Insomniac Games’ Sunset Overdrive originally came out in 2014 for the Xbox One and in 2018 on PC, but it never came to PlayStation systems. But given a few cheeky tweets, that might be changing. The Sunset Overdrive Twitter account breathed its first breath since 2018, which prompted a response from the official PlayStation Twitter account. While it might just be an innocent crossover, this has led some to believe that a remaster of the first game, a sequel, or both are coming to the PS5 (and possibly the PS4, too, given recent trends) in the near future.
Fizzie, the soda-infused mascot from Sunset Overdrive, tweeted its first tweet since November 22, 2018 by just saying “What the heck. Did anybody hear that?” Insomniac Games then tweeted about Sunset Overdrive, showing Fizzie coming a purple rift; the same purple rifts in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. This is also a part of the Ratchet, Rivet, and Clank takeover of the Insomniac Games account where the studio is tweeting as though they are the three characters. While already quite a coincidence, the PlayStation Twitter quote tweeted one of those tweets with some googly eyes.
All of this seems to point to something related to Sunset Overdrive coming in the future. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is coming out on Friday so it’s possible that it could be some sort of crossover. However, some are thinking that it is hinting at a sequel or remaster of the first game and not just some cheeky online collaboration.
There’s an alleged leak from earlier this year that claims both are coming. This leak in question says that Sunset Overdrive: Refreshed Edition, an updated version of that 2014 original, is coming to the PS4 and PS5 later this fall. The same leak also lists that Sunset Apocalypse, a PS5 exclusive sequel, is also coming at some point in the future.
Sony also registered a Sunset Overdrive trademark. This came after Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida affirmed that Sony does own the Sunset Overdrive IP now after buying the studio in 2019. Nothing has been confirmed — Insomniac also tweeted about Sly Cooper being in the game and it’s unlikely another one of those is coming anytime soon — but it sure sounds like something is coming.
It’s a new month and that means new books are being released. Goodreads has provided their list of most anticipated sci-fi and fantasy books releasing this month according to Goodreads members. I’m honestly surprised that Cavan Scott’s Star Wars: The High Republic – The Rising Storm isn’t on the list, but I guess there are people who don’t read those books. What books are you excited to read in June?
The Chosen and the Beautiful
By Nghi Vo
Publication Date: June 1st
Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.
For the Wolf
By Hannah F. Whitten
Publication Date: June 1st
The first daughter is for the Throne.
The second daughter is for the Wolf.
For fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale comes a dark fantasy novel about a young woman who must be sacrificed to the legendary Wolf of the Wood to save her kingdom. But not all legends are true, and the Wolf isn’t the only danger lurking in the Wilderwood.
As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he’ll return the world’s captured gods.
Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can’t control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can’t hurt those she loves. Again.
But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn’t learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.
The Hidden Palace
By Helene Wecker
Publication Date: June 8th
Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a perpetually restless and free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and pretend to be human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Having encountered each other under calamitous circumstances, Chava and Ahmad’s lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.
Each has unwittingly affected the humans around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.
Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?
The Wolf and the Woodsman
By Ava Reid
Publication Date: June 8th
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.
As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.
The Jasmine Throne
By Tasha Suri
Publication Date: June 8th
Exiled by her despotic brother when he claimed their father’s kingdom, Malini spends her days trapped in the Hirana: an ancient, cliffside temple that was once the source of the magical deathless waters, but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
A servant in the regent’s household, Priya makes the treacherous climb to the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to play the role of a drudge so long as it keeps anyone from discovering her ties to the temple and the dark secret of her past.
But when Malini bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to steal a throne. The other is a powerful priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.
The Library of the Dead
By T.L. Huchu
Publication Date: June 1st
When a child goes missing in Edinburgh’s darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?
When ghosts talk, she will listen…
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children–leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world.
She’ll dice with death (not part of her life plan…), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She’ll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down.
Girl One
By Sara Flannery Murphy
Publication Date: June 1st
Josephine Morrow is Girl One, the first of nine “Miracle Babies” conceived without male DNA, raised on an experimental commune known as the Homestead. When a suspicious fire destroys the commune and claims the lives of two of the Homesteaders, the remaining Girls and their Mothers scatter across the United States and lose touch.
Years later, Margaret Morrow goes missing, and Josie sets off on a desperate road trip, tracking down her estranged sisters who seem to hold the keys to her mother’s disappearance. Tracing the clues Margaret left behind, Josie joins forces with the other Girls, facing down those who seek to eradicate their very existence while uncovering secrets about their origins and unlocking devastating abilities they never knew they had.
Bacchanal
By Veronica Henry
Publication Date: June 1st
Evil lives in a traveling carnival roaming the Depression-era South. But the carnival’s newest act, a peculiar young woman with latent magical powers, may hold the key to defeating it. Her time has come.
Abandoned by her family, alone on the wrong side of the color line with little to call her own, Eliza Meeks is coming to terms with what she does have. It’s a gift for communicating with animals. To some, she’s a magical tender. To others, a she-devil. To a talent prospector, she’s a crowd-drawing oddity. And the Bacchanal Carnival is Eliza’s ticket out of the swamp trap of Baton Rouge.
