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Well, with the new Devoid of Liberty update, which sees us battling against a tide of void-mutated enemies the Illuminate have unleashed, the SEAF have also been buffed to better face the battle. To quote the official blog post:

"We have commissioned SEAF platoons to aid in completing operations. They’ll arrive on dropships to fight alongside you and your squad, offering medical support via stims, but also give a boost to your morale when you salute, shake hands, and–of course–hug them."

Yes, that's right, you can now hug the little troopers in blue. I hopped into the game to try it out, and, as you'll see below, SEAF troopers will pause mid shot and accept your offer of a little morale-boosting cuddle. It's only fair to show your appreciation, they do have a tough job after all.

Though, as you can also see at the end of the clip, I'd advise against hugging troopers when you're in the thick of combat, unless you want to share a casket because they couldn't untangle your remains. I've played a few missions in the new update and the SEAF actually amount to a somewhat fearsome fighting force now, with support weapons and increased numbers, and they'll periodically drop in on shuttles to help in the fight.

We'll definitely need the help, too. Those new Crusher enemies don't go down easy and they're weirdly hard to hear coming. The Necromorph-esque Wretch enemies, too, add a fast-moving component that the Illuminate didn't have before, and can really close you down quickly if you're not paying attention.

We've got a tough fight ahead of us, but don't forget to take a moment to stop every now and then to show your SEAF contingent their work is appreciated.

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Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse. %!s()

With Sony ending support for physical discs in the near future, and the heads of Ubisoft and Take Two seemingly not caring very much, you might think the end of physical game media is not far off. Yet there exists a growing movement to push back against this trend. I had a chance to chat to Clemens Istel, the owner of game preservation site Does It Play, about this movement.

He tells me, "Customer rights are almost non-existent in the gaming space, and companies have proven time and time again that honest communication is not their strong suit."

Does It Play is both a physical games media advocacy group and a database dedicated to documenting which games can be played without a download or offline. Istel is also part of the team behind Stop Killing Games. Just last month, we documented Does It Play's reporting, showing that 34% of physical PS5 games and 50% of tested Xbox Series X games don't fully work without a download first.

There are a handful of central reasons one might wish for physical discs to stay around. With games going through so many updates after release, a disc provides a clean way to preserve version 1.0 for future gamers to play and experience. It also means that storefront holders can't have a monopoly over pricing. If you wish to buy a game on PS5, for example, you can buy it directly from Sony, or through any number of second-hand or new physical marketplaces. This gives companies less control over the direct price long-term.

"Less options for people is always a bad thing. Especially if the only option is a future in which your purchased goods can just be taken away or altered whenever somebody else pleases," says Istel.

"For the most part, [over] all these years, it felt like there was an unwritten agreement between companies and players. They provide cool experiences, we buy cool experiences. But in recent years, this symbiosis [has] more and more turned into a one-sided form of exploitation." He continues, "Lobby groups and lawyers attacked preservation efforts, a growing minority of games are released unfinished, even hardware now has online dependencies."

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Istel points out that the last two Xbox generations can't be set up offline without a Microsoft account, and notes that some games are fully available on disc and still have hard-coded online checks before you can play. "The next step is killing physical media, the last thing you actually had some form of ownership over."

Istel argues that gaming companies have a "stranglehold on players", and that's what Does It Play, and movements like Stop Killing Games have come out of. Istel believes that Sony knew what consumers wanted when it famously made fun of Microsoft's introduction of DRM back in 2013, but it now has "Zero understanding for what their customers want. All that's left is a hyper-arrogant 'take it or leave it' attitude, as far as we can tell."

But Istel says it's not just console players who are affected by this. I'm told the Sony situation is just one step. "It sets another precedent and pushes the distribution further towards the idea of streaming, as recently suggested by Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick. Once we reach that point, all hope for customers to ever have control over a product is gone."

Though Istel believes the perspective on game ownership has "only gotten worse" over the years, PC gaming does offer one "glimpse of hope" with the "emergence of more DRM-free stores on PC."

The likes of game marketplace GOG sell many games DRM-free, which means you can download offline backups, play without an internet connection, and can install and play games on multiple computers without any limits. It gives more freedom over bought games, and means losing connection to servers, or servers going down, can't remove your access to the game— assuming it's downloaded already.

