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Fe: A Magical, Haunting Indie Adventure

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Fe

You guys ready for a game that exists on an almost pure Zen level? Maybe it’s all the white knuckle PUBG that I have been playing, or the fact that everything on the news is a bummer nowadays, but Fe was an almost medicinal experience for me in contrast. It’s simultaneously relaxing, horrifying and thought-provoking all while being pretty dang adorable. Yea, I know. That’s a heck of a lot of traits to have but the team over at Zoink! seriously manage to pull em off effortlessly.

Fe begins in a Nordic forest where invaders called The Silent Ones interrupt the forests ecosystem by harvesting plant and animal life for their own advancement. You step into the paws of Fe, an adorable creature who acts as the voice of the forest. It’s up to you to tune yourself into the voice of the forest in order to save the day and your little adorable homies of the wild.

Where some games might beat you over the head with tutorials and direction, Fe allows players to figure mechanics out for themselves and pave their own path of exploration. The game encourages exploration at every turn by rewarding you with hidden goodies spread throughout the wilderness.

The polygon-based art style uses minimalism in fantastic ways. The world is made up of vibrant neon eye candy, changing hues as Fe moves from quadrant to quadrant. The effect is immersive and dreamlike. Ultimately, the strange and beautiful cocktail that Fe serves up make for an experience where you are at ease with just roaming around taking in the sights objective free.

There is a certain haunting brutality added by the invasion of the Silent Ones. Their H.G. Wellian appearance, and animations really do cut the image of proper villains but something about their cold methods of harshly harvesting the helpless animals of the forest is pretty mean stuff adding to the villainy. These villains remind me of something, and they are designed to… more on that later.

In order to progress, Fe is required to learn different animal’s languages. For example, to be able to get an assist from birds, you have to help a bird elder out with a certain objective. After learning that language, areas you might have missed before are now accessible to you. The more relics and old ruins you explore the more knowledge you get into the backstory.

Singing the song of the forest in different languages gets you the help of all kinds of animals each with their own unique abilities. If you ever get stuck simply singing may offer some surprises to assist in further exploration.

Fe

The entire game looks remarkable and has a special approach to character/level design and overall game play. This is EA’s first outing with its indie developer-centric “EA Originals,” and a good sign that this branch of EA might be distributing some surprisingly innovative content.

The scariest take away from such a great gaming experience is the nail on the head allegory that the game presents. Humans are obviously the Silent Ones here, presenting a quiet powerful menace. It’s a challenging narrative when put under that lens. It’s horrifying because so are we, and for a game to offer that kind of food for thought is pretty dang great in my opinion.

Fe is an elegant indie title that is powered by a evocative searing score. (I need this soundtrack on some kind of special edition vinyl right away) Past the positive propulsive message that makes up the narrative is a wonderfully, haunting 3D platformer that is equal parts Journey, equal parts Okami and equal parts its own unique little beast. It’s a refreshing title that I’m excited to revisit.

Fe is out now on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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