Free games

• Twitch

  • Vane

    • 2019
    • Adventure game where you play a child that can turn into a bird to explore a vast expanse and solve puzzles with an aesthetic like Journey meets Limbo and a great soundtrack

• Epic Games

  • Torchlight II

    • 2012
    • Action RPG dungeon crawler similar to the Diablo series that has you playing as one of four classes as you explore randomly generated dungeons and hunt down the Alchemist

High profile Twitter accounts were hacked this Wednesday as part of a bitcoin scam, including the likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Apple

• No one’s quite sure of how all the accounts were compromised, or to what extent Twitter’s internal systems may have been affected, but Twitter was forced to temporarily block all verified accounts after their employee tools were used to hack even accounts using two-factor authentication
  • Anonymous sources claim that a Twitter employee was paid to either give access to other parties or post the tweets themselves, and a Twitter spokesperson says that the investigation is ongoing
  • Either way, this is a good example of why these kinds of tools and backdoor access can wreak havoc in the wrong hands. This may be one of the better arguments for end-to-end encryption
• It all started when Elon Musk’s account was compromised by a hacker using it to run a bitcoin scam, saying that any bitcoins payed to a specific address would be paid back two-fold (pay $1000, get $2000, was the example in the tweet)
• Bill Gates’ account was also hit, posting new tweets almost as fast as the old ones were deleted
• Shortly after that the accounts of Apple, Uber, Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, and many others including major online Bitcoin exchanges started all promoting the same scam
• The bitcoin wallet linked to the tweets has had its balance fluctuating up and down as it does seem to be sending money somewhere, but it seems to have received nearly $120,000 USD worth of the cryptocurrency with more flowing through even up to Thursday evening when we’re recording
• https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh

Ubisoft Forward

• Apparently the initial plan was to track how many minutes of the presentation each user watched and then reward them accordingly
  • Watch Dogs 2 for 1 minute of viewing, and so on for in-game rewards for The Division 2, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• After some issues with their login portal, Ubisoft changed things up so that you just had to register your Ubisoft account at a particular URL (we tweeted it earlier this week) and you would eventually get all the rewards
  • A lot of users have been grumbling that they haven’t received their rewards but their initial line of “it may take up to 24 hours” has slowly shifted to “Rewards will be delivered by the end of the week”
  • I just received mine a few hours before recording, so if you managed to register in time you should check your inbox
• Recap
  • Ghost Recon Breakpoint is getting AI teammates this week, with full customization, sync shots, and the ability to revive the player, along with some improvements to Ghost War and a new live event called Resistance
    • Resistance offers limited-time missions that will affect the presence of rebels in Auroa, as well as offer exclusive rewards for participating
  • Watch Dogs: Legion looks pretty cool, giving you the ability to build you own crew of up to 40 operatives, but as noted by Fanily member Asa its October 29th release date is butting right up against Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077
  • Valhalla is coming November 17th, letting players lead Viking raids, assault castles, assassinate targets, build alliances and make their mark on England’s Dark Ages
    • Most importantly you can recruit a cat to join your raiding party and keep the ship free of rats
  • Rainbow Six Siege is celebrating its 5 year anniversary with a message of thanks for the community’s dedication
  • Hyper Scape is now in open beta, bringing the sci-fi multiplayer shooter to PC players for free
  • Far Cry 6 will hit on February 18th and have you fighting to free your homeland of Yara from a brutal tyrant played by Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian), and I’m tempted to buy the game just because of him
  • Ubisoft’s going all-in on mobile
    • They showcased last year’s Might & Magic Era of Chaos
    • Brawlhalla is coming to Android and iOS on August 6th with cross-play and special rewards for early-adopters
    • Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad is a F2P tactical RPG hitting Android and iOS on August 27th with a roster of characters spanning the Tom Clancy universe

Apple Updates

• iOS 13.6
  • Introduces more options for controlling automatic updates, so instead of either having it download and install automatically or you do everything manually, now you have have your device download future updates and then prompt you that it’s ready
    • Updates will only be downloaded on Wifi
  • They’ve also brought in support for CarKey, which can let you use your iPhone or Apple Watch instead of your key fob for NFC-enabled cars
    • Not a lot of people will be able to take advantage of this, since it’s pretty much limited to BMW at the moment, and requires at minimum an iPhone XR or Apple Watch 5, but once it’s more widely available you’ll see people unlocking their cars by tapping their phone on the handle, and starting them by putting their phone on the car’s charging tray
    • You’ll also be able to set up limitations on young drivers and share or revoke keys with up to five other users
  • Health now has a new Symptoms section that you can use to track things like aches, appetite changes, coughing, nausea, and more
  • Apple News can now save your place in long articles, letting you get back into things where you left off, and also has a new audio feature for News+ that has professionally narrated content
  • There are also a bunch of bug fixes, like one that had some phonecalls from Saskatchewan appearing as if they were from the US
• watchOS 6.2.8 gives us support for those CarKey features, as well as ECG support in Bahrain, Brazil, and South Africa

Apple has posted a support document this week warning customers against using camera covers on their MacBooks, saying that it can lead to display damage due to the small amount of space allowed between the screen and body

• Even if you don’t see physical damage, it can also affect the light sensors used for screen brightness and the TrueTone display
• They say anyone concerned about their camera should keep an eye out for the green light beside the lens, which is engineered so that the camera can’t be access without it turning on
• They also say that, if you really need a cover, they recommend one no thicker than a piece of printer paper that won’t leave adhesive residue

