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Screaming sideways through the long, arcing bends of Snow Mountain Sprint, my front tires flirted incessantly with the densely packed snow at the side of the road, but such is the precision of the controls that they never so much as kissed. My first few events in arcade racer Inertial Drift were joyfully effortless, as I threw my car sideways around corner after corner. It makes a great first impression, but beyond the initial rush of unadulterated, high-speed thrills, it soon reveals itself to also have enough depth to go the distance.

My first races, you see, were in Edward’s Terra Dart, an easy to handle sporty number with all the depth of a paper bag but, crucially, the perfect vehicle to introduce Inertial Drift’s twin stick controls. Yes, in this racer, you steer with the left stick, but control your car’s drift with the right. This allows you to make separate adjustments on the fly to manipulate the angle of your car as you drift while also shifting it left or right on track, letting you hold the perfect line on basically any curve or glide neatly through any corner. It’s a game changer.

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The Dart is the purest, simplest expression of this. You can basically just jam down the accelerator, and attack each corner with twin-sticked abandon. And if you need to hit a really aggressive angle? A tap on the brake will swing the back end out further.

Edward’s Dart, however, is just the beginning. Each vehicle in Inertial Drift’s roster feels distinct and requires a specific approach to master. Ibba’s HPE Dragon, for instance, demands that you brake ahead of tight turns before starting to drift in order to hit the right line and maintain momentum. You can then take advantage of its high acceleration to power out of the corner. Riku’s Venom Industries Ventus will only enter a lazy, lightly angled slide with the drift stick engaged; instead it’s the brake that’s the primary way to get sharper angles through corners. Corey’s HPE Katana, on the other hand, is all about feathering the accelerator as you slide, finessing the drift stick to find the right angle. Break during a slide with that car and it straightens up.

There are just so many extremes to appreciate across the 16 car line-up. Seth’s Coda Supreno is extremely slow building up speed, which means every mistake is costly, but it’s the fastest car in the game when it gets going. It’s thrilling learning how to ease off the accelerator and find precisely the right drifting line to maintain momentum through turns. Gunner’s Roton 7D, meanwhile, has a stack of raw power and drifts on the brake, so feels super twitchy, swinging out wide at the lightest touch. It’s difficult to get a feel for, particularly on sharp corners that can leave you spinning out entirely if not deftly handled. And then there’s Samira’s HPE Jester, which doesn’t want to grip ever. It’s all drifting, all the time.

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As you’ve no doubt noted, each car is tied to a specific character, and you’ll get to know this cast as you progress through the Story mode. Playing through Inertial Drift’s story four times – once for each of the selectable characters – gave me a really good taste of what its racing mechanics have to offer, and cleverly uses its dialogue and challenges to teach lessons about how each car handles. Ibba, for instance, won’t be able to post a good enough lap time on City Skylink unless he – and by extension, you – takes Viv’s advice to heart about why sometimes you need to brake to go faster. The challenges here are geared towards making you a better driver, and as I worked my way through the events in each destination I certainly became that.

While the story itself is of no real consequence, its execution is refreshing. There is no testosterone here – no high stakes feuds between hotshot drivers with impossibly large egos. Instead, we largely have a cast of earnest racing enthusiasts – people of all stripes who want to share their love of racing, help each other out, and improve. It’s endearing, really, whether you’re playing as Edward, who only wants to have fun but discovers that with practice he has the chops to be competitive, or Viv, who is the racer to beat, but also humble enough to know she has more to learn.

It provides a backdrop to some absolutely gripping racing – all, essentially, against the clock, as even when you’re directly racing another character, your car safely phases through theirs instead of bumping. And all, I should also add, from a chase cam view – something that I typically never use in arcade racers, much preferring to be low to the ground and in first person. Thankfully, the cars actually look great on track in Inertial Drift and the sense of speed is still very real, even from that vantage point.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=My%20favourite%20course%20is%20Mount%20Kirino%2C%20a%20five-or-so-minute%20point%20to%20point%20race%20with%20winding%20mountain%20roads%2C%20large%2C%20sweeping%20switchbacks%2C%20rapid%20S%20bends%20and%20oh%20so%20much%20speed.”]

The Story mode only encompasses five destinations, but each is gratifyingly distinct. City Skylink, for instance, feels completely different from Sunset Sea Circuit. The former is a city course with wide freeways, long, curving tunnels and technical street sections, whereas the latter takes you from the beach up into the mountains as you hurtle along narrow, sweeping roads, zig zag through a downhill slalom, and screech around a series of switchbacks.

