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Month: January 2019
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With all the characters destines lying with the fabled weapon. Souls collide over the ages vying for control of Soulcaliber.
For more content, Patreon supports get access to upcoming ideas and more!
A huge thanks to Dalton, our favourite fan. And thanks to all our Official Fans that support us. And if you want to support us too, its as easy as clicking this link!
Also, make sure to check out RIPT Apparel for sweet 24 tee shirt designs. And don’t forget to use the coupon code PS2JSHOW for 10% off!
After fan outcry over Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s forced heterosexual relationship and child in their latest DLC, and despite initially saying there wouldn’t be any changes, Ubisoft has announced they’ll be changing the cutscene and dialogue to “better reflect the nature of the relationship for players selecting a non-romantic storyline”
They’ll also be addressing the achievement earned after the child is born called “Growing Up”, which many saw as a comment that being gay or childless was a phase to grow out of
Free games of the fortnight
Epic Games
Jackbox Party Pack (until Feb 7th)
2014
Pack of party games playable using your phone as a controller, ranging from head-to-head trivia to made-for-streaming lie detection with audience participation
Security
Collection #1 has been released this week, containing more than 700M email addresses and 1.1B unique username/password pairs
This collection compiles more than 2000 different leaks dating all the way back to 2008
If you’re curious about your credentials you can go to haveibeenpwned.com and type in your email address to see if it was included
They also provide a secure password checker, but I’m too paranoid to use it
Either way, the big bullet point here is to make sure you don’t re-use passwords, and use 2FA whenever possible. Stay safe out there
Also, it looks like Apple’s released security updates for pretty much everything so you should update if possible
Soulja Boy is at it again, shaking up the video game world by putting his name on illegal emulators
We missed reporting on it before, but apparently late last year he “released” game consoles, including a Game Boy clone, that were just rebranded bootleg Chinese Linux boxes with the price cranked up that run a bunch of emulators and unlicensed ROMS
My favourite part is how the SouljaGame Handheld (which comes with 3,000 games) is marketed as running Switch games
Well in a surprise to absolutely no one he was forced to stop selling them, presumably due to legal action, and souljagame.com now redirects to Nintendo’s 3DS store
And now he’s back at it again, showing off his latest project that supposedly has 800 games preinstalled from consoles like PlayStation, Game Boy, and Genesis
He’s now saying that they’re all licensed, and that Nintendo originally approached him because they wanted in
To top it off, when asked if it’ll play Fortnite he said “Yes, we’re working on it.” “Not this one, on the next one you can”
When asked for comment, Epic Games just said “No, you can’t play Fortnite on a rooted or jailbroken device due to anti-cheat measures”
YouTube has officially banned users from sharing videos of dangerous pranks and stunts
After a blindfolded teen crashed into another vehicle while attempting the Bird Box challenge, YouTube is finally stepping in
They’ve updated their guidelines to disallow videos “that can cause death and/or have caused death in some instances”
Specific examples cited were the Tide Pod challenge, which had people eating laundry detergent, and the Fire challenge, which had people dousing themselves in rubbing alcohol and setting themselves on fire
Yes, apparently the fire challenge is a thing. The flames are sometimes not visible to the naked eye, and in many cases the resulting burns require skin grafts
So that was my daily dose of what the fuck this week
They’ve also added that they don’t allow “pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger”, and “pranks that cause children to experience severe emotional distress”
We have yet to see policies against hateful or racist rhetoric, but hey, baby steps
In Japan: Man arrested for selling a modified figure
You’re known by your friends as ‘the dependable one’, a trust-worthy type, loyal to those you care about. You’re a deep thinker, using your knowledge to your strategic advantage. Your only real flaw is your tendency to get distracted by petting dogs in need of belly rubs! Who can really blame you for that?
There is something I like about each faction
Cherrystone Kingdom
Traditional look of European Knights
Silver armour and red cloth
Heavensong Empire
Outfits have a Samurai flair
They also wear Golden animal masks that reflect their role and discipline
Cloth and leather armour, yellow is their primary colour
Felheim Legion
Viking look
Undead and supernatural beings in their ranks
Blue cloth and heavy brown wool for their outfits
Floran Tribes
Plant people, some very humanoid
Looks like Dryads
Celtic and/or Druid look
Primarily green, they have a natural colour palette
I like the look a lot, going to want to watch some gameplay and maybe pick it up for myself.
