Ahhh, FIFA. Like the setting of the sun, the drawing in of the nights, the putting on of an old winter coat, there's both an inevitability and a level of comfort that comes with the release of a new FIFA game. The football season is properly back. The squads are correct again. A couple of new features to keep us occupied through the long, dark nights. All is right with the world.

FIFA 20 might not be the series at absolute peak form--so far, Volta doesn't seem like the revolution it perhaps could have been and Career Mode still feels underdeveloped--but modern FIFA is such a broad, deep, and complete offering that it remains a must-buy for football fans.

On the pitch, FIFA 20 is remarkably similar to last year. Sports games do change year-on-year--I just feel that rate of change is slowing as we reach the end of this console generation. So while there are some welcome improvements--more natural first touches and more satisfying ball physics--things feel very similar to FIFA 19 once you walk out of the tunnel.

Set pieces, have, however, received a bit of a makeover--specifically direct free kicks and penalties. In a throwback to the halcyon days of FIFA 2003, both now have you aim a reticle at the precise location you want to place the ball. Then, incorporating last year's genius timed finishing mechanic, you'll need to press shoot again at the right time, while also adding curve in the case of free kicks. Both take a little time to get used to, but they offer greater depth and satisfaction when you smack one into the top corner.

In another nostalgic move--and in an attempt to offer greater improvements off the pitch--FIFA 20 introduces a new mode, the FIFA Street-like Volta Football, bringing street soccer to the main series for the first time. You control a squad of street superstars aiming to become the world's best in a journey that takes you across various unique, exotic locales. These three-, four-, or five-a-side matches are shorter and more chaotic than a standard 11-a-side game, and they feel sufficiently different and entertaining to become a worthwhile staple in FIFA's roster of modes. Fancier tricks and flicks and simplified tactics make it a mode that feels a little more focused on, well, fun, than the more traditional game types--but don't expect the depth FIFA Street gave us all those years ago. There are no Gamebreaker shots here, and it's not as easy to utterly humiliate your opponent with outrageous nutmegs and rainbow flicks. Volta League, the mode's online portion, hasn't been populated enough to find a match so far, so we'll bring you more on that in the days ahead--but the ability to play against human opponents, recruit opposition players, and kit your created character out in new gear means this will almost certainly present more longevity than the mode it replaces, The Journey.

Volta's campaign mode, meanwhile, is a single-player, uh, journey in which you'll face off against AI teams. The world tour structure is compelling and those locations are well-realized, with unique personalities and play styles of their own. However the characters you share your travels with are so irritating, and the writing so aggressively How Do You Do, Fellow Kids, that it becomes a bit of a chore to play. Hopefully, more time with the mode will lead to these characters endearing themselves a little more. In a final, strange note, Volta requires an internet connection, even when playing the single-player mode, for reasons that remain unclear.

Career Mode is FIFA's other main single-player offering, and it comes with a raft of new features. Proper conversations between manager and players are finally possible, for example; players will come to you to complain to or thank you about their game-time, as they have for many years, but you now have the opportunity to reply, with the aim to keep their morale--and hence performance levels--high. The system is shallow, with the morale bar seemingly the only variable you can affect, and messages still repeat far too often, but it at least feels a little more interactive than the stagnant old email system.

Similarly, pre- and post-match press conferences have been overhauled, and they now appear more like those seen in The Journey in previous seasons. Again, the objective here is to maintain your team's morale, and again there isn't much more to it, but it is more visually and intellectually stimulating than a simple menu screen, as it was before. The final big new feature is dynamic player potential, which I haven’t gotten deep enough into a save to test just yet, but I’ll report back on its effects soon.

Disappointingly, despite all the changes, Career Mode still feels a little barebones so far, and it still contains a number of inaccuracies. The transfer window ends erroneously late for English clubs, for instance, while VAR and short goal kicks are yet to be introduced into FIFA at all. Transfer negotiations are unchanged, save for two new background locations in which to hammer out a deal, and scouting and youth teams are the same for yet another year in a row. Career Mode has taken some steps forward this year, but a revolution is needed.

