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They say everything old is new again and at least to my “geriatric” millennial eyes it means my generation’s being sold nostalgia while the Gen Z kids are making TikTok "get ready with me" makeup tutorials for the 90’s grunge look. We’re getting old and they’re thinking they invented messy eyeshadow and runny mascara and the Ninja Turtles. We’re shouting at clouds and they’re buying styrofoam cup stylized imitation Converse, for some reason. I’d love to say we of this generation are above moral panic but to be honest, go as far back as you care to google it and you’ll find that everything from comic books to pinball machines were encouraging kids to become one of Satan’s minions or tear the very fabric of the modern family apart. Too much radio time to too much TV time to too much time on phones and Roblox and Fortnite (Oh my!) And what’s a moral panic without some sense of exaggerated danger in the form of a threat to something we’re all supposed to collectively hold dear to us? We watched our parents buy into the censorship and leaned real hard in the opposite direction. Sure, we didn’t start the fire, but we definitely didn’t think that playing Dungeons and Dragons was going to open you up to anything but math, strategy and longlasting friendships. Are we above it? No, and bad habits die hard. That said though, a lot of moral panics these days, at least for us as elder millennials, boil down to a raised eyebrow or a rolled eye. We needed something with less stakes, perhaps. Less stressful than a threat to everything we are and hold dear. So, we hopped on social media and started making brackets for Disney movies and snack foods. And recently, we started the petty panic epidemic, with a monster of the week to banter about that’s just about as rubber and nonthreatening as those little jelly Godzilla finger things you got out of gumball machines at the grocery store. If you understand when it stops being hilarious and starts being dangerous (think violating people’s boundaries, mockery, not being inclusive), then you can have some real fun of getting a little mad about things that don’t really matter much. On social media it’s an art form. Play the game, vent some stress, and dip out when you just don’t care anymore. Right? Or is it a little more insidious than we thought, and a little bit too fine a line to want to walk before you’re following in your parents footsteps and banning things instead of having conversations. There’s always a new “thing” to fixate on, and right now if you’re in the realms of TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Insta, you might be noticing a three headed monster emerging. This month’s targets have been chosen, and it starts with Stanley cups. This polarizing cup is a suburban status symbol and launched a company that had previously sold thermoses to construction crews into a limelight they hadn’t really seen before, despite having the same or better quality stainless steel bottles on offer for decades. From mommy blogs and play dates it hit magazines, TV shows and the internet at large, and suddenly, and without warning… Starbucks, aka Starby’s to our successors and Stanley collided for one super-mega commercial colossus in the Valentine’s Day limited edition Stanley pink. Not any pink and red: candy heart pink and Russell Stover’s special selection red. And as soon as they dropped a Target release date, it was on. Before you know it, everyone and their mom are at Target behaving badly seconds after strolling in the door to get their mitts on two mugs that, let’s face it, may survive car fires but aren’t really very different from any other stainless steel travel mug. Meanwhile, a makeup company that’s graduated from indie to mainstream, mostly by embracing the magic of the “collab” in a much more successful way than McDonald’s, who thinks that a collab just means adding "X" something to a regular Big Mac Meal and putting it in an adult happy meal box. ColourPop's made an even bigger name of themselves lately, going from just creating great indie makeup that competed with high end dupes to creating eyeshadow palettes and lipsticks to match the mood of your favorite IP, from Animal Crossing to Avatar to Sailor Moon, Harry Potter (a major misstep, and a dealbreaker for many) AND a brand new IP that folks just a little younger than me who didn’t cut their vampire-show teeth on Buffy the Vampire Slayer hold dear: Twilight. So what’s the problem here? Everything from highlighters that don’t shine properly to “false advertising” for announcements that show a deep blood red lip not available using anything in the kit. Moving on from that we’ve got the Sephora tweens. These little monsters are said to have spawned forth from some of our own loins, and perhaps even more shocking, if you want to buy into what’s weirdly become a sort of legitimate panic in some circles, they’re at the makeup stores behaving badly. Mixing up Drunk Elephant smoothies in their Lululemon and…this is all because of gentle parenting! These kids don’t ever get told no and… Here’s where that fine line starts to come in. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s the premise that takes it from eyeroll to exclusion and starts witch hunts and plays into dangerous agendas. I have the lived experience of being a tween. No matter who you are, if you take an honest look back at that “special” time of your life you’re likely to find trauma, drama and angst. You’re also likely to recall yourself as a surly sarcastic little thing that didn’t think it was cool to like anything, hated the way adults did everything, and deeply idolized actual teens and twentysomethings. At least in my cis white female circles, this very critically involved things like Lip Smackers, cucumber melon body lotion, Clinique Happy and CKOne, and edgy little Urban Decay eyeshadow pots. We were the mall invaders. We were the samplers of every single thing in Bath and Body Works and neighboring Yankee Candle and the ones laughing and running past shelves full of glass bottles and somehow not passing out in Perfumania. We were the hellions with war painted arms from swatching all the things at the MAC counter who would bother the makeup artists to do looks on us and then if we were lucky afford one or two things they used that we’d then take home and desperately try to reproduce with Cover Girl and Wet & Wild. Did we leave a mess? Maybe we tried not to, but probably. Did we become sullen, whiny, sometimes sobbing messes when we couldn’t buy the WHOLE look from the MAC counter? Were we not, dare I say, little shits to our parents and some poor store staff who were just trying to do their jobs? It’s this very thing that got me thinking: maybe we’re better off with positivity instead of panic, even if it’s petty. While we’re all aiming for respectful interactions with other humans, let’s not forget that we’ve all gotta figure it out some time, and as much as we insisted it’s not “just a phase, Mom” luckily, it really is. Turning tweens into the latest threat to society isn’t anything new, but it’s not going to help anything, either. And as we’ve learned from Cady Heron in Mean Girls, “calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter.” It might be fun to laugh at soccer moms clamoring for the last pink Stanley at Target, and it might be easy to demonize the tweens being obnoxious and making a mess at Sephora, but it’s probably wiser to keep it to an eyeroll and a doomscroll and try not to cast too much judgement on people’s choices or journeys, because while we might be doing better at staying away from extremes, there’s more room for accepting people for who they are, even if they like pineapple on pizza.

It’s been announced that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II isn’t getting a physical release, and that seems to be continuing the trend that has been started with Alan Wake II. While Alan Wake II found itself on many game of the year lists, it didn’t find itself on store shelves in physical form since it was a digital-only release. It looks like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the follow-up to 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice will also stay digital only as developer Ninja Theory has recently confirmed. Digital only looks to be our future, but it’s definitely bad for consumers. And this is the (extremely simplified) reason why: When you buy a digital product, you’re not actually buying the product itself. Instead, you’re often just paying for access to it. With physical media, the agreements are pretty similar, but the access to your physical media can’t be taken away. With a digital product, there are all sorts of reasons and/or ways your access to that piece of media can be revoked. This loss of access to digital media is already creating a sort of crisis. Some classic movies are almost impossible to find online. For instance, when I look up George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead on Justwatch.com it succinctly informs me that “This title is not available for streaming.” It’s not like you can run to a video rental store (RIP Blockbuster) or even a Redbox and pick up this movie, so your options truly are limited. You can either pirate the movie (if you have the knowledge and want to take the risk) or you can find a physical copy. I was a digital only proponent, until I started to lose access to my stuff as the servers providing it went down. I paid for games that I couldn’t even download anymore. Over the last few years, I started retro collecting because I found that games running on emulated versions didn’t feel the same as they did on original hardware. There certainly is a convenience with digital only. We don’t have to lug our CD collections around in those CD sleeves. And having instant access almost anywhere is definitely an advantage of the more limited physical only versions. But with that convenience we’re giving up personal ownership. I’m not saying that the days of showing off your DVD/Blu-Ray collection should return, but there is a real danger of losing access to media–and even a danger for media to be lost to time. The way of digital only looks to be the prevalent trend, however, with leaks of new digital only Xbox Series consoles and PlayStations with optional optical drives. Hell, Microsoft just let go most of their physical media team during its recent massive layoffs. it’s hard to ignore the writing on the wall: digital only is probably our future.