Tidbits
Move over Korea, Google’s new AlphaStar AI system is crushing pro Starcraft II players
Even after it was tweaked with slower-than-human reaction times and fewer actions per minute than professional human players it managed to win 10 of its 11 matches
Metroid Prime 4 is being delayed after Nintendo decided to reboot the project and shift development back to the series’ original developer, Retro Studios
In a development update video they said that they didn’t make the decision lightly, but the existing development hadn’t reached the standards they were looking for
Windows 10 Mobile is becoming de-supported this December
In other news, Windows 10 Mobile is apparently still supported in 2019?
They’re recommending that users switch to an iPhone or Android device, since they’ll stop releasing any updates on December 10, 2019, which is amusing after their funeral procession for the iPhone when it released
Get ready for the bounty of Pokemon movies on its way
Detective Pikachu sequel is already in development, and they’re working on adapting Red and Blue as well as a spinoff centered on Mewtwo
Ale & Blood mini review
Really entertaining novella in the Bring Down Heaven series by Sam Sykes
Great taste of his style if you’re interested but didn’t want to commit to a full novel
Recommend Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant (and all the side novellas)
Summary from GoodReads
The zombie apocalypse happened more than twenty years ago. Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t all die out, largely because we’d had years of horror movies to tell us how to behave when the dead start walking. We fought back, and we won…sort of. The dead still walk; loved ones still try to eat you if you’re not careful; the virus that caused the problem in the first place is still incurable. But at least we lived, right?
The Newsflesh Trilogy is a story about blogging, politics, medical science, espionage, betrayal, the ties that bind, the ties that don’t, how George Romero accidentally saved the world, and, of course, zombies. It’s thoughtful horror, and horrific science fiction, and I’m very fond of it.
For more content, Patreon supports get access to upcoming ideas and more!
A huge thanks to Dalton, our favourite fan. And thanks to all our Official Fans that support us. And if you want to support us too, its as easy as clicking this link!
Also, make sure to check out RIPT Apparel for sweet 24 tee shirt designs. And don’t forget to use the coupon code PS2JSHOW for 10% off!
Netflix has a fun update that flew under our radar. Bungie breaks free from EA. This week’s bad description, might be too easy. Alan gave a movie a shot when he expected the worst.
I want to not have to use ‘fans’. Cause they are the friends we haven’t met yet, and friends are just the family you aren’t born to. That logic, I’m going to refer to our listeners as ‘fanily’
Netflix has a cool little update!
Bojack twitter posted an update
Unflattering pic
You can change your profile pic to be a character from many other Netflix exclusives
Bojack
Big Mouth
Stranger Things
Orange is the New Black
Defenders
Total of 25 different categories
Including “The Classics” which is the updated original pics
Choose Your Own Adventure publisher suing Netflix over Bandersnatch
Gameplay has players building the track as they move forward
Items appear to give players a boost
Almost like Mario Kart
Spikes and enemies can also pop up on the track
I am interesting in playing it at a cafe
The theme looks on point
The concern is variety
The variety of track pieces seem lacking
Luke suggests a board game called Battle Racers, for a more in-depth race experience
Reminder- The Wii Shop Channel is closing on January 30th!
Make sure you’ve purchased and downloaded anything you wanted and put it on the consoles you like, because everything from re-downloading to the Wii System Transfer Tool will be shut down
Update: The Twitter account for the Westworld mobile game we talked about last week has announced that it has been removed from app stores effective immediately, and it will officially be closed on April 16th. In-app purchases have been disabled, and any users with in-game currency left over should spend it before things are shut down
It looks like the “amicable solution” here was for WB to completely bail on the entire product
Big news from Bungie- after 8 years they’ve officially cut ties with Activision
It seems like things came to a head after Activision expressed disappointment with the new Destiny expansion during an earnings call, basically complaining that it was too focused on end-game players and how they want to “drive stronger engagement and in-game revenue generation”
Many were worried that this was a signal the micro-transactions would go back to how bad they were when Destiny 2 first launched, with a lot of content locked away behind dollar signs
Bungie released a statement thanking Activision for their partnership, and announced that the publishing rights to Destiny will go with Bungie when they leave
Looks like even though they’re working on new projects the Destiny community can still look forward to content and support while Bungie self-publishes their content
That said, it’ll be interesting to see how the game evolves- Activision likely wasn’t behind all of the problems with Destiny, but if nothing else this will mean the game stays more true to a single company’s vision. Time will tell what that vision is like
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is in the news this week after its director apologized for forcing characters into a heterosexual marriage