PC gaming shifted to digital a long time ago, and even before that, many PC games had physical restrictions in the forms of CD keys, but Istel believes digital DRM is not the same: "Digital DRM that requires you to go online makes you dependent on a third party, while a CD key gives you everything in your own hands to access the game.

"The former will eventually lead to the game becoming inaccessible. At the very least, there needs to be an end of life plan to keep the game working after official support ends."

Still, even if Sony does officially end disc support with the PS6, Istel doesn't think physical media will entirely go with it. He told me, "I firmly believe that physical media will stay, but it will probably never be mainstream again."

Though PC gaming went mostly digital a long time ago, Sony being the creators of the hardware and software on a PS5 gives it ownership over the device to an extent that isn't possible on PC. If you don't like Windows, you can swap to Linux. If you don't like Steam (for whatever reason), you can make do with half a dozen different digital storefronts. And that makes this specific fight so important for console owners. There's no alternative to Sony whilst owning a Sony device.

And, as such, it's a little strange to watch from the comfort of my own rig, given how relatively healthy the digital gaming market is on PC. Steam, its biggest storefront, may not be DRM-free, but the option is there to actually own games for those who want it. As consoles are unlikely to adopt third-party storefronts, that makes physical game discs the final line of defense for actually owning games, and an altogether different ball game compared to our PCs.

James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs. %!s()

The latest collaboration between Netflix and Adam Sandler‘s Happy Madison Productions, “Don’t Say Good Luck” is markedly more delicate and deeply felt than most films bearing that imprint, though it’s still proudly mainstream in sensibility — unafraid of sentimentality as it lunges directly and most effectively for viewers’ heartstrings. Hart’s family-friendly “Stargirl” films for Disney+ showed she could balance mega-streamer house style with human-feeling storytelling; her more adventurous 2018 superhero indie “Fast Color” demonstrated a mature, cross-generational approach to frequently juvenile genre fare.

Those skills serve Hart well in her broadly empathetic latest, which should play relatably both to adolescents beginning to assert identities outside their parents’ control, as well as to elders grappling with a lifelong duty of care to their children and an obligation, sooner or later, to let go. For suburban mom-of-three Elizabeth (Lynskey), who balances childcare with a job running a popular local deli alongside her husband Ted (Max Greenfield), that may be too soon: Years after beating cancer, she’s dismayed to learn it has returned, this time with a tougher prognosis.

The script, co-written by Hart and producer/partner Jordan Horowitz with story scribe Laura Hankin, limns this crisis without any of the usual expository medical-consultation scenes; the focus throughout is intimately domestic, as Elizabeth reckons not just with her health but with how to alternately protect and prepare her family in the face of a worst-case scenario. Her boisterous pre-teen twins Ethan and Caleb are too young to grasp quite what’s at stake; high school sophomore Sophie (Sandler) has rather more vivid memories of going through this anguish before.

But Sophie has a lot on her plate besides, beginning with the lead role in her school’s ambitious spring production of the Broadway musical “Waitress” — an unexpected coup over resident drama-club queen Mallory (an excellent Elyse Bell, bringing more nuance to this nascent-diva role than initially meets the eye), after her unassuming but purely sung audition strikes a chord with kindly teacher/director Ms. Parker (Stephanie Beatriz). It’s more work and pressure than she bargained for, putting strain on her relationship with longtime best friend Carolyn (Scarlett Estevez), who’s on her own path of queer self-discovery, and that’s before mounting family drama makes it increasingly hard for her to leave everything behind on stage.

There’s a lot of room here for flat teen-movie stereotypes, but “Don’t Say Good Luck” — the title a running bit between Sophie and Elizabeth, who cherishes her daughter’s thespian dreams — is persistently, pleasingly fair to all involved, finding complicating seams of vulnerability in characters set up as foils or antagonists. Jack (Jack Champion), Sophie’s handsome co-lead and crush, is neither dreamboat nor dickhead, just a boy not yet in command of his various talents; Linda (Bebe Neuwirth), Elizabeth’s officious mother, may run a little cold, but controls what she can to counter life’s ungovernable cruelties. As family tensions build, her sweeter other half Dale, played with winningly soft squareness by Steve Buscemi, gives Sophie the plain, solid advice she needs: “You can let it out,” he counsels. “If not with me, then with somebody.”

