Latest news with #GeoffKeighley
Al Bawaba
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Bawaba
Miyamoto reveals main cast for The Legend of Zelda live-action movie
Published July 16th, 2025 - 11:00 GMT ALBAWABA - Hunter Schafer is not starring as Zelda. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto just took to the internet by storm after revealing the new leads for the upcoming The Legend of Zelda live-action movie. The upcoming movie, which is set to premiere in May 2027, sparked widespread debate on social media after fans voiced their concerns over a live-action adaptation of their favorite video game franchise, stating further that an animated show or movie should've been the preferable step to take when bringing Zelda into the world of cinema. According to a post made by Geoff Keighley on X (formerly known as Twitter), English actress Bo Bragason will be playing Zelda while Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will star as Link. A fan wrote, "Actually great casting choices." Another added, "Still think it's bizarre to make a live action over an animated." The live action The Legend of Zelda movie has its leads according to Shigeru will be played by Bo Bragason, and Link by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth. The movie will be out in May 2027. — Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) July 16, 2025 © 2000 - 2025 Al Bawaba (
Digital Trends
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025: How to watch and what to expect
I'm still reeling from all the Summer Game Fest 2025 announcements, but Geoff Keighly is already gearing up to take to the stage again to kick off Gamescom with his annual Opening Night Live kickoff presentation. This is the last major gaming event for upcoming video games to show themselves off to a wide audience before The Game Awards at the end of the year, and we already know some big titles are scheduled to appear. To give you a refresher, Gamecom Opening Night Live 2024 was where we first saw Borderlands 4, plus deeper looks at Civilization 7 and Monster Hunter Wilds. Will this year be able to stack up? We can't say for sure yet, but I can tell you how to watch it and what games you can expect to see. When is Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025? CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 7 worldwide reveal at Opening Night Live kicks off @gamescom in a massive way. Tuesday, August 19. Streaming live everywhere at 2p ET / 11a PT / 8p CEST. — Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) July 14, 2025 The entire Gamescom event runs from August 20 through August 24, but Opening Night Live will get the party started early on Tuesday, August 18, at 2 pm. ET. Recommended Videos There's been no mention of how long Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025 will be, but last year's event was around 2 hours long, plus some pre and post-show coverage, so I suspect this year will end up being a similar length. How to watch Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025 It is to be expected now that all the big gaming events will be streamed live across all major platforms, and Opening Night Live 2025 is no different. You can watch along with the rest of the world who isn't able to be there in person on the official YouTube, Twitch, X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts. Make sure you also keep Digital Trends open as we cover all the announcements as they happen so you don't miss any important details. Every confirmed announcement for Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025 The big showpiece kicking off Opening Night Live 2025 is confirmed to be Black Ops 7, but that will only be the beginning. That's the only confirmed title, but here are some other games I think are likely to appear: 2XKO Borderlands 4 Resident Evil Requiem Silent Hill f Directive 8020 Ninja Gaiden 4 Hollow Knight: Silksong (please!)
The Verge
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
I skipped every Death Stranding cutscene and I'll do it again
I beat the original Death Stranding, but please don't ask me what happened in it. There was a cataclysm — not quite a Gommage — that made the US more divided than ever, and you play as a babysitter-meets-delivery-guy who has special awareness of invisible, hostile creatures called BTs that are 'beached,' which isn't as relaxing as it sounds. There are grenades filled with pee, poop, and blood, and everyone who's anyone was motion-captured to be in the game. There are whales, Guillermo del Toro (in appearance but not in voice), huge pools of tar, and Geoff Keighley is there, too. Sounds like a silly game, right? It is, especially if you skip all of the cutscenes in the game, like I did. And I plan on doing the exact same thing now that the sequel is here. Death Stranding's long cutscenes repelled me from playing through it, and I say that as a longtime fan of the Metal Gear Solid games. After five or so failed attempts at getting past the first episode since the game's 2019 launch on the PS4, due to trying to play it 'right' — which I thought required close examination of every word and frame of this bizarrely written story — I just said 'screw it.' I finally beat the game on my Steam Deck (runs great!) just a couple months ago. It's not that the cutscenes are bad, but their plodding, cinematic pacing feels at odds with the game's overarching design, which is a glorified physics sandbox stuffed with just as much humor as there is desolation. Plus, the gameplay is so good that I didn't want to wait for my reward of just getting to run around again and deliver stuff. Anything that helps me more quickly get to the ridiculous mid-to-late-game Sam-versus-Higgs boxing match is worth it. Death Stranding, even when played as an exposition-light adventure, still holds up because the game is good at doling out meaningful upgrades to how you traverse the fractured land. Aside from missions that require speed (such as pizza delivery) or the utmost care (such as nuke delivery), its design embraces open-ended exploration. Similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, some early environmental obstacles might prove overwhelming enough to put you on a staid, critical path from time to time, but it rarely forces you to choose one method over another. Put a ladder here, a rope or bridge there, or drift down a mountain on a floating carrier. It's fun enough just getting to tough-to-reach markings strewn about the world where fellow Porters have… peed. Experimentation breathes levity into a game world that really needs more of it. Skipping cutscenes allowed me to fully sink my teeth into a game that I would have otherwise missed out on. And you'd better believe that I'll be playing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach the same way. Despite the allure of some seriously quirky characters and the potential of this being the last game in the series for a while (perhaps Physint will be next from Kojima Productions), I'm holding fast to my playstyle. I'm most interested to see how the sequel evolves traversal, and the interplay of the environment and player choice. Cutscenes are just another obstacle.
