If you've been looking for a great set of wireless earbuds, the Apple AirPods Pro are a stellar choice. While they have the best functionality and synergy with iOS devices, you can also pair them with other Bluetooth phones (like the Google Pixel and more) and tech.

Right now, Amazon is selling AirPods Pro with the magsafe charging case for $179, which nets you a very nice savings of $69 off their usual price of $249.

AirPods Pro Sale on Amazon

If you are looking for another sweet piece of tech to pair with these, you can check out the new PlayStation variant of the Backbone One controller for iPhone.

Brian Barnett writes reviews, wiki guides, deals posts, features, and more for IGN. You can get your fix of his antics on Twitter (@Ribnax), Twitch (Ribnax), & YouTube, or check out his weekly video game talk show on Twitch (The Platformers).

Surface debuts globally on July 29 exclusively on Apple TV+.  

A satisfying potboiler mystery is always a fun summer diversion and Apple TV+’s Surface ticks all the boxes for what makes the genre worthy: gorgeous, wealthy characters; a gray moral compass; love triangles; and a lead character with amnesia and no long-term memory. It’s a smorgasbord of tropes but series creator/executive producer Veronica West manages to arrange the pieces in suitably entertaining ways, shifting and playing on our assumptions with enough finesse that the outcome feels unexpected and worth the ride.

Set in the most affluent neighborhoods of San Francisco, Surface opens with Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) waking from a nightmare of her recent horrific near-drowning. Having fallen from a ferry five months earlier, she’s trying to navigate her “new normal” with no memory of her past, or her present as the wife of James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a wealthy VC portfolio manager. She’s spent months convalescing in their gorgeous Victorian home, being doted on by a concerned (and helicoptering) James, and figuring out how to cope with the help of her therapist, Hannah (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), with the aftermath of being told she jumped off the ferry. Everything from the fancy dresses in her closet to the pictures on their walls are mysteries that she trusts James and her best friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) to reveal to her. But Sophie clearly doesn’t believe in the narrative she’s being fed.

As she begins to venture out into the outside world, volunteering at the local hospital and socializing at James’ work soirees, Sophie's curiosity prompts her to look at her own medical records which have some startling notes. And then she’s approached by a stranger, Thomas Baden (Stephan James), who slips her matches to a bar in Chinatown. Intrigued by the possibility of some answers, Sophie ventures to the dive bar and Baden reveals this was her old haunt and that he was the officer assigned to her case after her incident. He spurs her to dig deeper into inconsistencies regarding James’ behavior, and her former selves’ actions.

Like peeling back the layers of an enigmatic onion, Sophie pieces together that her pre-accident self was making some very morally complicated life choices with Baden. And as she continues to pull more aggressively at the threads of her past life — despite her therapist’s warnings — a lot of mess comes bubbling up in her fractured memories. James becomes more fraught with her erratic behavior and they challenge one another about the secrets they’re both keeping. He looks more shifty in his obsession with knowing her whereabouts, while Sophie digs into their marriage with observations by Caroline and James’ best friend, Harrison (François Arnaud).

The “Pilot” episode lays the groundwork for Sophie’s predicament very well, with all of the players in her small circle both helping and hindering her from feeling like she’s getting the true story about her life before. But West and her writers don’t quite get a hold of the pacing of their mystery until Episode 5, “It Comes in Waves.” In it, director Sam Miller plays with Sophie’s increasing impulses to push the boundaries of who she is now, by trying experimental memory recovery, drinking, popping pills, and unrepentantly flip-flopping between James and Baden’s affections. Tripping out at Caroline’s art show flips a switch in opening up Sophie as a character in regards to how she will continue to pursue her history and the “truths” that will continue to make her, and us, swing wildly back and forth, reassessing each new piece of information that comes to light. It’s after this point that the series pushes forward with renewed momentum and cliffhangers that are more propulsive going straight through to the finale.