It’s a potentially corny line delivered with finely tuned gentleness, which goes for much else here. Lynskey, so good at playing weary, careworn decency, makes heart-to-heart dialogue sound, well, actually from the heart, rather than mawkishly platitudinous; Sandler returns her sincerity with a lovely performance that captures the needy, girlish terror and exploratory adult curiosity at play in her character.

Her vocals, bright and plaintive and without musical-theater affectation, are exactly as imperfect as they need to be, though Hart gifts her with a full, climactically blossoming musical sequence at exactly the right moment, singing the signature Sara Bareilles ballad “She Used to Be Mine” — at which point any misty-eyed viewers who have barely been hanging on up to this point will likely take Buscemi’s advice. Commendably thoughtful and quietly humane for much of its running time, “Don’t Say Good Luck” also knows just when to let it out. %!s()

That, of course, is exactly why those cartoons were impossibly great. To those of us who grew up on them, watching Wile E. Coyote do everything in his power to catch and kill the Road Runner gave off a charge of reckless endangerment that was hilarious and cathartic. It was also disarmingly casual. Every time Wile E. got blown to smithereens by a faulty detonator, or dropped 1,000 feet off a cliff to a distant puff-of-smoke crash landing, we experienced the comedy of pure aggression — and the comedy of ironic resilience. That Wile E. always bounced right back in the next scene lent the crazed destruction a weirdly optimistic undercurrent.

“Coyote vs. Acme,” a studio comedy that combines famous cartoon characters and live action in the style of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (and also in the style of dozens of cheesy-bad franchise hybrids like the “Garfield” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Casper” and “Stuart Little” films), is a movie that wants to pay homage to the prankish exuberance of the “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” cartoons. The movie is about how Wile E. Coyote, after too many years of failing to catch the Road Runner, mostly because every gizmo and dastardly piece of equipment he ever put toward the task (dynamite, anvils, magnetic gloves) failed to work, decides to sue the Acme Corporation, the manufacturer of each of those faulty products. Will Forte, wearing a beard and a flop of geek hair, is Kevin Avery, the late-night-TV-ad lawyer who takes the case.

At heart, “Coyote vs. Acme” is a courtroom comedy. But the upshot of the movie is to integrate as much Road Runner-style mayhem as possible into a live-action universe. The film is chock-full of nods and references and jokey Looney Tunes Easter eggs. It could have been called “Remembrance of Rube Goldberg Bombs Past.”

Yet there’s a certain way that “Coyote vs. Acme,” next to those cartoons, feels neutered and tame. The movie will serve up an escalating gag, like the Road Runner eating metal pellets so that Wile E. can trap him with a magnet, only to see Wile E. magnetized by a speeding train. But the staging doesn’t have the sustained, rollicking ferocity that made some of those cartoons as freewheeling in their maniacal slapstick as “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Coyote vs. Acme” keeps giving you the feeling that it’s referencing that earlier universe, rather than immersing you in it. That’s partly because the movie isn’t trying to be a live-action Road Runner cartoon, but also because it stops short of conjuring their insane spirit.

The movie was inspired by Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker story (a rather labored piece of whimsy), which treats Wile E. Coyote’s lawsuit against Acme with put-on bureaucratic seriousness. “Coyote vs. Acme,” however, is looser and lighter. It really does just want to be piece of nostalgic cartoon hijinks, and to that end it’s got a winning gregariousness. The film was scripted by Samy Burch, the gifted screenwriter of “May December” and “Late Fame,” and she does a meticulous job of orchestrating conspiracies and cartoon cameos. It’s all worked out on paper. Yet the film is missing something: the delirious fizz of true anarchic bedlam.

Wile E. Coyote is our hero, and he’s his familiar wordless disgruntled self (though he holds up funny signs on occasion to indicate what he’s thinking). But we don’t see enough of the sneaky side of Wile E., the hungry predator who’s almost like the Grinch. Meanwhile, Will Forte gives a one-note performance as Avery, the lawyer who’s stuck in a mode of desperate high dudgeon. I’ve often felt allergic to animation-meets-live-action movies, because the live-action parts tend to get reduced to monotonous cartoons. That’s kind of what happens here. Forte’s frantic ambulance chaser, Lana Condor as his legal-assistant niece, John Cena as the grimacing Acme Corporation defense attorney — it’s all thin stuff.