The Verge
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The whiplash of covering Summer Game Fest 2025 in LA
I love going to Summer Game Fest. It's a rare opportunity to connect with my colleagues and friends in person, as well as listen to developers talk about why they make their games. In some ways, this year's SGF gave me everything I love about the event. But while I was comfortably ensconced in a happy bubble, the escalating conflict between demonstrators protesting against immigration raids and the Los Angeles Police Department cast a dark and soul-shaking pall that could not be ignored. Everything started on June 6th, when it was reported that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had conducted a raid in LA's fashion district, the same area where most of SGF was being held. I wasn't around to experience that because I was at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, watching Geoff Keighley announce a Game of Thrones RTS and a Wu-Tang game. But when Ian Proulx, Splitgate 2 creator and CEO of 1047 Games, came out with his now-infamous 'Make FPS Great Again' hat, it punctured the illusion of distance in time, space, and tone. In the months since President Donald Trump took office, ICE has ramped up its activities, sending agents to snatch parents from their children and children from their schools, enabled under the auspices that removing immigrants will be what makes America great again. Proulx's hat became the story of the day, if not the whole event. It was the main topic of conversation at the lobby bar of the JW Marriott hotel, where each night of SGF is capped off with a mixer. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony, as the very people that slogan has been used to target are being snatched up mere blocks away? Saturday was business as usual. Proulx's hat was forgotten as I settled in to work, flitting between wall-to-wall appointments checking out Escape Academy 2, the new Lego Party game, and Deadpool VR with no time to chat or even eat. I didn't check my phone for hours, and every TV was playing a video game. I had no idea what was happening both in Los Angeles and in the White House. But when there was finally a lull, I popped online, where I was greeted with a deluge of messages from people who were watching the news, telling me that something (a nebulous, undefined, but nevertheless urgent something) was happening and that I needed to get back to the safety of my hotel. Thankfully, my worst fears about martial law declarations and curfews didn't come to pass while I was there, but they did after I was back home. People had taken to the streets of LA in protest of ICE action and began moving through parts of the city, demonstrating and occasionally clashing with the police (and autonomous vehicles). But at that moment, when I was hearing that insurrection acts were going to be invoked and that the National Guard was being mobilized to sweep the city, I became legitimately scared — particularly for attendees who weren't citizens and those with immigrant families. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony? One such colleague, Janet Garcia, wrote an incredible account of what it was like working SGF and being the child of a Mexican immigrant. Her words right now are more important than mine. SGF also coincided with the BET Awards, and honoree Doechii also had a powerful message for the moment. There had already been several stories of international travelers being detained in the US for weeks, and I was scared that if something was happening, my journalist friends from Canada, the UK, and elsewhere could get caught in the mix. Word began spreading that something (again, what that was, nobody could say, and that uncertainty compounded the fear) was happening, and my friends and I all began to start asking aloud: do we need to leave? Some said yes, and I was ready to do just that, but something stopped me. I will never be able to adequately express how weird my job is in situations like this. It's really hard to write about the colorful pixels on a TV when it feels like the world is seconds away from catching fire. And yet I do it every day. Right when I was about to make the decision to leave early, a Capcom PR rep tapped me on the shoulder. I was late to my Resident Evil Requiem appointment. And I went, because in that scary moment I still thought, 'I have a job to do.' I did my best with Requiem, plodding along the abandoned hospital, being suitably impressed by how the sound of Grace's footsteps changed when she walked on the wooden floor vs. the floor covered in bits of broken drywall. But my phone kept buzzing with notifications throughout it all. Midway through the demo, my stress was so high from the ambient spookiness of the game and all the happenings outside the SGF bubble that I couldn't take it anymore. I made my profuse apologies to my PR contact (who was exceedingly gracious and understanding) and left. The mood that night at the hotel was less exuberant. It wasn't just everything going on in LA: the mood of the event itself was the lowest I'd ever seen it in the handful of years that SGF has served as E3's smaller, vibe-ier replacement. There were games there, good ones, but nothing big enough to anchor the show. As the industry faces its third straight year of rampant layoffs, cancellations, delays, and studio closures we're finally starting to see the pipeline of blockbuster games dry up. This was a stark contrast to last year when Sega had Metaphor: ReFantanzio and Shadow Generations, Bandai Namco showed off Shadow of the Erdtree, PlayStation was there with Astro Bot, and Xbox had just announced Gears of War: E-Day. I'm home now. And despite this year's strangeness, I look forward to going back to Summer Game Fest. Because if video games have taught me anything over the years, it's that in the face of overwhelming odds, the best thing one can do is stick together with your friends.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