Ultimate Team, meanwhile, continues its expansion and is now bigger and better than ever. The adoption of a Fortnite-esque battle pass model in FUT Seasons--not to be confused with FUT Seasons, the sub-mode--is somewhat confusing, but a masterstroke. It essentially manifests itself as an expansion of the existing daily and weekly challenges, with new tasks you can work towards over multiple weeks. Rewards include packs, players, new cosmetic options including tifos and balls, and more. It all adds another way to be rewarded and another objective to work toward--especially useful for those who struggle to compete in the weekend league (which, by the way, is unchanged and hence remains as moreish, and as grindy, as ever).

FUT's other new addition is Friendlies, which are a new way of playing casually within Ultimate Team. There are no great rewards for playing FUT Friendlies, but you do still earn coins, and, crucially, player injuries, contracts, fitness, and your playing record remain unaffected. The community has been crying out for a place to go when they can't face the pressure of Rivals or Squad Battles, and finally they have it. It also contains the same in-depth stat tracking and bizarre mode variants as was introduced in FIFA 19's Kick Off mode, along with new House Rules options. They're a weird, entertaining place to go to have fun with friends and they mean that, if it wasn't already, Ultimate Team really feels like its own game now. You might understandably disagree with its pay-to-win tendencies--yes, spending more money on packs means you're still more likely to get Lionel Messi than someone simply grinding for in-game currency--but FUT is as compelling and complete as game modes come, and I am horribly obsessed once again.

Completeness appears to be the ethos FIFA lives by, and despite the omission of Juventus (forza Piemonte Calcio), this year's game feels more complete than ever. The same goes for its aesthetics and licensing, which continue to offer the closest virtual approximation of real-world football--or, more accurately, Sky Sports' version of football--available.

Flawed and iterative, but comforting, complete, and compelling, FIFA 20 is as frustrating and as essential as ever. The Journey and FIFA Street will continue to be missed, but Volta offers a genuinely different option for those who want to dip in and out across FIFA's smorgasboard of game types, while Ultimate Team continues its route to world domination. It's just a shame Career Mode continues to stagnate--even if EA has finally remembered it exists.

Editor's note: With servers online but currently unpopulated before release, we'll bring our final verdict on FIFA 20 soon, once we've had more chance to test out Pro Clubs, Volta League, and Ultimate Team.

Ahhh, FIFA. Like the setting of the sun, the drawing in of the nights, the putting on of an old winter coat, there's both an inevitability and a level of comfort that comes with the release of a new FIFA game. The football season is properly back. The squads are correct again. A couple of new features to keep us occupied through the long, dark nights. All is right with the world.

FIFA 20 might not be the series at absolute peak form--so far, Volta doesn't seem like the revolution it perhaps could have been and Career Mode still feels underdeveloped--but modern FIFA is such a broad, deep, and complete offering that it remains a must-buy for football fans.

On the pitch, FIFA 20 is remarkably similar to last year. Sports games do change year-on-year--I just feel that rate of change is slowing as we reach the end of this console generation. So while there are some welcome improvements--more natural first touches and more satisfying ball physics--things feel very similar to FIFA 19 once you walk out of the tunnel.

Set pieces, have, however, received a bit of a makeover--specifically direct free kicks and penalties. In a throwback to the halcyon days of FIFA 2003, both now have you aim a reticle at the precise location you want to place the ball. Then, incorporating last year's genius timed finishing mechanic, you'll need to press shoot again at the right time, while also adding curve in the case of free kicks. Both take a little time to get used to, but they offer greater depth and satisfaction when you smack one into the top corner.

In another nostalgic move--and in an attempt to offer greater improvements off the pitch--FIFA 20 introduces a new mode, the FIFA Street-like Volta Football, bringing street soccer to the main series for the first time. You control a squad of street superstars aiming to become the world's best in a journey that takes you across various unique, exotic locales. These three-, four-, or five-a-side matches are shorter and more chaotic than a standard 11-a-side game, and they feel sufficiently different and entertaining to become a worthwhile staple in FIFA's roster of modes. Fancier tricks and flicks and simplified tactics make it a mode that feels a little more focused on, well, fun, than the more traditional game types--but don't expect the depth FIFA Street gave us all those years ago. There are no Gamebreaker shots here, and it's not as easy to utterly humiliate your opponent with outrageous nutmegs and rainbow flicks. Volta League, the mode's online portion, hasn't been populated enough to find a match so far, so we'll bring you more on that in the days ahead--but the ability to play against human opponents, recruit opposition players, and kit your created character out in new gear means this will almost certainly present more longevity than the mode it replaces, The Journey.

