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
- Bandersnatch is really interesting!
- Choose your own adventure show
- Part of the Black Mirror universe/collection?
- Thanks to Alaina for telling me to check it out!
Sonic Crash Course Board Game
BoardGameGook Details
- 2 – 4 Players
- 30 – 45 min playtime
- Weight 2/5
- Designed by Sean Mcdonald
- Train Heist (2013) 6.7 on BGG
- Published by IDW
- Machi Koro
Best review is based on the Kotaku Review
- Review written by Luke Plunkett
- Pick your miniature!
- Sonic
- Tails
- Knuckles
- or Eggman
- 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