Among fortune-tellers, carnies, barkers, and folks even stranger than herself, Eliza finds a new home. But the Bacchanal is no ordinary carnival. An ancient demon has a home there too. She hides behind an iridescent disguise. She feeds on innocent souls. And she’s met her match in Eliza, who’s only beginning to understand the purpose of her own burgeoning powers.
Only then can Eliza save her friends, find her family, and fight the sway of a primordial demon preying upon the human world. Rolling across a consuming dust bowl landscape, Eliza may have found her destiny.
Star Eater
By Kerstin Hall
Publication Date: June 22nd
All martyrdoms are difficult.
Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.
So when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.
A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.
The Witness for the Dead
By Katherine Addison
Publication Date: June 22nd
Katherine Addison returns at last to the world of The Goblin Emperor with this stand-alone sequel.
When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it.
Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly.
The classic 1960s TV series The Munsters is being adapted into a feature film and Rob Zombie has confirmed on Instagram that he’ll be directing the film. He shared a logo with the following statement:
“Attention Boils and Ghouls! The rumors are true! My next film project will be the one I’ve been chasing for 20 years! THE MUNSTERS! Stay tuned for exciting details as things progress!”
Zombie is best known for directing crazy, weird, dark, and brutally violent movies. I’m not really a fan of most of the films that Zombie has made, but The Munsters will definitely be a different kind of project for him. I don’t even know if Zombie can even make a lighthearted comedy like the original series. Who knows, maybe it won’t be a lighthearted comedy.
I honestly don’t know what a Rob Zombie-directed Munsters movie even looks like. I mean, when I do imagine it, I see the Munster family as a bunch of hillbillies monsters living in the backwoods, capturing and brutally murdering any outsiders who pass through their town.
I loved watching the original series when I was growing up, it’s a fun show! It centered on Herman Munster, a Frankenstein-like creature, his vampire wife Lily, along with their son Eddie, who is a werewolf, and their teenage niece Marilyn, who is a normal human. Then there’s also Lily’s father, Grandpa.
I’m curious to see what Zombie is planning for this film, but I can’t say I’m excited about it. We’ll just have to wait and see what he does. What do you think he’ll do with the movie?
Ubisoft revealed Rainbow Six Quarantine in E3 2019, a game about some sort pandemic, has finally been renamed in light of, well, the state of the outside world. The publisher unveiled the new title, one less likely to conjure up negative comparisons to the last 15 months: Rainbow Six Extraction. This announcement of the new game was coupled with a pre-reveal, stating that more of the co-op shooter will be shown at Ubisoft Forward on June 12.
Sentient. Consuming. Inevitable. See what awaits you in Rainbow Six Extraction. pic.twitter.com/3S3EBBlQEV
— Rainbow Six Extraction (@R6Extraction) June 7, 2021
The Rainbow Six Extraction Twitter account sent out its first tweet this morning with a teaser trailer attached. The teaser shows a nefarious black goop overrunning an abandoned facility before shooting spikes through the ground near some sort of robot. Given a follow-up tweet, it seems as though this infection is called the “Sprawl.”
Changing the name has been in the works for quite some time. “Rainbow Six Parasite” was thrown around last year as details leaked onto the PlayStation Network, as discovered by MP1st. Given pandemic, many assumed the game had changed its named because of the global pandemic. Ubisoft then came out during an earnings call and said that it was “evaluating” giving the game a new name and that Parasite was just an internal name.
Marvel dropped some big news on Friday. They’re releasing their very own tabletop roleplaying game in 2023 called Marvel Multiverse. The game will use the all-new D616 system and let you play as your favorite heroes and villains.
In spring 2022, a Playtest Rulebook will become available allowing fans to take on the roles of their favorite heroes or the ability to create brand new ones. The Playtest Rulebook will even have full profiles available for fan favorites including Spider-Man, Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Wolverine, Storm, and more.
Marvel Multiverse is written and co-designed by Matt Forbeck (The Marvel Encyclopedia). Sadly, we don’t know much about the new D616 system, but there are 6 stats that your character will use: Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic.
They also say that it’s “an accessible and easy-to-learn system for newcomers to tabletop RPGs and a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop role-playing games on the market.” Anyone who plays with the Playtest Rulebook will be given the chance to provide feedback before the game has its full release in 2023. The cover for the Playtest Rulebook is by Iban Coello.
Dwayne Johnson and Beau Flynn are re-teaming for the upcoming action-thriller Emergency Contact, set against the Austin, Texas underground music scene. The film will star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, known for his roles in Aquaman, Us, Watchmen, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. The movie is coming from a pitch from busy writing team Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, who wrote Johnson’s upcoming superhero DC movie Black Adam.
Abdul-Mateen will executive produce, with Flynn is producing through his FlynnPictureCo., with producing partners Johnson, Hiram Garcia and Dany Garcia and their Seven Bucks Productions, who recently produced Johnson’s Disney flick Jungle Cruise. Flynn previously produced Johnson’s films Baywatch, Rampage, and Skyscraper.
The film is only described as a “high-concept, high-octane action film set in Austin,” but no further plot details are available.
It sounds like a solid group to bring this concept to life. Are you intrigued by this project?