Volta's campaign mode, meanwhile, is a single-player, uh, journey in which you'll face off against AI teams. The world tour structure is compelling and those locations are well-realized, with unique personalities and play styles of their own. However the characters you share your travels with are so irritating, and the writing so aggressively How Do You Do, Fellow Kids, that it becomes a bit of a chore to play. Hopefully, more time with the mode will lead to these characters endearing themselves a little more. In a final, strange note, Volta requires an internet connection, even when playing the single-player mode, for reasons that remain unclear.

Career Mode is FIFA's other main single-player offering, and it comes with a raft of new features. Proper conversations between manager and players are finally possible, for example; players will come to you to complain to or thank you about their game-time, as they have for many years, but you now have the opportunity to reply, with the aim to keep their morale--and hence performance levels--high. The system is shallow, with the morale bar seemingly the only variable you can affect, and messages still repeat far too often, but it at least feels a little more interactive than the stagnant old email system.

Similarly, pre- and post-match press conferences have been overhauled, and they now appear more like those seen in The Journey in previous seasons. Again, the objective here is to maintain your team's morale, and again there isn't much more to it, but it is more visually and intellectually stimulating than a simple menu screen, as it was before. The final big new feature is dynamic player potential, which I haven’t gotten deep enough into a save to test just yet, but I’ll report back on its effects soon.

Disappointingly, despite all the changes, Career Mode still feels a little barebones so far, and it still contains a number of inaccuracies. The transfer window ends erroneously late for English clubs, for instance, while VAR and short goal kicks are yet to be introduced into FIFA at all. Transfer negotiations are unchanged, save for two new background locations in which to hammer out a deal, and scouting and youth teams are the same for yet another year in a row. Career Mode has taken some steps forward this year, but a revolution is needed.

Ultimate Team, meanwhile, continues its expansion and is now bigger and better than ever. The adoption of a Fortnite-esque battle pass model in FUT Seasons--not to be confused with FUT Seasons, the sub-mode--is somewhat confusing, but a masterstroke. It essentially manifests itself as an expansion of the existing daily and weekly challenges, with new tasks you can work towards over multiple weeks. Rewards include packs, players, new cosmetic options including tifos and balls, and more. It all adds another way to be rewarded and another objective to work toward--especially useful for those who struggle to compete in the weekend league (which, by the way, is unchanged and hence remains as moreish, and as grindy, as ever).

FUT's other new addition is Friendlies, which are a new way of playing casually within Ultimate Team. There are no great rewards for playing FUT Friendlies, but you do still earn coins, and, crucially, player injuries, contracts, fitness, and your playing record remain unaffected. The community has been crying out for a place to go when they can't face the pressure of Rivals or Squad Battles, and finally they have it. It also contains the same in-depth stat tracking and bizarre mode variants as was introduced in FIFA 19's Kick Off mode, along with new House Rules options. They're a weird, entertaining place to go to have fun with friends and they mean that, if it wasn't already, Ultimate Team really feels like its own game now. You might understandably disagree with its pay-to-win tendencies--yes, spending more money on packs means you're still more likely to get Lionel Messi than someone simply grinding for in-game currency--but FUT is as compelling and complete as game modes come, and I am horribly obsessed once again.

Completeness appears to be the ethos FIFA lives by, and despite the omission of Juventus (forza Piemonte Calcio), this year's game feels more complete than ever. The same goes for its aesthetics and licensing, which continue to offer the closest virtual approximation of real-world football--or, more accurately, Sky Sports' version of football--available.

Flawed and iterative, but comforting, complete, and compelling, FIFA 20 is as frustrating and as essential as ever. The Journey and FIFA Street will continue to be missed, but Volta offers a genuinely different option for those who want to dip in and out across FIFA's smorgasboard of game types, while Ultimate Team continues its route to world domination. It's just a shame Career Mode continues to stagnate--even if EA has finally remembered it exists.