Daredevil Born Again may have received some great news–especially for fans of the original Netflix series. Fan favorite characters Foggy Nelson and Karen Page might be getting their original actors according to Jeff Sneider on X (formerly Twitter): What that means for the canonicity of the original Netflix show remains to be seen, but I’d like to think that somewhere along the line that Kevin Feige and the forces-that-be over at Marvel decided to expand upon Netflix’s fantastic Daredevil rather than start fresh from the ground-up. I mean, why not? And that’s the question most of the internet was asking until casting choices (namely, Wilson Fisk’s Wife) proved that there may be some shakeup with the show’s original cast. Which is a shame, because Daredevil on Netflix was a great live action showing for the Man Without Fear and his associates. But this latest rumor has served as a panacea for fans that felt like they were going to be forced to watch as their show turned into a twisted, MCU-ified version of itself. Frankly, I actually enjoyed the moments of Charlie Cox’s Daredevil that we got in Echo and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, though both of these have had their critics amongst fans. But I am thrilled to know that Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson might be returning as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson (respectively), because they added heart and a whole lot of fantastic acting to Daredevil during its run on Netflix. Production on Daredevil: Born Again is starting to ramp up, so expect more news coming out of the House of Mouse regarding the Scarlet Swashbuckler and his MCU outing.

I’ve been a Deep Rock Galactic fan since the beginning–and even though I’m coming up on 2,000 hours of playtime, I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. It doesn’t hurt that I have a regular twice a week game where my friends and I dive into the depths of Hoxxes to destroy the local ecosystem while strip mining the minerals. It’s exciting to me, then, that Deep Rock Galactic only seems to be getting more popular each passing year–and with more games on the horizon being developed by Ghost Ship Games (and others!) in the Deep Rock Galactic universe, hopefully this drop pod won’t slow down anytime soon. But let’s look at some of these end of year stats, published by Ghost Ship Games. Unfortunately, most of these stats reflect only the Steam version of Deep Rock Galactic–leaving out the Microsoft Store version (which caters both Windows and Xbox players) and the PlayStation version. It’s amazing that the Deep Rock Galactic community has over 8 million dwarves, and over 150,000 daily users on Steam. It’s definitely an active community. Among the player deaths, it’s no surprise that falling is still the number one cause of death for dwarves on Hoxxes. Coming in far in second place are those ever-present glyphid grunts. Sadly, these stats leave a lot of questions I’d like answered. What is the most played class? How often do cave leaches get dwarves before they get the cave leeches. What are the error cubes for? Stuff like that. Hopefully these stats will only go up for next year–though that seems unlikely for a game that is half a decade old. Then again, if you rock and stone, you're never alone. Rock and stone, miners!

Valve, for most, doesn’t invoke the sense of “evil” that other gaming companies tend to invoke in the community. They’re not known for squashing games based on their IPs, and even encourage putting up Steam pages for them so they can reach a wider audience. It’s surprising, then, that the up and coming remake of Portal for the Nintendo 64 (yeah, you heard that right) has been ordered to be taken down by Valve. It’s a confusing situation for those who follow Valve’s modus operandi, but it makes a little more sense once you realize that Nintendo can get a bit litigious. I’m sure Valve doesn't want any more lawsuits to deal with right now. The reason given for the take down, at least by user @JoeyCheerio on X (formerly Twitter) was that Portal 64 used Nintendo’s proprietary libraries. And when you start to use Nintendo’s stuff without permission, problems start. Surprisingly, another user made mod, Team Fortress 2: Source 2 has also been ordered taken down by Valve. This one is a direct protection of what, I assume, their plan for that IP will be. So that’s sort of good news, at least in that there is a potential update to Team Fortress 2. One that is almost a decade in the making, since that game has been without an update for quite some time.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to grasp what the top brass behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe has planned for the greater MCU. Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Tony Stark was like lightning in a bottle that led to an entire interconnected universe of films that have dominated cinemas for the last decade. However, MCU fatigue is very real, and there aren’t any Robert Downey Jr. level personalities to prop up the franchise, nor any Thanos-like threats to build against, especially now that the fate of Johnathan Majors’ Kang is still being decided behind the scenes. And without a working knowledge of the rest of the MCU, you might feel a little lost. It’s hard to get new faces into a franchise that demands a viewing of 33 films and even more TV shows to access. Then you have shows like Echo that make an earnest effort in creating grounded stories that don’t require you to have working knowledge of the greater MCU.  