Sorry we missed last week. I went down to New Orleans to compete in the Elite Dodgeball National Championship with my team Adrenaline Rush. It went pretty well. 34 teams showed up and we were only one of two teams not from the West region to finish in the top eight. If you’re interested, you should check it out, maybe get a team out to one of the qualifiers next season.

But anyways, you’re here for trailers, so that’s what we’re gonna give you. We won’t be covering any of the Apple event because, well, it was really boring. And we won’t be giving you anything from the PlayStation 4 Pro event since you got enough of that yesterday. Instead, there are actually a lot of rock solid movie trailers that just came out along with some PAX West videos we need to catch you up on.

So let’s get to it!

Friday the 13th: The Game — PAX West Trailer

I still have no idea what to make of this game. On one hand, I truly, one hundred percent appreciate the aesthetic of this trailer, posing it as an 80s hair metal music video. That’s super cool. On the other, it’s three minutes of people getting stabbed, burned, and stomped.

And I was tired of it after just 30 seconds of it. So maybe know when to quit while you’re ahead? But also, if this is the same arc of the game (interesting premise, tiresome execution), I’m a little concerned. Seeing some of the gameplay videos, there still seems to be promise, so we’ll see. They’re still expecting an October release for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Serial Cleaner — PAX West 2016 Trailer

Well this is absurd. And fantastic. And ludicrous. And amazing. It’s a 70s-style stealth game about cleaning up murder scenes. Like, literally cleaning them up with a mop. You have to clear out any evidence not before the police get there but while they’re there, so you have to sneak around to do your dirt.

The best thing, though, is that it very deliberately encourages my favorite kind of stealth games: the exploratory kind. The ones that sort of have that one path and demand perfection from you in executing it can be fun (sometimes), but the idea of poking at the seams of the system to find where you can get out and around it always seemed more appealing. Also it looks damn nice. It comes out, I dunno, soon(?) for Steam, I guess?

Seasons After Fall — Launch Trailer

This looks fantastic, it’s already out, and reviews have been positive. Why aren’t I already playing it?! Oh, that’s right, because my backlog is so full it’s about to pop like a water balloon. I guess I could maybe just bump it up the queue a little bit…

Based on this trailer, the game is extraordinarily reminiscent of Ori and the Blind Forest, and that’s damn fine by me. It’s mostly the art style since it’s less precision platformer and more puzzle adventure, but that kind of makes it more endearing to me. Now that I think about it, as soon as I’m done with this, I’m gonna go play. It’s available now for PC.

ReCore — Launch Trailer

Well if that isn’t just some of the clunkiest writing ever. No judgment (okay, a lot of judgment). I’m just saying maybe you take another pass on that script every once in a while. Plus the game itself still looks interesting as hell. Who can say no to shooting robots while wearing rocket boots?

I know I can’t. And little dog friends in video games are some of my favorite friends to have. If you haven’t been looking forward to this since its announcement June of last year, you haven’t been looking forward to video games. And if it’s good, perhaps consider it amends for Comcept’s last endeavour. It comes out September 13 for the Xbox One and PC.

Collateral Beauty — Teaser Trailer

Tell me that isn’t one of the most anime-ass anime premises you’ve ever heard of. The woman coming up to him and saying she’s death? That’s exactly what happened in Persona 4. If you’re thinking it’s a little A Christmas Carol, you’re right, but guess where those personification influences came from: the East.

That is all being said knowing full well this is an exceptionally Western execution of the idea. And it looks compelling as fuck. Will Smith is an incredibly potent actor, and even this trailer sort of cements the idea that about 95% of the cast of Suicide Squad was out of their element with him (and Margot Robbie) there. It hits theatres on December 16.

Morgan — IBM Creates First Movie Trailer by AI

A lot of hubbub gets made for machine learning and AI nowadays, and coming from an academic and professional background of studying and implementing both of those things, the general public doesn’t understand what either one really is or does. And that’s okay. It’s easy to be fooled by marketing and publicity and movies and novels to think you know.

For instance, if you think they just tossed the movie into Watson and got a trailer back, you’re wrong. There was a lot of tuning for metrics and heuristics to get Watson to just understand what it was looking at. It doesn’t know this is a movie and this is what a movie trailer should look like. It instead only knows this is how to look at this one thing and what the end result should look like. Don’t get me wrong; this is still immensely impressive. But I’m really tired of the sensationalized press around AI. Anyways, the movie is out now and apparently it’s not very good.

Gold — Official US Trailer

Straight up, awful song choice. I love the song itself, but come on. It’s a stylistic mismatch at the get-go and then it proceeds to be painfully on the nose after the break. And that’s not to mention the trailer pretty much draws out the entire narrative arc in its 143 seconds of runtime.

I am, however, still interested in seeing it. From the actors to the director to the writers (mostly), the people involved are pretty great. It looks like a real fucking downer by the end, but I’m still interested. It comes out December 25.

Underworld: Blood Wars — Official “Legacy” Trailer

Uhhhh surprise! It’s real! I honestly just assumed all that talk about bringing it back was a goof. But apparently it’s just like the Resident Evil film franchise in that it can’t be fucking killed. No one’s really enjoyed one of these since the first one, and that was mostly out of novelty.

But here we are again, trying to figure out 1) who keeps deciding these are a good idea and 2) how does Kate Beckinsale remain so amazing? I mean, sure, they are still tremendously profitable, but come on. Leave it fucking be. Anyways, it hits theatres on January 6, 2017.