My favourite course, however, is Mount Kirino, a five-or-so-minute point to point race with winding mountain roads, an epic corkscrew that lets you hold a drift seemingly forever, large, sweeping switchbacks, rapid S bends and oh so much speed. And along the way you’ll go from the ski fields, where chairlifts are silhouetted against the night sky, through an ancient forest lit by lanterns and studded by impossibly large trees, down mountain slopes with purple-hued stars and a sliver of moon dominating the screen, and then at last a cityscape appears like a mirage in the distance while you careen along a series of ridges. I’m not in love with Inertial Drift’s cel-shaded, vaporwave aesthetic in general, but it certainly has its moments.

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The courses in the Story mode are only a slice of what is available elsewhere. There are 20 course configurations in all, spanning point to point races and circuits, and including both forward and reverse options. If you want to practice these other options you’ll need to hop into the Arcade mode, where you can also test your mettle against the fastest times posted by players around the world. This is fine, but I really enjoyed the context and challenges provided by Story mode, so it’s a shame finishing a character’s story doesn’t open up a Story mode+ which lets you do all the courses in reverse, or perhaps offers up a different selection entirely. (There is, however, an option to choose “Xtra Crispy” when starting a new story save, which offers up harder targets and faster opponents, but the same courses.)

That said, Arcade mode is definitely useful in order to familiarise yourself with specific courses before heading into the Grand Prix mode. Each car/racer has a custom grand prix to complete, and it pays to be familiar with each event, as you only have three second chances to clear the full set. The Challenges are also quite cool – there’s one of these for all the extra cars that can be unlocked, which then lets you take them into other modes. And for fans of same screen action, in addition to online multiplayer, Inertial Drift also features two player splitscreen.

Lamplighter has proved to be one of the most complex characters introduced yet in The Boys, and so far we’ve only really seen him in a single episode. The former member of The Seven played a prominent role this week in Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” and through his interactions with Frenchie, Kimiko, and Mother’s Milk, we learned a lot about The Boys’ history and the characters’ current situation.

When Lamplighter was mentioned previously, it was usually to curse him for murdering Grace Mallory’s grandchildren–the inciting tragedy that caused The Boys to break up before the series’ events kicked off. But it turns out things are slightly more complicated than they may have seemed. According to Lamplighter, he’d been intending to kill Mallory herself–not innocent children sleeping in bed. Does that make him less evil? Maybe a little, but more importantly, it adds some dimension to the character, and Lamplighter’s remorse makes for yet another villain on this show who is–well, if not totally loveable, at least sympathetic.

What set Lamplighter off, though, and made him set out to kill Mallory in the first place? Through a series of flashbacks, we learned that The Boys tried to blackmail the supe. But thanks to tricky camera angles, we didn’t get to see exactly what they blackmailed him with. But thankfully, we had a chance to chat with Shawn Ashmore, the actor who plays him, and we tried to get some answers.

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We dug through The Boys Season 2 Episode 6 to find every hidden nugget.

The Boys Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” answered some of the season’s longstanding questions. How old is Stormfront exactly? She was born in 1919, which makes her 101 years old. What is her plan for Homelander? In true Nazi fashion, she plans to prop him up as the pinnacle of the Aryan race and put him in charge of an army of supes created with the newly stabilized Compound V being developed at Sage Grove. What is Lamplighter’s part in it all? He was just there to burn the evidence and keep the patients in line, but he’s feeling regretful over his actions and might be an asset to The Boys going forward.

Lamplighter’s introduction was just one highlight of another great Season 2 episode. This one also fleshed out Frenchie’s backstory, demonstrating just how bad a boy he was before the series’ events. It added dimension to characters who are evil, and showed good characters doing evil things, with more collateral damage than The Boys themselves are used to causing. And it gave Starlight and Butcher the chance to bury the hatchet and reach an understanding, largely thanks to their mutual love of Hughie–and his love of children’s shampoo.

Naturally, we went over Season 2 Episode 6 with a fine-toothed comb to unearth all the comics references and other hidden Easter eggs that we could find. Keep reading to see what we found, and check out GameSpot Universe’s episode-by-episode video breakdowns for more.

1. The Bloody Doors Off

The episode’s title is taken from the 12th and final volume of the comics. It’s apt for the episode, considering all the doors that get blown off at Sage Grove.