The game has previously been hailed as a step forward, in which you can play as a man or a woman (a series first) and, though you’re presented with a potential partner of the opposite sex, you can choose to pursue same-sex romance options (or just run around and not romance anybody, as you prefer)
Unfortunately the latest DLC pack, Legacy of the First Blade, breaks that thread and has your character getting married and pumping out a kid
It may seem like it’s not a big deal but these kinds of games have players building up a personal story for the characters and how they interact, and this kind of sudden jarring change removes a whole layer of immersion for many players
A lot of fans feel that it’s entirely at odds with how the main character is developed leading up to that point, with little to no motivation for the sudden personality switch
According to creative director Jonathan Dumont the intention was that it was a child to carry on your bloodline to the lineage of assassins shown elsewhere in the series, and to let players choose between a utilitarian view of continuing your legacy or forming an actual romantic relationship, but the clarity and motivation was poorly executed
There are no plans to change the current DLC, but he’s said that future chapters will be mindful of how they missed the mark
Apparently EA just can’t get enough hate as it is, so they’ve gone ahead and cancelled yet another Star Wars game
This one has a bit of a history- it started at Visceral Games, and would have been a linear action-adventure game directed by Amy Hennig, the same woman that directed the Uncharted franchise
Then EA closed Visceral back in 2017, and rebooted the game at EA Vancouver into something open-world with the excuse that single-player linear games are dead
Thank you Spider-Man and God of War for proving them oh so very wrong
There are rumours that this one (where you would play as a scoundrel or bounty hunter exploring various open-world planets and working with different factions) was cancelled because it wouldn’t come out soon enough, which seems like a weird reason to keep rebooting projects
Apparently they might be starting work on another smaller-scale Star Wars title, but people aren’t holding on to much hope that it will amount to anything
For me, hope for a good SW game from EA died with 1313
On the plus side, Respawn’s Jedi: Fallen Order is still slated for a fall 2019 release. So that’s something
Interesting legal news from the US- federal judge Kanis Westmore has ruled that FaceID and TouchID can’t be compelled by law enforcement
Ruling basically applies the same rights against self-incrimination to biometrics that previously applied only to passcodes
Westmore wrote: “If a person cannot be compelled to provide a passcode because it is testimonial communication, a person cannot be compelled to provide one’s finger, thumb, iris, face, or other biometric feature to unlock that same device. The undersigned finds that a biometric feature is analogous to the 20 nonverbal, physiological responses elicited during a polygraph test, which are used to determine guilt or innocence, and are considered testimonial.”
This could still be overturned, and there are already cases where judges have allowed authorities to compel biometric phone unlocks in the past, but it shows that the legal system is slowly catching up with modern tech
In the meantime, just a quick reminder since I’m a paranoid guy, if you restart your phone or bring up the emergency screen on an iPhone by hitting the power button 5 times quickly it will disable TouchID and FaceID, and force a passcode unlock which has always been protected
Tidbits
Netflix is being sued over their interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
Apparently they’ve been in negotiations with Chooseco, a publishing company specializing in children’s books, over the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark for years but never actually gained permission to use it
Chooseco is suing for $25M in damages, saying Bandersnatch benefits from association with the Choose Your Own Adventure series without actually getting the license to use the name
The final season of Game of Thrones will be coming on April 14th, and they released a teaser on YouTube to get the hype-train rolling!
PlayStation VR has released its third digital “demo disc”, featuring superstars like Moss, Thumper, Superhot VR, and Astro Bot Rescue Mission
There’s an interesting theory going around that Facebook’s ’10 Year Challenge’ could be a way to train facial recognition on age progression
Rather than having to comb through user photos, they’re having clean, simple, helpfully labelled sets of photos that they could use to teach computers what people are likely to look like as they get older
Titans mini-review
Pretty solid, once they got “fuck Batman” out of their system
Took the characters in interesting directions, and gets you invested right before the evil season finale cliffhanger
Recommend Venom (2018)
I was expecting some mindless action, but I found myself caring about the plot and characters
The symbiote’s characterization is a little sudden, but it felt fresh and interesting
Solid superhero movie even for people that don’t like Spider-Man
A bad app, or bad actors, may be using your phone for nefarious purposes! Dunkey has a new Best of the Year video. Alan has a movie recommendation we missed earlier. Josh answers last weeks Bad Description of a video game, and gives a new one.
