Banished

I have never encountered a game that has made me feel as stupid as The Banished Vault does. There have certainly been titles with mechanics of abyssal depth or vast nuance that I don’t have the dedication to wrap my head around, but this is an absolutely new level. It’s layers of things that just make me feel mentally deficient. And I actually had to stop playing far earlier than I intended, because there was this ever-present shame that kept clawing at my spine. I was hoping that if I kept scratching at the game’s…

The unusual release pattern for 2023’s Marvel movies means we’re going all summer without a new MCU film in theaters, but don’t despair as The Marvels is on its way into cinemas this November. But, you know what, fans are actually more excited to keep their behinds parked on their sofas and tune into what Marvel Studios is offering up on Disney Plus, which might be bad news for Brie Larson. At least, this is the vibe we’re getting from the latest Twitter conversation concerning the superhero slate coming across the rest…

Screengrab via Disney With The Little Mermaid now available to watch in theaters across the world, we’ve finally had one pressing question about this underwater story answered; how Ursula came to be banished from the mermaid kingdom, and why she holds so much hate for King Triton. The 1989 animated Disney film introduced us to the villainous (and fabulous) character of Ursula (voiced by Pat Carroll). She is a sea witch with magical abilities which she uses to make contracts with the “poor unfortunate souls” that…

With a proper setup, owning and driving an electric car can be a pretty seamless experience. If you have a charger at home, you’ll never really have to worry about charging — simply plug in at home, and your car will always have enough juice to get you through the day. But that convenience can fall apart when you go on road trips. Whether it’s just a short jaunt out of town, or a cross-country adventure, you’ll suddenly have to keep track of nearby charging stations, and allot enough time to charge up your car. With…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Fridaaaaaaaay! Today we particularly enjoyed the Equity podcast team’s 2023 predictions on the future of building, crypto, and AI. Meanwhile, good luck to Alex (who mostly looks after TechCrunch+ these days, but he used to write the Daily Crunch and still occasionally groans at our awful jokes) as he embarks on parenthood and is taking a couple of months off to do whatever new parents…

It’s incredible just how quickly a fandom can turn on that which they used to love, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor: Love and Thunder proving to be the most recent example. Taika Waititi’s Ragnarok was a breath of fresh air for both the franchise at large and the Odinson in particular, reinventing the stoic God of Thunder as an intergalactic blast of near-immortal hilarity. It’s rightly regarded as one of the superhero saga’s finest-ever entries, so expectations were through the roof when it was announced the…