By Ronald Gordon 

Hello and Welcome back to the Roundup! The Critics Circle’s way of gathering up the stories from Members near and far and showing them off proudly. This week we have a Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak review, a hot tip on Playstation’s new controller design, news on Gravity Rush, and so much more!

Before we start, I’d like to mention that the Circle also has a series of impactful moments to brief those who are interested. If you’d like to take a look at everything that’s happened or is planned to happen, please take a look at this article here!

First and foremost, we at the Circle would like to introduce yet another young mind into the Intern fold. Khloe Wilkerson is a proud Bronx native and winner of our Scholarship, offering her the opportunity to be a paid intern and write for the Circle. After attending one of the Circle’s afterschool programs, Khloe was awakened to games as a hobby and managed to win first place in a scholarship competition. She now has $3,000 put towards her future college costs, a Legion 5 Gaming Laptop, and a newly ignited spark for gaming as a whole. “As I start to learn more about gaming, I find myself interested in a wider variety of genres. The kind of games I enjoy playing are competition games, games with storylines, sports, action-adventure, etc. Some games I will be interested in playing in the future are Turtles Shredder’s Revenge, NBA Live 22, and updates to Animal Crossing. Of course, I can’t wait for the new Zelda.”  We’re happy to have Khloe as a part of the Circle, and can’t wait to see what she does with her new love of gaming! 

Next up we have a story from Sarah Doherty Granoff, who enjoyed exploring Skyrim’s world so much she even gathered over 120 books in the game. Having explored places high and low within the world of Tamriel, Sarah found that her one true passion in Skyrim was reading all the stories and epics written about the world and its many assets. “I see the shelves full of books in the Jarl’s palace and start planning a heist. I wonder if the city guards notice that volumes seem to vanish in my wake. I keep my eyes peeled for new entries to add to my collection as I complete quests for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.” While Sarah’s methods of obtaining every book might not always be morally correct, that doesn’t discount the fact that she’s already obtained 123 books and is always coming back for more when she needs a good story to read. 

Senior intern Kimari Rennis brings a review of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak and the engaging content it brings to the table. While she was able to practically speed run the base game of Monster Hunter Rise, Sunbreak proved to be a bit more challenging than she would’ve expected. “I instantly felt a blast from the past fighting Daimyo Hermitaur from my time playing Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. Its move set was reimagined, its model was crisp and beautiful, and it hit really hard. In fact, Daimyo Hermitaur was responsible for my first death in the game as it slipped in and out of the ground, dragging me with it,” writes the author. Regardless of difficulty, Kimari is still playing her hardest and enjoying every moment she encounters along the way. “With all of the vast changes and content unveiled in this expansion, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak feels like a new hobby that I can’t get enough of.” 

Moving on to members of the Circle, Jorge Jimenez brings an article about PlayStation’s DualSense Edge Controller. What’s a game console without a controller? A glorified brick, that’s what. Yet in a world full of high-end consoles there must also be high-end controllers to match, and that’s what PlayStation’s DualSense Edge controller is meant to be. “The buttons on the PS5 DualSense Edge can be completely remapped, and stick sensitivity and dead zones can be tuned. You can even reduce the trigger travel for faster inputs in shooters, much like the Xbox Elite Series 2 wireless controllers,” Made to rival that of the aforementioned Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers, the DualSense Edge features everything a gamer would need to build a useful controller layout fit for any game. Jorge’s finishing opinions on the controller read as such, “While no release date or pricing was revealed, more info should be coming in the next few months. Here’s hoping we get some fun new colors.” 

Whitney Meers, member and writer for PCGamesn, wrote an article about a particularly frightening Roblox Horror game. Although the game has the simple premise of going through doors and solving puzzles, albeit with the threat of otherworldly horrors on the horizon, Doors has many YouTubers calling it the scariest Roblox game. “Doors also feels unique because, while the graphics aren’t particularly high fidelity, it looks so much like an indie horror game that it’s hard to believe it’s built within Roblox, a sandbox game,” says the writer. Whitney believes that Doors is a testament to how Roblox as a platform is capable of much more than what people expect, a valid assumption considering it currently has 96.1 Mil visits on the Roblox site. “Perhaps Doors’ success will inspire even more developers to create horror games with similar tones.” 

Lastly, we have writer for Tom’s Guide Tony Polanco who talks about the pros and cons of buying one of the infamous Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series of GPUs. While newer computer parts should be available for everyone to buy, the RTX 30-series has been one of the most difficult GPUs to obtain since their release back in 2020. The market has changed, and RTX GPUs are once again becoming available. But the concept of whether they’re really worth it is brought up. “The first Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series GPU is expected to arrive in late 2022. Codenamed “Lovelace,” the upcoming graphics card line is rumored to be vastly more powerful than the current Ampere line. If supposedly leaked specs are correct, the cards may offer a 150% performance increase over the RTX 30-series. Even if the rumors are off, Lovelace GPUs will no doubt be extremely powerful.” As Tony discusses in his article, there are many reasons to buy an RTX GPU right now, mainly the price and availability being fairly reasonable to those who can afford it. “The graphics cards will also be more than enough for future game releases. But for those who want to future-proof their rigs or simply have FOMO, then it might be worth it to wait for the more powerful RTX 40-series,” 

Beyond The Circle 

In a shocking bit of news, Gravity Rush is getting a film adaptation! In an article published on Deadline, written by Matt Grobar, news of the Gravity Rush film’s director and scriptwriter is revealed. Anna Mastro, who directed shows like Shameless, is set to Direct the film alongside script writer Emily Jerome, who wrote Panopticon. “It’s not yet clear who will produce the Gravity Rush film. And while PlayStation Productions falls under the Sony umbrella, it’s similarly unclear whether the pic will be distributed by the studio.” Regardless of publisher news, Gravity Rush is more than deserving of a movie considering how wonderful the games are. Here’s to hoping that it ends up being as good, if not greater than, the games themselves. 

In other news of games having other media made, The Verge’s Jay Peters brings news about Horizon Zero Dawn getting a TV Series. Thanks to a deal made by PlayStation and Netflix, a Horizon Zero Dawn series was announced alongside an Orbital series that’s also coming to Netflix. It’s exciting to see so many games getting newer and better things for them, and Jay is nearly ecstatic to hear the news. “We still don’t know who will play Aloy, though, and it’s unclear when the show might eventually be released. That said, I’m still tentatively excited about the show. While I personally feel the Horizon games can be clunky and overstuffed with things to do, I really enjoyed the story in both of them and think they’d translate well to a TV adaptation.” Here’s to hoping we get some news, names, and a date in the coming months.

Finally, The Last of Us series got its first teaser trailer posted on YouTube. Set to release on HBO Max in the next year, The Last of Us is shaping up to be an interesting series. Have a watch of the trailer here!

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle senior intern. He was the first of our writers – or any intern anywhere – to complete an internship at Rockstar Games.