Editor's note: With servers online but currently unpopulated before release, we'll bring our final verdict on FIFA 20 soon, once we've had more chance to test out Pro Clubs, Volta League, and Ultimate Team.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has charitably offered to buy Sylvester Stallone a new knife if his upcoming Rambo film is a success.

In a video posted to his personal Twitter, Schwarzenegger remarks on the quality of a knife Stallone signed for charity in Cardiff. The Tweet is captioned, "Good luck with Rambo this weekend, @TheSlyStallone. I loved it, and when it’s a hit I’m going to buy you a new knife to celebrate."

Thank you very much big man. You’re a great friend, and a great star, but my knife is always going to be sharper than yours! #RAMBO https://t.co/co7YZk1Uhl

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Now that director James Gunn has officially revealed the full cast for DC’s upcoming movie The Suicide Squad, we know that actor Jai Courtney will be returning to the role of Captain Boomerang. But just because he's coming back doesn't mean he's safe. When it comes to a franchise like this, anyone can die, as Slipknot learned the hard way. While talking to ComingSoon.net, Courtney expressed how he hopes Captain Boomerang doesn’t come back for the Suicide Squad sequel only to be killed off early on.

“Obviously I can’t talk about it at all, but I’d be disappointed with that as well,” Courtney told the outlet.

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Every victory in Overland, no matter how small, is won by the skin of your teeth. That's a feeling any good turn-based tactical strategy game gives you, of course. But Overland's pared-down options, compact maps, and fast-rising stakes mean that nearly every decision--the car you drive, the company you keep, where you move, what you carry--feels vital and could potentially have major ramifications. A mysterious and omnipresent race of creatures (I think) has ravaged the USA, and for the characters under your care, road-tripping from the East Coast to the West Coast seems to be the best course of action. The journey across Middle America is a beautiful but difficult one, filled with life-or-death obstacles right from the get-go, and Overland's roguelike structure means you will see dozens, if not hundreds, of ordinary people (and dogs, all of them good) perish in fraught situations. But the high risk makes its small victories, like finding a cool item or escaping an area unharmed, feel all the more rewarding, more motivating. Overland is filled with bite-sized doses of relief that feed you with the encouragement you need to continue helping these poor folk on the off chance that maybe this time, you might make it all the way.

The post-apocalyptic survivors of Overland don't possess the combat expertise of XCOM or Fire Emblem soldiers. The randomly-generated personality traits for characters are simple in nature, but make them feel more grounded and sympathetic than your typical strategy soldier, perhaps emboldening them as a good yeller, or informing you that someone “really misses their family.” Attacking and killing the unnerving and aggressive rock-like creatures that stalk you in each area you traverse is an option (if you happen to be carrying a makeshift weapon, at least), but clearing the playfield of hostiles isn't really the objective here. In fact, the noise that you make in attacking the creatures only attracts more, and in the game's densely packed maps, consisting of a 9x9 grid filled with buildings and solid obstacles, it will quickly create a scenario that is impossible to escape.

Overland is instead a game that centers around your roadtrip vehicle. The vehicle you drive is your lifeline, and as you move from area to area on your trip west, your main priority is to keep that four-wheeled machine fueled and in good shape. You start with a simple hatchback but will eventually stumble across different models, and your type of vehicle will inform your strategy--vans let you transport more survivors than your standard car should you encounter them and pickup trucks provide plenty of storage for items but sacrifice seating. SUVs are a late-game godsend that marry the best of both worlds. Escaping an area on foot is possible, but as you'd expect, it's impossible to make any cross-country progress--your characters will be funneled into an area with a beat-up car to try and salvage in order to move forward.

Keeping your engine running is the game's central challenge, and it's a demanding one. You need to scavenge new areas for fuel canisters, perhaps finding them in dumpsters or slowly siphoning gas from abandoned cars, and you might find some useful tools and items to assist you along the way. But where Overland creates its challenge, and in turn, its compelling high-risk decision making, is in the strict limitations it puts on what you're actually able to achieve. Restrictions characterise every aspect of the game: Your characters can only take two actions per turn and two hits before dying, and getting injured reduces your actions per turn to one; your vehicle can only take two hits before exploding, and its movement is limited to the two-lane road down the middle of the map, which will often be littered with junk; each character can only hold one item, meaning scavenging is an onerous task that potentially means giving up the ability for a character to defend themselves, and the compact maps mean you're always one square away from either narrowly slipping by or getting skewered by a creature. The lack of choice and options available to you in the overall moment-to-moment makes the ones that are there feel intimidatingly important--one misstep can cause serious havoc.

