Latest news with #KyleKatarn
Engadget
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Amazon offers four more free games for Prime Day, including Marvel's Midnight Suns
The 2025 edition of Prime Day is upon us and, as expected, Amazon is offering Prime members an extra batch of games at no additional cost. Four more PC titles are now available to Prime Gaming subscribers, namely Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Marvel's Midnight Suns and Football Manager 2024. All of these are redeemable via the Epic Games Store save for Dark Forces II, which you can snag via GOG. The highly acclaimed Dark Forces II carries on the story of Kyle Katarn, a young mercenary who has infiltrated the Empire and learns he has a connection to the Force. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first-person survival horror title from 2010. Critics praised its novel 'sanity" gameplay feature, smart writing and immersive nature, and it is regarded as one of the most influential games in its genre. Marvel's Midnight Suns is a much more recent game. This is a 2022 turn-based tactical RPG from Firaxis, which is also known for the Civilization and XCOM series. Although the game struggled commercially, it was broadly critically acclaimed. As for Football Manager 2024 , that remains the most recent entry in the long-running (and time-absorbing) soccer management sim series. Sports Interactive cancelled the 2025 edition in February after months of delays due to development issues. The next instalment should arrive later this year, including the major technical and visual upgrades that were promised for FM25 . In the meantime, you can scoop up the previous edition for zilch if you're a Prime member. However, you'll only have until 11:59PM PT on July 11 to do so. The other three titles will remain in the Prime Gaming lineup for the rest of the month. Along with these freebies, Amazon is offering various discounts on the Luna Controller during Prime Day in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Belgium. In the US, Amazon has slashed the price of the Luna Controller by 43 percent to $40. A bundle that includes one month of Luna+ access is the same price (also 43 percent off). Meanwhile, a bundle of the controller and the Fire TV Stick 4K will currently run you $60 , which is half off. Remember that you'll need to be a Prime member to take advantage of these deals.
Gizmodo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
I Love It When Cassian's Blaster Does the Thing
A love letter to a small noise in a big Star Wars show. There is a lot to love in Andor. It is a dense show, a big show, one that is filled with fascinatingly layered characters worth diving deep into, twisting plotlines that hold a mirror up to our world and the galaxy far, far away alike. It's a show that, in spite of a certain reputation in contrast to other Star Wars stories, is filled with little nods to the franchise's history old and new. But right now, at least in our moment of interest, it's a show where Cassian Andor's blaster pistol goes vuh-weeeeee. Just like Andor more broadly, there's also a lot to love about Cassian's blaster pistol. It's a MW-20 Bryar pistol, itself one of those aforementioned little nods: the design is heavily inspired by the legendary K-16 Bryar pistol wielded by Kyle Katarn in the Star Wars video game series Dark Forces, a character with intriguing parallels to Cassian even beyond the latter in part subsuming the role of the former in modern continuity. It's a good-looking gun design even beyond that legacy, just a flat wedge of weaponry with a handle attached—different enough to Han's iconic DL-44 but in that sort of vein, that excellent Star Wars mix of looking just askance to a real-world gun but with a greebled, sci-fi layer. It also does a little flippy-thing with the body of the blaster that's very cool, which brings us to that sound. The vuh-weeeeee is what accompanies that spinning of main section of the blaster, and in a franchise just bursting with incredible sound design, it's maybe one of Andor's best additions to the auditory canon. It's subtle, but pointed, a layer of Cassian's intimidation whenever he pulls the pistol out to point at someone. Star Wars guns don't need cocking or reloading like some actual weapons do; a blaster bolt is superheated gas condensed into a shard of pure energy. Maybe that's the gas being primed, maybe the chamber is re-filling the flow of tibanna ready to be charged up and fired. Honestly I don't really care to know, because while the internal mechanics of a MW-20 Bryar blaster pistol might be cool, but they're kind of not the point. The vuh-weeeeee serves as a similar auditory clue to both the audience and the characters around Cassian that he's ready to pop off at a moment's notice. There's an actual mechanical ka-chunk noise too, presumably of that spinning section locking back into place on the blaster, but it's the vuh-weeeeee that really sticks in your ear, this high-pitched little whine. In Andor Cassian is the kind of man who rarely pulls out a blaster pistol to not use it: from Skeen to Cloris, when the bryar's broken out, he means business. You hear that ka-chunk, as it settles into a vuh-weeeeee, and you know Cassian's good to go, and that somebody's probably about to get a bolt put through them. This high strung, intense little noise is not unlike the wielder of the weapon that makes it. After all, what is Cassian Andor if not a primed bolt of pure energy, ready to go off at a moment's notice, ready to be aimed in the direction of something and fired at it for maximum effect? All it takes is a ka-chunk, then a vuh-weeeeee, and he's ready to burn a hole through the structures of power he's rebelling against. Perhaps all that's true. But maybe it's also just true that vuh-weeeeee sounds cool as hell, and in a show already bursting with so many ideas and details, at the end of the day, you also just need a bunch of cool spacey noises. Andor is all that character work, all that symbolism and commentary, but it's also the vuh-weeeeee. And it wouldn't quite be Star Wars if it wasn't both.