2. Casquette A L’envers

The opening song is Casquette A L’envers by the French hip-hop group Sexion D’Assaut. The song’s title translates to “upside-down cap” according to Google. The music video is playing on the TV in the background during the opening scene.

3. Golden Girls

Frenchie opens the episode discussing The Golden Girls, an NBC sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1992. The show starred Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty as four older women who live together. Frenchie refers to his friends as his Blanche and his Dorothy, McClanahan’s and Arthur’s characters respectively.

4. Harold Jaffe

Starlight’s small operation to remove her Vought tracking device–in which Frenchie uses some kind of stone-cutting tool to penetrate her super-skin–takes place at Harold Jaffe Jewelers, a real jewelry store. However, the real location is in Ohio, not New York.

5. The Stranger

Hughie’s t-shirt this week features the cover of Billy Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger. It had four singles: “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “She’s Always a Woman,” and “Only the Good Die Young.”

6. Pokémon with Hep C

Hughie remarks that The Boys’ hideout isn’t so bad–the rats are “like Pokémon with Hep C.” Hep C is Hepatitis C, a viral liver infection that can be spread through needles. Pokémon is–well, if you don’t know what Pokémon is, I’m not sure I can explain it to you. How about I link you to our list of examples of people eating Pokémon from the anime instead?

7. The .50 caliber round

Starlight reprimands Butcher over the .50 caliber round he pumped into her chest. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember it–that was all the way back in Season 1, Episode 7.

8. The Dab

When Deep reunites with A-Train, he greets him with a half-assed “dab.” The dab is a dance move that originated in the Atlanta hip-hop scene in the 2010s.

9. Weaponized Xanax

When Mallory recruits Frenchie, she remarks that he used “weaponized Xanax” against a supe whose powers were fueled by rage. Xanax is a sedative that’s used to treat anxiety. Turns out Frenchie doesn’t just do drugs; he’s a chemist who makes them as well.

10. ADX Florence

Mallory intimidates Frenchie with a description of ADX Florence, or The United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (USP Florence ADMAX), a real prison near Florence, Colorado. Mallory refers to the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist named Ted Kaczynski who was apprehended in 1996, and the head of the Aryan brotherhood, which might refer to a number of people at the prison, including Thomas Silverstein and Barry Mills.

11. Vas and friends

Some of the supes at Sage Grove are references to characters from the comic books on which The Boys is based. The patient who vomits acid is based on Discharge, a member of the G-Wiz division of the G-Men (a parody of the X-Men). The patient with the massive penis is based on Vas “Love Sausage” Vorishikin, a Russian supe ally of The Boys who is a major side character in the books and similarly well-endowed. (Mother’s Milk even references the name “Love Sausage” while observing the patient on the security monitors.)

12. Lamplighter

Lamplighter, who was mentioned throughout Season 1 but never seen, is played by Shawn Ashmore in Season 2. Ashmore appeared in Episode 5, but his identity wasn’t confirmed until now. As this episode portrays, Lamplighter was a member of The Seven until he “retired” before the events of Season 1, at some point following his murder of Grace Mallory’s grandchildren.

13. Sail Away

The song during Alistair, A-Train, and Deep’s lunch is Enya’s “Sail Away.” Just kidding–the song is actually called “Orinoco Flow,” but I bet you’ve spent the last two-decades-plus believing it was called “Sail Away.” Anyway, it’s a goofy new age jam that reached incredible heights of popularity in the ’90s partly due to its inclusion in the music compilation album Pure Moods, and is still instantly recognizable in 2020.

14. Malala Yousafzai’s tweet

Alistair mentions “Malala Yousafzai’s tweet” about The Deep as evidence that he’s becoming more popular with women again. Yousafzai is a Pakistani feminist activist, as well as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history–she co-received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. The idea that she would tweet in support of The Deep is pretty ridiculous.

15. The Documentary

When A-Train says he’s “seen that documentary” about the Church of the Collective, he’s pointing out yet another similarity between The Deep’s cult and the real-life cult Scientology, which was the subject of a 2015 documentary called Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.

16. Majorette

A majorette is a baton-twirling dancer who often performs alongside marching bands and during parades. Lamplighter’s pride was no doubt stung by the comparison.