You know, stories like Netflix did a fantastic job telling. In fact, they did such a good job Echo requires you to have seen them to prime you for their show’s main villain, Kingpin. See, all of Kingpin’s most important character development has been done in a series that is not even considered canon with the greater MCU. It really makes you wonder what the hell they’re thinking. And for a show that doesn’t require working knowledge of the MCU’s vast library of interconnected movies and TV shows, it throws a lot of references to the greater MCU back at an audience that might feel left in the dark. I watched the first episode of Echo, and will most likely finish this series. Secret Invasion lost me after the first episode, but Echo has some potential. Even if Disney doesn’t have enough faith in the show not to dump all of its episodes at once, But really, at this point who’s watching beyond the most diehard of Marvel fans? If such a thing even exists. Perhaps it’ll make some waves in the deaf community, or the Native American population that will finally have some good representation. By all accounts, Alaqua Cox does a fantastic job with her portrayal of Maya Lopez. In fact, critics seemed to like the newest Marvel show, giving it a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, and generally praising everything from its writing to its action scenes. But everyone's conversation about how it's been received has revolved around the question of: “who cares?” and “will people watch it?” According to Televisionstats.com it’s the number 1 ranked show in the US as of today, based on audience engagement. So it’s certainly getting a lot of people talking. Overall, I liked what I’ve seen from Echo so far. A part of me would love to see the MCU finally die off so we can get more variety in our entertainment. However, I don’t think superhero media is going to die off completely, and even the MCU might continue to limp along in a diminished capacity for a very long time. Echo is streaming now on Disney+.

I haven’t played The Last of Us Part 2, but I’m well aware of the controversy surrounding the game based on its handling of Joel. To say that this created an uproar in the fanbase is a dangerous understatement, since not only was there a schism in the community, but it turned into a rift that has been downright adversarial in the most toxic way. Now that the film has reached a larger audience, I’m very concerned for Kaitlyn Dever,  who was recently cast as the controversial Abby. Now, I’m not sure that The Last of Us TV show is going to go the same direction as the game. The first season deviated a fair amount from the source material, which is a perfect way to anger fans of most franchises. But the changes made to the TV show actually ended up being well done and in the spirit of the show, and were thus well received. However, the second season may end up being a little more loyal to the source material, and that’s how we get into problem territory. Potential spoilers ahead. For those aware of the plot, they know that fan favorite surrogate dad Joel (Pedro Pascal) is killed by a revenge seeking Abby in The Last of Us Part 2. I would be surprised if such a major plot point is deviated from, but with Joel being such a beloved character, and Pedro Pascal being such a hot commodity, it’s possible that Joel may meet a kinder fate than his video game counterpart. Since The Last of Us TV show is reaching a wider audience base than the video game, I have some concerns that the backlash will be larger. Now, it’s possible that audiences aren’t as intimately connected to Joel as most players of the game were. After all, Joel was our avatar for most of the game’s story. Unlike TV audiences, we actually walked miles in Joel’s shoes. We were just as helpless as his daughter died in the introduction of the game, and we pulled the trigger to save the life of Joel’s surrogate daughter. TV audiences just don’t have that same connection. In fact, The Last of Us TV show has a real opportunity to “fix” some of the problems that fans had with the game’s sequel. In The Last of Us Part 2 fans weren’t introduced to Abby until after she kills Joel, and then you’re forced to play as her to progress the story. Unlike the video game, the TV show thrives when it takes the perspective from Joel and Ellie. It can employ this with Abby’s story too, instead showing her path of revenge and only revealing that her target was Joel after she has a chance to take her revenge. This angle could potentially “redeem” a story that is maligned by a chunk of the fanbase. But on the face of it, losing a popular actor is just bad business. Plus, don’t you hate it when a character survives a horror movie just to be killed off in the sequel? It’s one of my least favorite tropes. Let’s see how The Last of Us pulls it off. The Last of Us streams on Max and Season 2 will premiere some time in 2025,

Hyperkin, maker of hardware that plays retro games, is releasing a handheld system that can play Sega Genesis and Mega Drive games. The Mega 95 has a five inch display that is toggleable between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, along with a battery that’s touted by Hyperkin to last 10 hours–that’s better than the Sega Nomad’s battery pack that ate through AAs in hours. So if you were a kid and dreamed of wanting a Sega Nomad–or just couldn’t afford the batteries to keep it running–Hyperkin’s Mega 95 might be your dream come true. Just like the Sega Nomad, the Mega 95 isn’t restricted to only handheld play. There will be a dock available that allows you to plug it into a TV, and even has two controller ports for couch multiplayer. I’d love to be able to get my hands on one and check out the screen, but for now I’m stuck looking at these prototype photos.