11 Promising Games I Played At Summer Game Fest 2025
This year's Summer Game Fest was a weird one. On a show-wide scale, Geoff Keighley's Not-E3 was lacking the the big, juggernaut announcements we usually expect from a June video game showcase. That understated showing extended to the actual 'Play Days' show floor in Los Angeles, where developers gave press and content creators a chance to try out new games. What made the show so odd on a smaller scale was that I was the only person on-site covering the show for Kotaku. I've been to Play Days the past three years, and for reasons outside of our control, fewer Kotaku writers have been sent to the biggest American games event with each trip around the sun. As just one person, I was only able to see a handful of games during the event. This means Kotaku unfortunately missed out on a ton of really cool projects, games that I was only able to look at longingly as I passed by them at the show. I hope things are different in 2026, but for now, here are the games I played and saw at Summer Game Fest 2025. This article will be updated periodically as embargoes lift. I know Mario Kart World is the kart racer to beat right now, and while I can't say definitively if Sega's latest Sonic Racing game clears that high bar, I can say what I've played of Crossworlds is a blast. The big headliners from the show were the crossover characters announced at the showcase, but I didn't play as Hatsune Miku, Joker, or Ichiban; I was focused squarely on getting behind the wheel as my guy Shadow the Hedgehog. Crossworlds definitely feels a bit lighter and floatier than other kart racers, but what it lacks in weight, it makes up for in a surprisingly deep customization system that lets you create builds for your vehicles tailored to your playstyle. I was able to add perks like starting races with a specific item to give me an edge at the beginning of a lap, reducing damage when I was on the wrong end of an incoming attack, or even using aggressive gameplay to my advantage by granting myself a boost if I collided with an enemy racer. I'm interested to see what the meta turns out to be when Sonic Racing: Crossworlds launches on Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on September 25. Guacamelee developer Drinkbox Studios' latest game, Blighted, is unlike anything the studio's done before. In the brief time I spent with the action RPG, I was most captivated by its world, in which people can gain memories of the dead by eating their brains. This desecrated land is overrun by horrifying creatures that stand between you and a monster who has begun feasting on the brains of the living and blighted the rest of this world. The game feels reminiscent of Hades' frantic but strategic combat with an isometric view. Its enemy design is its greatest strength, with several of the monsters I faced requiring me to change up my play style and adapt to the moment. Blighted is launching in 2026. Dosa Divas is the next game from Outerloop Studios, the team behind Thirsty Suitors, one of 2023's most delightful surprises. Though I only got to play about 30 minutes of the turn-based RPG, I was already drawn in by its cheeky, timely satire. The game follows siblings Samara and Amani as they face a third sister, who has created a fast food empire so pervasive that it has essentially turned the culture of cooking into a bygone era. The people in Dosa Divas have become so accustomed to convenience that good food created with love and intention is dying out in favor of meaningless slop. That sure does sound like, well, every creative medium right now in the wake of AI-generated garbage and America's attempts to eject entire cultures from its borders. A quick and easy approximation of something is no replacement for the potential of the original when it's made with heart and soul. This cathartic premise is enough to grab my interest, but its simple yet engaging turn-based combat is also a fun vehicle to ride as I watch this sibling rivalry play out. Snap & Grab is one of the more interesting takes on a heist game that I've seen. Rather than executing the crime of a lifetime on your own, the game has you scope out a location to plan a course of action for someone else to take in your stead. As world-renowned photographer Nifty Nevada, I was able to freely take photos at a fancy rich people party, yet instead of merely capturing the festivities, I was actually taking photos of the penthouse to chart out a plan for one of my goons to come in and steal a priceless artifact for me. I had access to most places in the home, so I was able to take photos of where guards would be posted and note potential distractions or weaknesses in the security system. If I could account for all those pitfalls, it'd be a quick grab and dash for my accomplices. As I walked through the penthouse, I noted several other potential setups that I missed in previous runs, so Snap & Grab seems to give you a lot of freedom to chart your own course. I hope it has more surprises in store when it