17. The pictures

We don’t see what Mallory showed Lamplighter to blackmail him, but actor Shawn Ashmore, who plays Lamplighter, told us it was the first thing he asked when shooting the scene. “Mallory shows him images of something in the warehouse in a flashback sequence, and it’s alluded that he’s, you know, had sex with a bunch of underage girls or whatever,” Ashmore said. “I know what those images were of, because it was the first question I asked. I was like, ‘Why would Lamplighter turn?’ Like how bad are the pictures that Mallory shows him in that warehouse? Why would he do that? Like, he could burn everybody in this room–if those were to come out, how bad are they? And they’re worse than I could ever imagine.” He wouldn’t say exactly what they were, because he said it’s better left a mystery.

18. Stand Your Ground state

The man who Starlight accidentally kills says they’re in a “stand your ground” state when he pulls the gun on them. Stand your ground laws take on a variety of shapes depending on the location, but they generally encompass use of force when one’s life is in danger. The man is right that Pennsylvania, where Starlight says Sage Grove is located, has such laws.

19. Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night

You can see a poster for the event that Lamplighter enters when Frenchie is tailing him. It’s called “Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night.” I have no idea what it is.

20. Teddy Bear Picnic

“Teddy Bear Picnic” is a 1907 children’s song that’s now in the public domain. There’s nothing violent in the song; it’s simply another antiquated reference from Stormfront to remind us that she’s older than she looks.

21. L’Oreal Kids Strawberry Smoothie

You can smell just like Hughie if you want–L’Oreal Kids Extra Gentle 2-in-1 Shampoo, Strawberry Smoothie scent is a real shampoo you can buy on Amazon. Maybe skip the Axe Body Spray though, unless you’re actually Vin Diesel.

22. Postmates Sugarfish

Elena tells Queen Maeve she’s going to Postmates Sugarfish. Sugarfish is a popular Los Angeles sushi restaurant owned by Japanese sushi chef Kazunori Nozawa.

23. Why isn’t this man restrained?

This scene is an echo of a similar scene in the comics. In the books, after The Boys attempt to blackmail The Seven and Lamplighter kills Mallory’s grandchildren, Homelander delivers Lamplighter to The Boys as a peace offering, and Mallory shoots Lamplighter in the head.

24. Liberty’s costume?

When Stormfront opens her box of precious memories, several things are visible, including an ominous-looking hat, a knife with some sort of insignia on it, and what looks like Stormfront’s original Liberty costume.

25. Literal Nazis

In the photos Stormfront shows Homelander, she’s with literal Nazis Heinrich Himmler (the commander of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo secret police) and Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda.

26. Thank you for being a friend

The song that plays at the end when Homelander and Stormfront kiss is the Golden Girls theme song, “Thank You For Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold. If you stay through the credits, you’ll also hear another version of A-Train’s new theme song.

The 2020 NFL season has wrapped up its second week, and with that, EA has adjusted player ratings in Madden NFL 21 based on how the athletes performed on the field.

Some of the players who saw their player ratings rise included Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen, who rose from a 77 OVR to a 78 OVR after throwing for 417 yards and four touchdown passes in his team’s win over the Miami Dolphins.

Seattle Seahawks wide receiver D.K. Metcalf also had a successful week on the field, thanks to his epic 54-yard touchdown reception against the reigning defensive player of the year, Stephon Gilmore. Thanks to his strong performance, Metcalf rose to an 80 OVR rating.

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It appears Rocket League‘s conversion to free-to-play has been a success. Following the change in business models on September 23, the soccer-with-cars game reached 1 million concurrent players for the first time in its history.

Corey Davis, the co-studio head at developer Psyonix revealed the news, posting a screenshot of the game’s gigantic player population. This number seemingly counts players across all platforms–PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.

According to Dot Esports, Rocket League’s previous peak concurrent player record was 120,000 back in March. The jump to 1 million showcases just how significant the impact of going free-to-play has been for the title.

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Halo’s community director has spoken up to shut down rumors about Halo Infinite‘s release date. Retail listings recently suggested that the game was scheduled for release in Holiday 2021, which is later than some might have wanted, but Brian Jarrard told the Halo community in a tweet that such listings are not necessarily accurate.

“PSA: We haven’t locked on [a] release date for Halo Infinite yet,” he said. “Anything you see on a retail site is just placeholder / speculation.”

Halo Infinite was originally lined up as a launch title for the Xbox Series X/S in November, but Microsoft pushed the game out to 2021 due in part to COVID-19 and the impact of working from home. The company has provided no indication yet as to when in 2021 the game may be released.

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