As a series, Surface is gorgeously shot, portraying an almost fairytale version of San Francisco that’s always glowing with wet streets of reflected neon and neighborhoods only possessing expensive cars and luxuriously appointed abodes. It’s visual wealth porn similarly captured in Big Little Lies or Little Fires Everywhere. It’s not surprising that all three are executive produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production shingle, so there’s a throughline here of watching the dappled lives of the uber rich deal with their niche problems. However, where Surface acquits itself differently is showing Sophie's distaste and unease with her affluent life. As she struggles with being in her own skin, she’s also not in accord with the life James has built for her and that puts another strain on their relationship, which is interesting and feels authentic in her journey of discovery. That’s expanded upon in the sixth episode, which is one of the better efforts of the season.

The cast is also integral to selling this whole story, with Mbatha-Raw giving a sympathetic yet ambiguous performance as Sophie. She starts as a blank slate innocent, but as more and more of who she was comes into focus, Mbatha-Raw flirts with all the iterations of who Sophie has been and could be. At times, we’re watching her decide which Sophie she wants to be and it’s engaging to watch. Jackson-Cohen vacillates between loving and obsessive well, as his performance leaves us on our toes about whether he’s the cause of her problems or the sad recipient of Sophie’s choices. Graynor is also great at leaving us wondering if she’s a friend or foe. Unfortunately, Stephan James’ Baden isn’t given enough backstory to flesh out beyond the face value, which is really unfortunate because his character feels the most underserved in the story. He’s given scenes where you’re left wanting to know more about his work life or his personal life, but he’s only oriented around Sophie, which means we don’t get much of his internal life outside of his devotion to her.

Maybe the most disappointing element of the series is how it ends. There’s a strong argument that where it's left is just fine, like a great book that leaves you thinking about it for days or weeks. West and her creative team leave us with some answers, some questions but no need to keep going. Yet the very final minutes all but require that, which feels like it's been mandated to stretch the premise, regardless of its plausibility. And that’s always the cardinal sin of a great mystery: not knowing when to end the game.

Both My Hero Academia Season 5 OVAs, "HLB" and "Laugh! As If You Are in Hell," will be available to stream on Crunchyroll on Aug. 1, 2022.

My Hero Academia is back! Kind of. The two new OVAs (Original Video Animation) may not contribute much to the overall plot of the show or offer many clues as to what's coming next, but they are good reminders of what My Hero can do at its best. These standalone stories get you reacquainted with most of the main cast, expand the world of MHA, and also provide enough superpowered laughs and fun to make the wait for Season 6 easier.

OVAs, in general, are not what they used to be. Back in the '80s and '90s, when home video exploded in popularity, they were an avenue to produce edgier, more mature animation that couldn't get past TV sensors. From gory and violent shows like Bubblegum Crisis and Hellsing Ultimate, to experimental ones like FLCL and Gunbuster, or complex, epic sci-fi operas like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, there was an OVA for everything. Nowadays, most high-profile OVAs tend to be short episodes or bonus features released on home video as cool extras to reward fans. Shows like Attack on Titan released OVAs that expanded their world without distracting from the main plot.

My Hero Academia had already released several OVAs, but not to this level of anticipation. After a lackluster reception to Season 5, a smash hit film, and an adaptation of an acclaimed arc coming soon, it is the perfect time for the show to remind us why we've stuck with it for many years, and prepare us for what's to come.

The two new OVAs are as different as they come. HLB, or Hero League Baseball, is essentially an episode-long game of baseball between Gang Orca's hero agency and Lion Hero: Shishido and his agency. Meanwhile, Laugh! As If You Are in Hell feels more like a standard episode of the show, with Midoriya, Bakugo, and Todoroki working with Endeavor to stop a criminal whose quirk makes people around him laugh uncontrollably.

Just like the last time a big shonen anime did a baseball episode (Jujutsu Kaisen), the HLB episode is a hilarious success. Rather than remotely attempt to connect this episode to the events of last season, it is mostly just an excuse to show how superpowers would affect sports in this world. The result is essentially Super Mario Strikers but with baseball — i.e. a no-holds-barred bloodbath. The animation may not reach the hights of the main series, but it still knows when deliver energetic moments of action to highlight the quirks.