launches next year. Leading up to my appointment, Mixtape was far and away one of the most talked-about games at Summer Game Fest, and I wasn't disappointed. Beethoven and Dinosaur's adventure game stars a group of teenagers in the '90s creating a playlist for their final night together. Each song on the mixtape is accompanied by what is essentially a playable music video animated in a distinct, Spider-Verse-like, stop-motion-esque art style. Every segment is as unique and memorable as the song that accompanies it. The songs are attached to flashbacks of the group's high school antics, and in just the short time I played, each segment was a rolicking good time full of that kind of 'us-against-the-world' hope you feel when you're a teen who hasn't had that optimism beaten out of you yet. I want it now, but I'll have to wait until the full game is released later this year. Absolum was probably my biggest surprise of the show. I went in with no real knowledge, and was kinda disappointed when I had to stop playing it for another appointment. Developed by the team behind Streets of Rage 4, Absolum marries those same pitch-perfect beat-em-up stylings with roguelite runs. It's frenetic, stylish, challenging, and has a gorgeous 2D animation style that's lovely to look at. I played as an agile character whose base kit prioritized quick, vicious combos, and a grappling hook that let me close distance and tear through enemies with reckless abandon. But Absolum has multiple playable characters with different playstyles that you customize throughout each roguelite run. What I played felt deep, demanding, and rewarding, and I can't wait to play more when the game launches on PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch. The old-school Ninja Gaiden games were a blind spot for me for a long time. I played a little of the 3D action titles on the original Xbox and my fair share of Dead or Alive, but as far as the tough-as-nails sidescrollers that started it all, I never saw Ryu Hayabusa's origins. Ryu isn't the main character in Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but his apprentice Kenji is taking the lessons he's learned from the OG out into the field with him. Ragebound is a pretty tough and unforgiving sidescroller that can lay you out in a second if you're not careful. Its combat is one pillar of that challenge. But its platforming, in which you scale walls, hang from ceilings, and overall use every surface to your advantage in one way or another, tests your spacial awareness while half a dozen enemies are pestering you (or just one enemy you can't even damage under normal circumstance is menacingly charging up an attack, preparing to take you out in an instant). It feels like a faithful throwback, and your mileage may vary on whether you're up for the task. If you've ever played something from Supermassive Games, you probably have some idea what you're getting into with Directive 8020. The narrative horror team is delving into sci-fi for the latest entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, and while I spent probably the least amount of time with it of all the games I checked out (roughly 15 minutes), I did see enough to know Supermassive is still doing what it does best: riffing on different horror genres with difficult choices and consequences for your actions. Directive 8020 shows a space station crew turning against each other in paranoia as an alien force that can transform into anyone infiltrates their group, sowing distrust between them as they try to survive. My time with the game was short but sweet. Vermila Studios' horror shooter Crisol: Theater of Idols wears its OG Bioshock influence on its sleeve. But rather than a sunken city, it takes place in a worn-down version of Spain haunted by twisted puppets and mannequins that can only be destroyed by bullets powered by your own blood. It's unnerving and atmospheric, and its use of your health bar as your blood-fueled ammo means you have to make every shot count, lest you die while fighting for your life. The farming sim genre can feel a bit oversaturated these days, as everyone chases Stardew Valley's success. To stand out in 2025, you've gotta have some kind of twist that keeps things fresh. Grave Seasons illustrated that to me in just 30 minutes. The moment that made it click for me was when I was pulling crops out of my garden and found a severed human hand buried in the dirt alongside them. Farming sims are often viewed as a cozy getaway, so Grave Seasons using it as a stage to explore a supernatural murder mystery is the kind of subversive take that carves out space in a crowded market. Relooted was another interesting spin on a heist game that I played in LA, with its bite-sized robberies feeling like brain-teasing puzzles about meticulously planning one swift run from entrance to exit. The game follows an African crew reclaiming stolen artifacts from Western museums, with each member having a skill that makes them crucial to getting these items back where they belong. Your job as the field agent is to assign your team to different stations, so when you grab an item, you've cleared a path for yourself to book it once the alarms start blaring. Arranging a perfect getaway feels satisfying, and it helps that Relooted's sidescrolling parkour is smooth as hell. I played a few early heists, so I can only imagine how much more elaborate later heists can get, and how crafty I'll have to be to see them through. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
