up from the event is that we finally have been given an official release date for Bethesda's and Machine Games upcoming new adventure of the whip cracking Archaeologist as they unveiled that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be releasing on Xbox and PC on December 9th this year. It was also unveiled at the event that we will be seeing this new adventure get a PS5 release in the new year in the Spring so it will be intriguing to try out this new global adventure real soon and it has a lot of potential so here is hoping all is great.

 

The last of the pieces I will bring up is the new look at the new action based games from the studio behind Sniper elite and Zombie Army (which also saw a new Sniper Elite announced) with a new game of Atom Fall of a nuclear based city in the UK that has seen a massive disaster after the affect of Nuclear energy and have you explore the quarantined Lake side town as you gather resources and interact with friendly and hostile inhabitants, strange creatures and cults in order to uncover a deep conspiracy the government is not telling you about. So I find this setting interesting and maybe this could be a bit like that recent massive fan expansion of Fallout London and will be worth trying out in March of next year.

But that is all I can really see from the event that provided a lot of interest to me. Sure there is a whole lot of other announcements that were shown at the event, but some were decent or just not that much of an interest. It is difficult to find forms of the new announcements and everything shown but in all case it seems like we have an exciting time for gaming for the rest of this year and into the future for more gaming entertainment.

But I would love to know your own thoughts of all that I brought up here as to which of the games or announcement are you looking forward to the most and what games did I miss were you excited for? Let me know you thoughts and choices down below.

 The end of Jedis, The creation of killers and building of robots 

The last of the stories for this week is with a bit of some announcements of some new projects, updates to others and some mix match pieces that fit more into one big story instead of some smaller ones and I will go through them all here as to what has been unveiled this week.

so we start off with some news based in a galaxy far far away, as we journey to the world of Star Wars as it was announced earlier this week that the planned to continue the story of the recent series will no longer be happening as it was announced that the Acolyte has been cancelled after one season. Now there is a lot of divide and speculation online about the whole reason as to why the series was cancelled with elements being the case of low viewer numbers and another aspect pointing towards the unnecessary hate campaign by media critics online that will call anything that releases in this day and age as "woke" when it will be most of the vocabulary they use and do not know what the word means most of the time. Personally I will say I enjoyed the series a good amount as I felt that there was some strong moments, interesting lore expansion of the past, a good cast and the action scenes in this were very strong, but I can say to me the issues were some story elements were a little messy, the pacing on the episodes were a bit too quick and probably needed a longer episode length for each and some writing was a bit hit or miss but not all the time but I had hope there was potential to improve it with a follow up season with improved writing and story but I guess that will not happen. Now I have seen a massive movement of petitions and a lot of people checking it out more and being disappointed in its cancellation and will be worth to see if it will work out of a revived chance (it has happened before with other shows) but I guess the legend of the Acolyte will lay dormant for the time being.

The next announcement is coming to us in the form of a follow up to a now planned anthology series based on the stories of some of the most dangerous people in the world and following on from the series focused on Jeffrey Dahmer. Earlier this week they unveiled the next series will focus on the story of Erik and Lyle Menendez who in August 1989, they murdered their parent in cold blood with a tale of them suggesting it was in self defense but for other possible nefarious means. The only piece I know of this is a famous playing card of a Basketball player that had them in the background of the stands and I am intrigued to see how the story will play out. You do not have to wait long as they announced this new miniseries story will be releasing next month on September 19th.

On the first of 2 news stories talking about robots and cyborgs, one of the surprise announcements from this week was that it looks like we are getting a new prequel series based on the film franchise of Pacific Rim. The planned new series is set to be a form of an origin film that will tell the creation of the massive 2 people mech fighters that are used to save the world from massive Kaiju creatures and how it all started. Now the likes of this was that I thought the first film told the origin so unless this is set years before that will be my guess and I do hope that Guillermo Del Toro will be back to take on the project in some way and have the appeal of the original instead of the disappointing sequel.

The 2nd piece of Robot news and the final part of the announcement was one that had just came in as an announcement just about a few hours ago and that was the announcement that we will see the return of the character of Ultron in the MCU. It was confirmed that James Spader will be making his return to voice the killer cyborg and his army with the upcoming release of the Vision focused series that is confirmed to be the conclusion of a trilogy that started with Wandavison and part 2 being Agatha All Along. The last time we saw a form of Ultron was about 3 years ago with the release of the What If episode where Ultron won and become the ultimate being of the multiverse that he nearly killer the watcher. It will be intriguing to see what will be made of this character in the new series and if they will have some form of a presence in the upcoming Avengers films but I guess we will find out more about the series as it develops for a supposed 2026 release.

But with all of that, what are your thoughts and opinions on what was discussed in these stories, are you sad for the acolyte not getting a new season and what are your opinions on the new announcements above. Let me know your thoughts on them all below and lets discuss them there.

And with all of that, this brings us to the end of the 78th edition of weird Mind News Room and I do hope that you have enjoyed this mixed length form of content on talking all things media. Let me know your thoughts and opinions on everything down below and as always I hope you all stay being wonderful people and have a great day everyday and I will see you all in the next episode :)

Take Care, keep being you, signing off,

Sam H :)