“Coyote vs. Acme” will play in theaters starting Aug. 28, but the movie has, of course, been through its own obstacle course. After being completed, it was shelved by its studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, only to become something of a cause célèbre among vintage cartoon fans. The movie certainly deserves to be released — and thanks to the independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment, which bought it from Warner Bros. for $50 million, that is now happening. But will the purchase prove to be worth it? “Coyote vs. Acme” would like to be a classic-cartoon version of “Roger Rabbit,” but I’m afraid it just plays like a polite and mildly likable look back at yesterday’s cartoon madness.

The film’s most winning gambit it to sprinkle “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” characters throughout the story. Tweety Bird is used nicely, as is Daffy Duck, who dominates the film’s explosive opening scene (getting trapped in goo during a top-secret Acme test film). But only two legendary characters truly get to throw their weight around — that grandiose Southern-fried sociopath Foghorn Leghorn, who’s the CEO of Acme, and the great Bugs Bunny, who is always wilier than anyone, including poor Wile E.

As Wile. E. and the Roadrunner discover that they’re frenemies who need each other, the movie ends up taking a moral stand against the Acme Corporation. It’s revealed that there’s a sinister reason why the company’s products kept blowing up in Wile E.’s face. But who wants to see Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner turned into the dramatic linchpins of a Looney Tunes “Erin Brockovich”? It’s true that you couldn’t make Road Runner cartoons today. But you can make a movie like “Coyote vs. Acme,” which melts down anarchy into presentable buddy mishegas. %!s()

After speeches, the group marched to Broadmeadows Town Park, occupying one lane of Tanderrum Drive, a two-lane road.

While the group was walking on the road, a car travelling in the same directionsounded its horn.

Protesters alleged that as the car approached the group, a passenger flung open the door twice, as if trying to push people out of the way.

Video of the incident, seen by Guardian Australia, shows a protester walking on the edge of the group in the lane where the car was attempting to pass. The video shows him turning as the car approaches and appearing to kick at it.

The car then clips the man on the legs and accelerates away.

Witnesses said it did not slow down as it attempted to pass the group.

The protester, who asked not to be identified, alleged that he heard an occupant of the car shout racial abuse before the car struck him.

The comments were not audible in the video, but Guardian Australia spoke to two others at the march who claim to have heard the alleged remarks. Several participants, including the man in the video, said they separately reported the incident directly to police within hours and in the following days.

“It felt surreal. I did not have the chance to even feel anything but shock,” the 43-year-old said.

Merri-bek Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton, an organiser of the event, said the incident contradicted the rally’s purpose, which was to support community members who were “feeling really intimidated” by a recent rise in anti-immigration rhetoric.

Bolton said the group had been in contact with police in the days before the event to make them aware of the rally and received confirmation over the phone that officers would attend, but none did so.

Athiya Zameer, the member of the group designated to liaise with police, said she believed the incident would not have occurred if police had been present.

In a formal complaint to police on behalf of the group, Zameer called for action against the driver, claiming the alleged incident had caused trauma to the person hit by the car, children present and the wider community.

“We want to make sure that people feel safe to do these actions, to raise their voices,” she said. “We live in a community [of people from] migrant backgrounds who are already traumatised by wars and the police … and to have an incident like that just traumatises them even more … that’s really unfortunate.”

In a response to the complaint, seen by Guardian Australia, police confirmed they had been aware of the planned event. The response said the incident was “being actively investigated” and police were “committed to ensuring that allegations are thoroughly assessed”.

They declined to answer questions from Guardian Australia about why officers did not attend the protest.

The Greens state MP Anasina Gray-Barberio, who attended the rally but did not witness the car incident, said “the community expects an urgent and robust response”.

“The community deserves answers … Communities of colour deserve to know that when they’re subjected to violence or racism, those incidents will be treated with the seriousness they deserve,” she said. %!s()