There are items and character traits that can help push these boundaries. For example, your lone starter character will always be equipped with a backpack to carry an extra item, some traits will let survivors perform specific actions for free, and most (but not all) dogs have an inherent attack option. But it's rare for you to feel like you have a complete handle on the situation in Overland, and even then, it'll definitely be short-lived. The margin between success and failure is very fine, and constantly having to fly by the seat of your pants and improvise is a heart-pounding feeling--an undo function is available but has limits and conditions, and the game saves after the end of each turn.

All of these factors help guarantee that every new run of Overland you play will be filled with memorable narratives born out of the natural flow of the game. One time, I was eking through a road blockage by having two characters clear debris as a third slowly snaked the car through a narrow passage, all while dozens of creatures bore down on us. A larger creature shoved debris between the clearing crew and the car, leaving me no choice but to escape on foot and leave the driver behind to a grizzly fate. In another situation, my crew of three stumbled across a brand-new, well-equipped pickup truck. But it could only seat two people, and after some consideration, I purposely drove away with my two favorites, abandoning the weakest member of the group. Later on in the run, that person would come back to try and get revenge. In one of my favorite scenarios, one of my human characters was cornered, unarmed, by a creature while scavenging. In a moment of desperation, I commanded her two other companions, both dogs, to race to the car, grab a wooden pallet from the trunk, and work to pass it to her relay-style so she could block the hit she was about to take. Overland is filled with these kinds of thrilling, dire scenarios where you need to improvise an immediate solution or resolve to just drop everything and get the hell out of there.

There is a caveat to a game with so many difficult decisions, however: The risk of getting yourself stuck in a bad situation with no obvious way out and a feeling of merely perpetuating your eventual demise. You'll likely have many forlorn campaigns in Overland, especially when starting out, where the difficulty and hopelessness can feel overwhelming. Perhaps you're constantly driving on fumes and finding it's too difficult to obtain fuel from any of the areas presented to you, or perhaps your survivors are all injured and movement-restricted, making it feel impossible to achieve anything meaningful. Overland does present you opportunities to crawl back from these hopeless brinks--believe me, it's possible. But it can sometimes feel like the procedurally generated aspects of the game are stacked against you--especially when you have a crew equipped with debuffs like "Bad Driver" and "Clumsy,"’ guzzling up gas at an increased rate and making a racket with every action they take.

But Overland's brutal, minimalist design is tough to stay away from. The bite-sized victories you narrowly eke out with each new area are incredibly moreish, and the game feels very well-suited to portable play on both Nintendo Switch and on iPhone through Apple Arcade. The game's clean, stylish art direction and somber, eerie soundtrack help to build the intriguing sense of mystery, too--whatever is happening in this post-apocalypse is likely much bigger than you or your survivors will ever have the chance to fully understand.

All that matters is getting your survivors to the West Coast and making it through seven different biomes filled with an increasingly distressing variety of threats and hardships with whatever tools you can scrounge together. Overland perfectly captures a feeling of being helpless, of only just getting by, and of being afraid to venture too far away from your car into the pitch-black dark of night. Every movement you commit, every action you command, and every item or character you sacrifice for another will be an apprehensive decision. But taking each of those tough steps makes you even more grateful to hear the soft chime of your car's open-door alarm when you make it back, and the rev of the motor when you escape down the highway, relieved to leave another pack of abnormal creatures behind.

Every victory in Overland, no matter how small, is won by the skin of your teeth. That's a feeling any good turn-based tactical strategy game gives you, of course. But Overland's pared-down options, compact maps, and fast-rising stakes mean that nearly every decision--the car you drive, the company you keep, where you move, what you carry--feels vital and could potentially have major ramifications. A mysterious and omnipresent race of creatures (I think) has ravaged the USA, and for the characters under your care, road-tripping from the East Coast to the West Coast seems to be the best course of action. The journey across Middle America is a beautiful but difficult one, filled with life-or-death obstacles right from the get-go, and Overland's roguelike structure means you will see dozens, if not hundreds, of ordinary people (and dogs, all of them good) perish in fraught situations. But the high risk makes its small victories, like finding a cool item or escaping an area unharmed, feel all the more rewarding, more motivating. Overland is filled with bite-sized doses of relief that feed you with the encouragement you need to continue helping these poor folk on the off chance that maybe this time, you might make it all the way.