My backlog from 2023 is a mile long, but I’m surprised it took me this long to get to RoboCop: Rogue City. If you grew up in the 80’s, 90’s or early 00’s, it's a safe bet you've seen RoboCop. While there have been plenty of RoboCop games before, nothing comes as close as RoboCop: Rogue City does to make you feel like you’re the titular shiny policeman with a hand cannon tucked into his leg. This is a game that was designed for millennials. RoboCop: Rogue City is a first person shooter with a surprising amount of narrative beats. It takes place between the movies RoboCop and RoboCop 2. Unlike RoboCop 3, Peter Weller returns for Rogue City, providing the voice for the now cyborg Alex Murphy, or as Omni Consumer Products (OCP) designated him: RoboCop. There are some other familiar faces around, including RoboCop’s parter Lewis. Unfortunately, only Weller returns to reprise his role, while everyone else is voiced by kinda sound-a-likes that deliver wooden performances. I was half expecting RoboCop: Rogue City to be a corridor shooter with a few cutscenes in between to give context to the action. Instead, Rogue City takes a more Deus Ex: Mankind Divided approach by putting you into large (not quite open world) locations where you can explore and fight crime. You can even write tickets for cars parked illegally. It’s really impressive with the level of detail to the RoboCop world, but it also makes you feel more like a cop than just a killing machine. There are a lot of interactions with NPCs, too. You have some moral choices to make, usually siding between the corporate fascist OCP, or the government of Detroit that is just trying to do the right thing. Whether you help certain people or not will have consequences for the future, but they mainly affect story beats only. And there is so much story. There are main plots and side plots galore. And that brings me to my first and most significant complaint about RoboCop: Rogue City: there is almost too much story. I’m glad Rogue City isn’t a corridor shooter, but I’d also like there to be less breaks in the action. It feels like for every few minutes I get to play with my gun out there is at least 5 minutes of exposition waiting around the next gameplay corner. And while these side quests and conversations with NPCs aren’t horrible, they take time away from what makes Rogue City fantastic: its gunplay. RoboCop: Rogue City does an excellent job making you feel like RoboCop. You clomp around with weight. You twirl you sidearm with gusto. And you take down perps with little to no remorse. Sure, you're a cop so you can’t just shoot everything that moves, but more often than not thugs will take out their guns, inviting their gruesome demise. There are hostages you have to look out for occasionally, but luckily the hostage sequences are spread out to not feel overbearing. Everything about the combat feels great, from the sounds to the firing of the gun. There is even a RoboCop appropriate targeting system that highlights enemies. It’s an amazing feeling to clomp through firefights taking out perps with a burst of the iconic handcannon. You can pick up other weapons along the way as your enemies drop them, but I found myself sticking with RoboCop’s overpowered pistol–mostly because of the upgrade system that turned it into a really fun gun to use. While not exactly an RPG, there is a simple skill system in RoboCop: Rogue City that lets you enhance everything from your damage to your conversational skills. You can also upgrade RoboCop’s sidearm by switching out different circuit boards, each with their own potential for modifiers that change multiple aspects of the gun, from its fire rate, how much damage it does, etc. Like I said before, RoboCop: Rogue City feels like a game for millennials. But it stands on its own, without much prior knowledge of the franchise. However, if you’ve seen the movies Rogue City is a real treat, full of the ultra violence and dark humor that made the original movie so popular. RoboCop: Rogue City is available now on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store and for PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox Series S|X.