This week in past game news:

July 11 – 1993 – Goof Troop on SNES

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goof_Troop_(video_game)
• Goof Troop is an action-adventure video game, developed and released by Capcom in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and based on the television series of the same name. The game can be played in multiplayer mode, wherein one player controls Goofy and the other Max.
• Goof Troop is one of the first games designed by Shinji Mikami.
  • Shinji Mikami is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he went on to direct many of the company’s biggest titles. He directed the first installment of the survival horror series Resident Evil in 1996 and the first installment of Dino Crisis in 1999. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the critically acclaimed remake of the first game in 2002. He returned to direct third person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat ’em up action game. Mikami worked at PlatinumGames to direct the third person shooter Vanquish in 2010. After that he created his own studio Tango Gameworks. Under that company, he directed the third person horror game The Evil Within. The company has since been acquired by the American company ZeniMax Media.

July 12 – 1985 – Acclaim acquires Sculptured Software, renames it Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City

• https://www.mobygames.com/company/acclaim-studios-salt-lake-city
• This studio is responsible for the Super Star Wars games, which are terrible representations of Star Wars and games made difficult to extend play time.

July 13 – 2010 – Fruit Ninja on iPad Releases

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_Ninja
• iPhone version released a few months prior, this mobile game dominated peoples attention when it blew up on iPad. And still is being remade and released, as recently as April 2019, for Oculus Quest.

July 14 – 1998 – Civilization Name Case settled

• MicroProse, Avalon-Hill, and Activision have settled the Civilization name issue out of court. MicroProse is the undisputed owner of the franchise (both computer and board games). Activision gets a license for “Civilization: Call to Power” and one add-on. Avalon-Hill relinquishes all rights to MicroProse.

July 15 – 2003 – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic
• The story of Knights of the Old Republic takes place almost 4,000 years before the formation of the Galactic Empire, where Darth Malak, a Dark Lord of the Sith, has unleashed a Sith armada against the Republic. The player character, as a Jedi, must venture to different planets in the galaxy to defeat Malak.

July 16 – 2005 – Dance Dance Immolation

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Dance_Immolation
• Dance Dance Immolation was an interactive performance piece by fire art group Interpretive Arson based out of the artist work space known as NIMBY in East Oakland. It is a modified version of Dance Dance Revolution where players are shot with fire if they perform poorly. Participants are not harmed since they wear a fire proximity suit with forced-air respirators. Numerous other safeguards are built into the system to ensure the players are not subject to direct flame exposure or inhalation of superheated air. The piece was premiered in 2005 and ran at various festivals and private events internationally. It was retired in 2013 at Burning Man, where all the components were gathered into a pile and a piano was dropped on it.

July 17 – 2017 – Redneck Deer Huntin’

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_Rampage#Redneck_Deer_Huntin‘
• Redneck Deer Huntin’ is a hunting game for the PC using the same engine as the previous games in the series. It was developed by Xatrix Entertainment and released in 1997.

Tidbits

• The class action lawsuit against Apple’s silent performance throttling has concluded, and eligible iPhone owners can get about $25 each if they submit a claim online
  • The class includes any US resident who owned any iPhone between 6 and 7 Plus before December 21, 2017. You must also have experienced “diminished performance” on your device
  • If you want your share, or you want to opt out so you can sue Apple individually (good luck), you can go to smartphoneperformancesettlement.com
• Walmart is bringing their weight into the mask-wearing debate, requiring customers to cover their faces in all locations
  • Since governments have failed to set the tone and tell citizens to wear a mask whenever they need to leave the house, businesses like Walmart, Costco, and Apple have been cracking the whip to prevent COVID outbreaks
  • Walmart will apparently be bringing on specially trained “health ambassadors” stationed by store entrances to enforce the new rules
• According to PCGamer, Halo 3 is the best PC port of the Master Chief Collection so far
  • Many were worried, especially after Reach’s issues with sound and frame rate since it runs on a modified Halo 3 engine, but apparently Halo 3 runs perfectly with a full 144fps without the animation issues of some of the other MCC titles
• Gizmodo hit the panic button this week, screaming about a major Windows security patch that everyone needs to install, if they’re running Windows Servers, anyway
  • The bug is related to the Windows Domain Name System, and it is a pretty nasty one, so if you’re running Windows Server you should absolutely update as soon as possible. Most people won’t need to do anything, though
• Ubisoft’s chief creative officer, managing director of Canadian studios, and their global head of HR have all resigned effective immediately following a review centred around sexual misconduct charges
  • This follows the departure of their vice president, Maxime Béland, after similar allegations

Review

• Half-Life: Alyx is damn good.
  • Played on an Oculus Quest using Virtual Desktop
  • It takes a little finessing to get things running smoothly for wireless PC VR, but after a little guess-and-check (H.264 vs HEVC) I spent a couple hours in the game with no issues at all
  • The environments are great, locomotion is solid, gunplay and reloads are satisfying, there’s no melee combat so far, but the grabbity gloves are fantastic
    • The gloves let you point your hand at an item out of range, press a button, and flick your wrist to have it launch itself toward you
    • Then it’s really intuitive to catch it on its way past your head and either put it in your ammo inventory over your shoulder or your item inventory in your wrists
  • Overall this really feels like a triple-A VR game, and I very much hope we can get more like it