The post-apocalyptic survivors of Overland don't possess the combat expertise of XCOM or Fire Emblem soldiers. The randomly-generated personality traits for characters are simple in nature, but make them feel more grounded and sympathetic than your typical strategy soldier, perhaps emboldening them as a good yeller, or informing you that someone “really misses their family.” Attacking and killing the unnerving and aggressive rock-like creatures that stalk you in each area you traverse is an option (if you happen to be carrying a makeshift weapon, at least), but clearing the playfield of hostiles isn't really the objective here. In fact, the noise that you make in attacking the creatures only attracts more, and in the game's densely packed maps, consisting of a 9x9 grid filled with buildings and solid obstacles, it will quickly create a scenario that is impossible to escape.

Overland is instead a game that centers around your roadtrip vehicle. The vehicle you drive is your lifeline, and as you move from area to area on your trip west, your main priority is to keep that four-wheeled machine fueled and in good shape. You start with a simple hatchback but will eventually stumble across different models, and your type of vehicle will inform your strategy--vans let you transport more survivors than your standard car should you encounter them and pickup trucks provide plenty of storage for items but sacrifice seating. SUVs are a late-game godsend that marry the best of both worlds. Escaping an area on foot is possible, but as you'd expect, it's impossible to make any cross-country progress--your characters will be funneled into an area with a beat-up car to try and salvage in order to move forward.

Keeping your engine running is the game's central challenge, and it's a demanding one. You need to scavenge new areas for fuel canisters, perhaps finding them in dumpsters or slowly siphoning gas from abandoned cars, and you might find some useful tools and items to assist you along the way. But where Overland creates its challenge, and in turn, its compelling high-risk decision making, is in the strict limitations it puts on what you're actually able to achieve. Restrictions characterise every aspect of the game: Your characters can only take two actions per turn and two hits before dying, and getting injured reduces your actions per turn to one; your vehicle can only take two hits before exploding, and its movement is limited to the two-lane road down the middle of the map, which will often be littered with junk; each character can only hold one item, meaning scavenging is an onerous task that potentially means giving up the ability for a character to defend themselves, and the compact maps mean you're always one square away from either narrowly slipping by or getting skewered by a creature. The lack of choice and options available to you in the overall moment-to-moment makes the ones that are there feel intimidatingly important--one misstep can cause serious havoc.

There are items and character traits that can help push these boundaries. For example, your lone starter character will always be equipped with a backpack to carry an extra item, some traits will let survivors perform specific actions for free, and most (but not all) dogs have an inherent attack option. But it's rare for you to feel like you have a complete handle on the situation in Overland, and even then, it'll definitely be short-lived. The margin between success and failure is very fine, and constantly having to fly by the seat of your pants and improvise is a heart-pounding feeling--an undo function is available but has limits and conditions, and the game saves after the end of each turn.

All of these factors help guarantee that every new run of Overland you play will be filled with memorable narratives born out of the natural flow of the game. One time, I was eking through a road blockage by having two characters clear debris as a third slowly snaked the car through a narrow passage, all while dozens of creatures bore down on us. A larger creature shoved debris between the clearing crew and the car, leaving me no choice but to escape on foot and leave the driver behind to a grizzly fate. In another situation, my crew of three stumbled across a brand-new, well-equipped pickup truck. But it could only seat two people, and after some consideration, I purposely drove away with my two favorites, abandoning the weakest member of the group. Later on in the run, that person would come back to try and get revenge. In one of my favorite scenarios, one of my human characters was cornered, unarmed, by a creature while scavenging. In a moment of desperation, I commanded her two other companions, both dogs, to race to the car, grab a wooden pallet from the trunk, and work to pass it to her relay-style so she could block the hit she was about to take. Overland is filled with these kinds of thrilling, dire scenarios where you need to improvise an immediate solution or resolve to just drop everything and get the hell out of there.