The Mandalorian and Grogu was announced today, and it will feature two of the most popular characters in the recent Star Wars ouevre . For other IPs it wouldn’t be a surprise that Disney decided to make a feature length film featuring the duo, but for Star Wars it's unprecedented. Still, it’s hardly a surprise. Star Wars films aren’t in the best of shape. While most of the TV shows revolving around that IP have been mostly well received by critics and audiences, the latest Star Wars trilogy received mixed reactions from fans. Now it seems that Disney is leaning on some of its most prominent characters, and that means it's either finally giving fans what they want–or hoping this Hail Mary will “save” what some see as a flagging Star Wars film franchise. The Mandalorian started off as a Disney + show and quickly became popular among core Star Wars fans while also bringing in lots of new fans. It was such a success that it’s not unusual to see stuffed “baby Yodas” on the shelves of most any store. And starring as the titular Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal’s popularity has exploded, making him a household name. After Disney acquired the Star Wars IP for over $4 billion dollars, it has had varying degrees of success with the franchise. While Kathleen Kennedy was lauded by some for overseeing Star Wars as it tried new things, she was hated by the subset of fans that hated how they handled the legacy cast. It’ll be interesting to see if The Mandalorian and Grogu can revitalize the Star Wars IP as a film franchise. One thing’s for sure, though: we’ll be seeing more “baby Yoda” on store shelves–at least for the foreseeable future.

Game Chops is a Video Game Record Label that specializes in signing artists who inspire video game music or provide stylized covers of popular video game music since 2012 but never putting together a full album until later. Now they are home to such popular artists like DJ Cutman and Helynt. After an already jam packed year of video game albums, 14 in total this year alone, comes Sonic and Chill by Funk Fiction. A slick funk based cover album of familiar tunes that really blast our nostalgia ridden brains back to 1991. Funk Fiction himself has been crafting synth wave remixes for a long while (2017)  but with Sonic and Chill he brings the funk to some of our childhood classic songs from the Sega Genesis but with fantastic chilled out vibes popularized on lofi channels across youtube. Favorites like Green Hill Zone, Marble Zone and Angel Island Zone bring us back to our adolescence but it isn’t all remixes. Songs like Chill Zone and File Select take a popular theme or tone and use it to create something wholly new. Clocking in at around 43 minutes, Game Chops and Funk Fiction have really created a special kind of vibe using the Sonic the Hedgehog music catalog and the lo-fi aesthetic that has become all the rage in the last couple of years. With Zelda and Chill, and Mario and Chill already in the collection, Sonic and Chill is a perfect addition in keeping with the fantastic Game Chops lineage.

The show that has been wowing audiences around the world has returned to its self proclaimed second home in the Windy City. Chicago, in partnership with Lin-Manuel Miranda, welcomed Hamilton to the Nederlander Theatre in the Loop this September. We recently were in attendance for a performance and it seems like Hamilton hasn’t missed a beat since it’s departure. There were a few adjustments made only by actor choice but overall, it still hit the same highs as before, with the stand outs being Josh Marin as the King of England and Alex Nicholson. Both commanded audience attention when on stage, hitting every comedy queue and high note necessary for their roles. The audience came in full support of the show's return with near, if not fully sold out shows. With not an empty seat in the house, the new cast felt the love with uproarious applause from the crowd. There is an ongoing lottery sign up on the Hamilton website if you’d like to try your hand on that but otherwise get your tickets early! Tickets are available until January 2024, but no word on the show's run coming to an end officially yet.