Dunkey has his Best of 2018 Video out
God of War – Dunkey says its a rare example of a triple A studio actually making a triple A game. We did a whole history leading up to it and don’t wanna spoil anything! https://www.ps2jshow.com/ps2j-196-history-5-30-2018/
Celeste – Help Madeline survive her inner demons on her journey to the top of Celeste Mountain, in this super-tight platformer from the creators of TowerFall. Brave hundreds of hand-crafted challenges, uncover devious secrets, and piece together the mystery of the mountain.
Into The Breach – Control powerful mechs from the future to defeat an alien threat. Each attempt to save the world presents a new randomly generated challenge in this turn-based strategy game. From the creators of FTL.
Zeroranger – Bullet hell shoot em up with beautiful pixel graphics down with minimal colour palette, and an amazing soundtrack.
Enter the Gungeon – A bullet hell dungeon crawler following a band of misfits seeking to shoot, loot, dodge roll and table-flip their way to personal absolution by reaching the legendary Gungeon’s ultimate treasure: the gun that can kill the past.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – Help Donkey Kong and his friends get back their home from Vikings.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – Set 3 years after the events of Uncharted 3, Nathan Drake has apparently left the world of fortune hunting behind. However, it doesn’t take long for adventure to come calling when Drake’s brother, Sam, re-emerges asking for his help to save his own life and offering an adventure Drake cannot resist.
Lumines – The critically-acclaimed puzzle game produced by legendary creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi comes to PC.
Monster Hunter World – Enjoy the ultimate hunting experience, using everything at your disposal to hunt monsters in a new world teeming with surprises and excitement.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon – Battle with swords and whips in this retro-style action game brought to you by game creator Koji Igarashi and Inti Creates! Play as Zangetsu, a demon slayer bearing a deep grudge, who must travel through perilous lands to defeat a powerful demon lurking in a dark castle.
Downwell – A game about a young man going down an endless well with gun-boots.
Jack Box Party Packs – The team behind YOU DON’T KNOW JACK presents FIVE guffaw-inducing party games in one pack! You’re gonna need more than one party for this. Your phones or tablets are your controllers! For 1-100 players!
Monolith – A top down action shooter with procedurally generated elements. Explore a large, abandoned facility in search of incredible power, fighting dangerous foes and gaining new weapons and upgrades as you progress.
PS2J 202 (June 2018) News Update
Bethesda’s lawsuit against Warner Bros accusing the Westworld mobile game of copying Fallout Shelter has been quietly resolved
Terms weren’t disclosed, but both sides are covering their own legal fees and Bethesda called the resolution “amicable”
My guess? WB found that the company they hired to develop the game copied code and paid to make the problem go away
There’s a sneaky package tracking app that’s crowd-sourcing its data in the worst way possible
The app is called “Parcels – Track Your Packages” (not to be confused with the popular “Parcel” app)
As soon as you download and open it, it starts sending requests to its server looking for packages to track
The weird part here is that you may not have registered any packages yet
What it’s actually doing is downloading the details for shipments that other users have registered, including tracking number and courier details
Then the app uses your device’s resources and connection to get the status of those packages and send the info back, presumably to be forwarded on to the person that’s actually asked for it
This is likely a way to get around any limiting that the tracking websites may have, since the requests are coming from a large number of devices instead of a single group of servers
The problem is that, even if it was done with good intentions, the developers have created a botnet
They could easily leverage this framework to have all the devices perform DDoS attacks or falsify ad-clicks
Besides that, it’s also an issue because there’s no security involved
There’s no encryption on the data that’s being sent or received, or even on the instructions your phone gets from the server
9to5mac had the app running on a test device for an hour and managed to capture tracking info for 52 different shipments because they knew how to look
AT&T has found an easy way to upgrade all their mobile users from 4G to 5G- change the logo!
Background: actual 5G is using a completely new chunk of the wireless spectrum which requires new modem and antenna tech as well as more cell towers due to shorter range (because fun fact, some of the new spectrum is blocked by oxygen)
A much easier strategy, as AT&T has shown, is to just call 4G LTE “5G E”, and roll out software updates to reflect that
As a bonus, some of the phones that got this super-important update are still months behind in security patches
Their justification is that the new name will be applied to areas that have advanced LTE features, and actual 5G will be called 5G+. Because this just isn’t confusing enough
Psyconauts 2 coming out 2019 Looks like Raz in actively in the Psyconaut Organization.
Agent Nein is doing experiments on the mind of the villain from the first game.
It looks like Raz’s family may have accepted their powers and be more a part of the story.
An overhead shot of the common enemies you face show a couple new types: a worm thing with yellow eyes, a evil bunny with flame on their back, and a giant Judge with a gavel as a warhammer.