There is a caveat to a game with so many difficult decisions, however: The risk of getting yourself stuck in a bad situation with no obvious way out and a feeling of merely perpetuating your eventual demise. You'll likely have many forlorn campaigns in Overland, especially when starting out, where the difficulty and hopelessness can feel overwhelming. Perhaps you're constantly driving on fumes and finding it's too difficult to obtain fuel from any of the areas presented to you, or perhaps your survivors are all injured and movement-restricted, making it feel impossible to achieve anything meaningful. Overland does present you opportunities to crawl back from these hopeless brinks--believe me, it's possible. But it can sometimes feel like the procedurally generated aspects of the game are stacked against you--especially when you have a crew equipped with debuffs like "Bad Driver" and "Clumsy,"’ guzzling up gas at an increased rate and making a racket with every action they take.

But Overland's brutal, minimalist design is tough to stay away from. The bite-sized victories you narrowly eke out with each new area are incredibly moreish, and the game feels very well-suited to portable play on both Nintendo Switch and on iPhone through Apple Arcade. The game's clean, stylish art direction and somber, eerie soundtrack help to build the intriguing sense of mystery, too--whatever is happening in this post-apocalypse is likely much bigger than you or your survivors will ever have the chance to fully understand.

All that matters is getting your survivors to the West Coast and making it through seven different biomes filled with an increasingly distressing variety of threats and hardships with whatever tools you can scrounge together. Overland perfectly captures a feeling of being helpless, of only just getting by, and of being afraid to venture too far away from your car into the pitch-black dark of night. Every movement you commit, every action you command, and every item or character you sacrifice for another will be an apprehensive decision. But taking each of those tough steps makes you even more grateful to hear the soft chime of your car's open-door alarm when you make it back, and the rev of the motor when you escape down the highway, relieved to leave another pack of abnormal creatures behind.

Apple Arcade, the mobile gaming subscription service for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac users is officially out starting today, along with the launch of iOS 13. And if you’ve been on the fence wondering if $5 a month is worth paying to play a selection of curated mobile games that are all certified as ad and microtransaction-free, I can tell you that based on my experience with the beta it most certainly is.

I’ve been able to play with the service for the last couple of days thanks to it being available a few days early through the iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 betas. Out of the 53 games available now I played through a good handful, including Oceanhorn 2, Speed Demons, and Spaceland.

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Universal Studios' 2019 Halloween Horror Nights event has kicked off in both the Hollywood or Orlando theme parks, featuring haunted houses and mazes based on original concepts and iconic horror properties like Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Stranger Things, and Jordan Peele's Us.

If you're wondering when to visit the Universal theme parks for a night of scares, Universal Studios Hollywood is running its HHN on dates from September 13-15, 19-22, 26-29; October 3-6, 10-13, 17-20, 24-27, 31; and November 1-3, 2019. The dates for Universal Studios' Orlando HHN event are September 6-8, 12-15, 18-22, 25-29; October 2-6, 9-13, 17-20, 23-27, 29-31; and November 1-2.

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I had quite a few gaming options this past weekend. I could shoot my way through the cel-shaded landscapes of Pandora in Borderlands 3. I could dip in and see if Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s beta might bring me back to the franchise. I could start up a new, incredibly in-depth RPG experience with Greedfall. Instead, I decided to play Mutazione.

Mutazione, from Danish developer Die Gute Fabrik and now out on PC, Mac, PS4, and Apple Arcade, is a much smaller-scale experience than any I mentioned above, focused on a 15-year-old girl named Kai venturing to an island inhabited by people mutated from a meteor that fell decades ago. There’s Tung, who looks like the Hulk but is as calm (usually) as Bruce Banner, and Yoke, the archivist with a penchant for piano playing who happens to look like a human-sized rat in a wheelchair.

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The voice cast for Superman: Red Son has been revealed along with the first image from the movie.

TV Insider reports that Jason Isaacs will play Superman against Diedrich Bader (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) as Lex Luthor and Paul Williams (Batman: The Animated Series) as Brainiac.

Vanessa Marshall will return to play Wonder Woman after voicing her in the Crisis on Two Earths and Flashpoint Paradox movies as well as the upcoming Harley Quinn series. Batman will be played by Roger Craig Smith, who previously played the character in Batman: Arkham Origins and Batman Unlimited.

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