Marvel Villainous – August 2020

Free Games

• Epic Games

  • Faeria

    • 2017
    • A turn based collectible card strategy game that takes place on a dynamic hexagon-based board set in a fantasy universe

  • Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

    • 2015
    • The ninth instalment in the open world action adventure Assassin’s Creed series that introduced new traveling systems, and refined combat and stealth mechanics, it was seen as a large step forward after the previous game, Unity

Update: GeForce Now seems to have lost access to its library of Activision Blizzard games due to a misunderstanding

• According to an investor conference call Stadia isn’t part of Blizzard’s Overwatch deal with Google after all, as we speculated last week
• From the sounds of it there was some confusion about whether they had permission to continue offering them post-beta, and they do hope to negotiate a new agreement and get the games back online in the future

In a cautionary tale, a journalist for the Guardian was stranded this week when her internet-connected rental car lost connection

• The car sharing service, Gig Car Share, is marketed as something you can just sign up for on your phone and instantly rent a car
• Unfortunately when Kari Paul and her partner, on a long-weekend road trip outside of the city, decided to pull over and take a quick hike, they found that they could no longer start the car
  • A customer service rep told them that there was an issue with the car’s software that couldn’t be fixed because there wasn’t enough cell service for a reset that the vehicles require every few hours, so they needed to be towed- they had found a 40-mile stretch of highway with no cell service, and phone support couldn’t restart the car’s systems remotely
    • Initially they were just taken back into cell range and told to wait, but after another rep said they should sleep in the car and try again in the morning they gave up and paid out of pocket for a tow back to their bed and breakfast
• Five hours, two tow trucks, and more than 20 calls to customer service later, they finally got the car to start again
  • Once they did get it going, the rep on the phone said “Can I give you one more piece of advice? Get the hell out of there – now.”
• So what can be done? Well buried in the company’s website is mention of the Gig Card, an RFID card you can use to lock or unlock the cars in areas of poor cell service. It won’t prevent the software issue Kari saw, but it could help in other cases
  • The downside is that the cards are a little antithetical to Gig’s “sign up and go” idea- it takes two weeks to receive them, and there’s very little marketing to let people know about how necessary they could get on long drives
• Ultimately she was refunded, given an additional credit, and she’s being sent a Gig Card for long trips in the future. And hopefully this story can help save others the same trouble she went though

The reviews are starting to come in for the new Motorola Razr, and they’re not looking good

• The look and feel seem pretty cool, and they’ve definitely nailed the nostalgia factor
• Unfortunately there are some pretty serious trade-offs involved, especially with the screen
  • First off it’s made of plastic, compared to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip which is using a similar form-factor with a folding glass screen, so that’s some tough timing
    • And because it’s a flexible plastic you can feel the dips and bumps of components underneath, instead of a solid surface as we’ve grown accustomed to with our phones
      • It’s even to the point where, in their Caring for the Razr video, they mention that bumps and lumps are normal
  • Input has also been seeing many issues with the device, having a large air bubble appear at the fold where the display seems to be peeling away from the lamination
    • After a week of use it looked like the flexible display stopped unfolding completely, even though the protective plastic front did, leaving a gap between the two along the hinge
    • The damage isn’t just cosmetic, either- there’s a strip of broken pixels where the screen started peeling away, and touch and taps are virtually unresponsive
    • Their theory is that it had something to do with temperature- the device was used in just below freezing temperatures and brought back into warm rooms a couple of times, so that could be something, but it’s not exactly unreasonable behaviour
      • Speaking of temperature, that’s also the theory behind an issue with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip- one customer reported receiving the device, unpacking it, and flipping it open only to be treated to a loud cracking noise and a series of fractures in the glass along the hinge
    • Motorola responded to the story by saying they don’t recommend storing it in temperatures below -20C and above 60C, but in this case we’re talking about -1 so it should be covered under their standard warranty
  • It also seems to be the norm with these flexible displays that, even when they’re working perfectly they just can’t hit the same quality as their stationary brethren- everything looks washed out and dim compared to flagship Android and iOS devices
• There are also reports of Motorola’s fancy hinge regularly having an embarrassingly obnoxious creaking noise, which they say is “intrinsic to the mechanical movement of the phone”
• On top of that, the camera can be compared to phones that cost a fraction of the price years ago- it has a 16-megapixel sensor, but movement, shadow, or low light all seem to be too much for it. The Verge even had trouble getting it to focus on faces
• The battery power has also been reported to be underwhelming, even with the midrange hardware running the phone
• The $1500 device seems to be mainly defined by its gimmick, when all of its compromises are outshined by the just announced Moto G Power that goes for $250

We skipped the question for a Valentines theme segment, so picking up from a couple weeks ago…

If you’re life had a video game soundtrack, what game would it be from?

• Bastion

Josh really enjoyed the Sonic Movie

Josh is still hooked on Slay the Spire

Tidbits

• The Witcher 3 on Nintendo Switch is getting a pretty slick update, adding new graphical options and cross-save support for the PC version
  • CD Projekt Red has confirmed to Polygon that they’ve added touch control support, save integration with GOG and Steam, more languages, and the ability to adjust video options like depth of field, anti-aliasing, motion blur, and chromatic aberration
  • Modders had actually already found a way to tweak those settings to increase The Witcher’s framerate on the Switch, so official support is a nice bonus
• Apple was officially smacked down this week by the California Supreme Court in a bag search case, so they’re now forced to pay employees kept waiting for bag checks before they’re allowed to leave work
  • The case dates back to 2013, and had employees saying they were kept up to 45 minutes after their shifts, off the clock waiting for managers during busy times
• Sonic the Hedgehog has officially achieved the biggest opening weekend of any video game movie, sitting at $57M in the US
  • The previous record holder, Detective Pikachu, only made $54M

We want to know,