Some teaser shots of game play shows the wonderful ascetic of the game remains intact.
Tidbits
Shout out to fellow APN member I Have Some Notes for the tip
It looks like the fourth film in the Star Trek reboot has been quietly shelved
But hey, at least we got some odd-numbered Star Trek movies that were good!
Vive is introducing new hardware later this year called Vive Pro Eye, that includes eye-tracking from inside the headset
The idea is that you can make menu selections by looking at them instead of having to move your head, and computers can focus resources on rendering the best graphics exactly where you’re looking
Hobbyists have resurrected Kojima’s PT as a free download in Unreal PT
Nearly identical to the PS4 original, just missing the intro and closing cutscene
Also includes a helpful guide.txt for the game’s more obtuse moments
A huge thanks to Dalton, our favourite fan. And thanks to all our Official Fans that support us. And if you want to support us too, its as easy as clicking this link!
Also, make sure to check out RIPT Apparel for sweet 24 tee shirt designs. And don’t forget to use the coupon code PS2JSHOW for 10% off!
Were back and there is free games of the month! Josh talks about some new things for the future. Alan recommends something for your health. Josh has his first Bad Description challenge.
Today’s bad description: “After his girlfriend is abducted by the stubborn antagonist. Tradesmen is forced to pursue through a dangerous construction site.”
A new year means a new list of the top 50 worst passwords of the year!
Bad news, #49 is joshua
Then we have some classics, like #43- letmein
New ones, like #39- harley
A new twist on qwerty at #26- zxcvbnm
The double-devil at 1#4- 666666
Down from #4 last year to #9 this year- qwerty
And for the 5th consecutive year:
Exactly what it says on the tin at #2- password
And continuing its reign as the #1 worst password- 123456
Bethesda just keeps shooting themselves in the foot over Fallout 76 – and I’m not even talking about the game itself!
First there was the Power Armor Edition of the game that came with a functional power armor helmet (which was pretty cool) and a bag to carry it that was supposed to be durable canvas, but was instead cheap, flimsy nylon
Even after shipping the product listing showed the original canvas bag that was advertised
Eventually the listing was updated to say nylon, but the picture still has not been updated
The initial response from Bethesda support? “We are sorry that you aren’t happy with the bag. The bag shown in the media was a prototype and was too expensive to make.”
They then offered 500 Atoms (about $5 worth of their in-game currency) to people that contacted support with proof of purchase
Then a week later they finally announced plans to make things right and manufacture proper canvas replacement bags
If you bought the Power Armor Edition you have until January 31st to submit a ticket at beth.games/2QDropM to get the replacement when they’re ready
But wait, there’s more!
Many users, after submitting tickets for the replacement, were shown all of the other users’ replacement tickets including addresses, emails, and partial credit card info
The problem was fixed in about 45 minutes, but they confirmed that 65 tickets containing personal information were exposed in that time
Apparently they’re contacting customers that were affected, but that’s not really a genie you can put back in the bottle
Then, to cap it all off, Nuka Dark Rum brought us a whole new fiasco
The idea here was that it would be a dark rum in the iconic Nuka Cola rocket bottle- pretty cool, right? Maybe even worth the $80 they were charging
Well after they started shipping, a note appeared at the tail end of the website talking about “the story of the intentional and complex design of the Nuka Dark Rum product”
Because you know any time you have to tell people something was intentional that really inspires confidence
It goes on to say how no corners were cut, and “it cost over 2X what it would have if we would have simply cast a glass mold”
Concerned yet?
They apparently decided that a glass bottle alone wouldn’t be dramatic enough, even though I think a glass rocket bottle would be pretty great all on its own
Which brings us to my favourite line- “Over 100 hours were spent just writing the code to create the 3D-printed prototype of the shells”
So they 3D printed a giant novelty plastic shell for a standard bottle- 13 inches tall and 6 inches wide
The cap is kind of neat, where instead of a screw-top it’s an integrated cork, but I’ve seen some videos of people trying to pour the rum and the plastic shell definitely doesn’t play nice with the glass bottle inside
Tidbits
According to the New York Times, Facebook is selling even more of your personal info than we thought!
Not only did they give companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Sony access to data on all your friends, but they also gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read your private messages
The FCC in the US has reclassified text messages as an “information service” instead of a telecom service
What does this mean? They basically just repealed net neutrality for your text messages
Masked as a way to allow telecom companies to block spam messages, it also dismantles protective regulations and gives them the ability to censor or favour speech as they choose, potentially blocking or editing your message if they feel like it