And this is what makes this an essential episode for My Hero Academia, even if it doesn't move things forward. It explores a rather mundane part of the show's world and uses its runtime to answer the question of how it would work with superpowers, all while reminding us of which character has which power ahead of the new season. Seeing the over-the-top violent and creative ways the players use their quirks not just to score but to put the other team out of commission is thrilling and some of the most fun the show has been in a long while. Whether it’s Mineta using one of his adhesive spheres disguised as a baseball to knock out the batter using his own strength, or Gang Orca using his sonar to affect the ball's movement, or Shishido just throwing the ball so hard it destroys the home base and knocks out both the batter, the catcher, and even the umpire, it’s all delightful, superpowered madness.

Sadly, the second episode feels more like retreading old ground, focusing on a criminal that must be stopped. That the villain is essentially a Joker-like character does result in some fun scenarios where every character starts laughing uncontrollably. Also, the episode does work well as a season premiere-like recap, bringing us up to speed on where the characters are in their journeys, with Midoriya, Bakugo, and Todoroki still doing their Hero Work-Studies at Endeavor's Agency, and mentions of the Meta Liberation Army and other story beats from last season. Still, it feels rather inconsequential, and the episode ends a bit too abruptly.

Did we need these OVAs? No. Do you need to watch them to understand the previous or the next season? Probably not. That being said, you can still gain something from them. If nothing else, they serve as good reintroductions to this world and these characters before the new season, and the baseball episode is a delightful one-off story I wouldn't mind seeing more of. How does football, or wrestling work with quirks? Maybe we'll find out one day.

Sony says it's increasing production of PlayStation 5, and is "working to bring forward more supply into the year-end holiday selling season."

During its latest earnings results, Sony explained that both software sales and gameplay engagement have dropped year-on-year – not a huge surprise given the huge increase in gaming during COVID-19 lockdowns.

"Taking this situation into account," Sony explained, "we intend to take action to increase user engagement in the second half of the fiscal year, during which major titles including first party software are scheduled to be released, primarily by increasing the supply of [PS5] hardware and promoting the new PlayStation Plus service."

Sony says it still expects to meet its forecast of 18 million units sold during this financial year, and is seeing positive signs for supply after lockdowns lifted in Shanghai, a major components production hub. As a result, Sony now believes it can bring forward production and sell many of those units during the holiday season, a boom-time for sales.

Sony has previously promised to ramp up production this year, but supplies have remained constrained, with new units selling out almost immediately. In a Q&A session, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said, "We want to produce more units as soon as possible."

Sony's been improving its hardware and services consistently since the launch of PS5, most recently adding an update to support 1440p monitors, and introducing the new PlayStation Stars loyalty service.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Tomb Raider star Alicia Vikander will no longer be Lara Croft after MGM lost the rights to the franchise.

According to The Wrap, the rights for the Tomb Raider film franchise have lapsed after MGM failed to greenlight a Tomb Raider sequel in time, and that means the franchise is now up for grabs.

MGM had until May this year to put a Tomb Raider sequel into production but has now lost the rights after failing to do so. This has sparked a bidding war in Hollywood with “a host” of studios now putting in bids for the popular video game franchise.

The next film, it seems, will be a complete reboot of the franchise without Alicia Vikander, who starred as Lara Croft in the last movie reboot of the series. Tomb Raider saw Vikander suit up as the iconic Lara Croft and earned a paltry $275 million at the box office, barely breaking even. On top of that, it suffered from lackluster reviews.

IGN’s own review said: “It’s a shame to see the trend of poor game-to-movie adaptations continue with a character as great as Lara Croft. In this new Tomb Raider origin story, Lara’s singular drive to find her father falls flat because their relationship isn’t interesting, and that failure is compounded by a lackluster story and characters.”

MGM had already begun looking at a potential sequel, with Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green pegged to write and direct, but that too has fallen apart. GK Films acquired the Tomb Raider rights in 2011 from Square Enix and is now considering offers.

Things look brighter on the gaming side for Tomb Raider. Embracer Group acquired Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics earlier this year, and the studio is working on a new Lara Croft adventure in Unreal Engine 5.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.