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Tag: assassin’s creed valhalla

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PS2J 319 News – Shigeru Eats Crow

  • September 25, 2020
  • Tagged as: abtracetogether, account, ads, advertising, aesthetic, Alan, alarm, Alberta, Amazon, among us, antitrust, Apple, archive building, arkane studios, assassin’s creed valhalla, atmosphere, automation, ban, bastion, Battlefront, bedtime, bethesda softworks, binary, block, bytedance, cheap, Chrome, clock, Cloud, clouds, cnbc, colourblind, complete edition, contact tracing, control, coupon, covid, data breach, Diablo, dishonored, Doom, early access, Epic Games, eternal, exclusive, exploration, exposure notification, Facebook, Fallout, fauna, firestorm, flag, flora, Free, Free Games, free to play, friends, fun, game, game development, game pass, Gamepass, god’s, Google, Greece, greek, grid, hades, Halo, hard drive, haveibeenpwned, hdd, Health, hello games, id software, innersloth, intelligent tracking prevention, interesting, invite only, ios 14, iPhone, Japanese, Josh, katamari damacy, lightning, lock, luna, Mac, machine games, MacOS, marsh, memory card, meteors, Microsoft, Mixer, myst, mythology, NES, New Vegas, nintendo switch, No Mans Sky, obsidian entertainment, Oculus, oh my, oracle, Origins, PC, Phil Spencer, planets, Playstation, Prey, Privacy, ps1, quake, quest, rage, Reddit, release, resident evil 7, Rocket League, rogue legacy, rollercoaster tycoon 3, routine, safari, sandworms, satisfying, security recommendations, series, sky, sleep, soaked, Sonic, Space, ssd, Star Wars, Steam, storage, story, Streaming<, supergiant games, swamp, tango gameworks, ternary, the elder scrolls, tiktok, tiktok global, tornadoes, tracker, tracking, transistor, Trump, Twitch, Ubisoft, united states, Update, usa, variety, verify, volcano, walmart, wash your hands, we love you, wear your masks, web app, wild, wild robots, Wolfenstein, XBox, Xbox 360, Yooka Laylee, zagreus, zenimax
http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/http://ps2jshow.fushigiyami.com/podcasts/PS2J-319-Crow.mp3

Free games

  • Epic Games

    • RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition

      • 2020 updated bundle of the 2004 title, including the Soaked and Wild expansion packs
      • Construction and management sim game that has you managing amusement parks and either completing objectives in career mode or creating the park of your dreams in sandbox mode
    • Rocket League

      • Now officially free to play, and if you download it from the Epic Games Store before October 23rd you’ll get a free coupon for the store as well

PSA: the iOS 14 update disables your alarm if you use the Bedtime feature

  • Although each day’s alarm can still be viewed in the Clock app, they’ve moved the Bedtime suite of features into a new Sleep section in the Health app
  • This wouldn’t be a big deal, but unfortunately as part of the move you’re expected to go in and set up your sleep preferences again before the alarm is active
  • The new Sleep features include wind-down routines and automations, which are pretty slick, but you’ll have to go set all of that up or you might accidentally sleep in after you upgrade

ABTraceTogether has finally been updated to run in the background on iOS!

  • The update was just released today so there aren’t any reports on how it may be affecting battery life, but I’ve set it up and I’ll be reporting back next week.
  • So far it’s promising at least, in that it only asked for Bluetooth permissions and my phone number, so even though I don’t think it’s using the Exposure Notification framework I’m willing to give it a shot
  • In the meantime though I strongly recommend that everyone who can run it does so.
  • Stay safe out there, everyone

Amazon’s announced a bunch of stuff this week including updates to its Echo and Ring hardware, but the most surprising entry is a new cloud-gaming service called Luna

  • For $6/month in early access you’ll be able to play games with either their fancy proprietary $50 controller, an Xbox One or PS4 controller, or a mouse and keyboard
  • At launch titles will be streaming up to 1080p/60fps, with 4k support teased as “coming soon”
  • During the early access period they’ll be offering games like
    • Control
    • Resident Evil 7
    • GRID
    • Yooka-Laylee
  • They also talked about bringing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to Luna, but with no solid timelines
  • Amazon has a nice leg up for this with their ownership of Twitch, too
    • Some of the integration sounds a lot like what Microsoft promised with Mixer, where streamers can broadcast from Luna direct to Twitch and viewers will be able to go right from watching the footage to playing on the service themselves
  • Luna will reportedly run on Fire TV, Mac, and PC, along with having “web apps” for iPhone and iPad to get around the App Store restrictions hampering Game Pass
    • Android is listed as “coming soon”
  • There aren’t any solid dates, at the moment though, and early access is invite-only and United States exclusive

No Man’s Sky 3.0 has hit with their new Origins update, and it’s an amazing amount of content to provide completely free for all players

  • New planets have been added to existing solar systems, increasing exploration and adding millions of fresh worlds to explore
    • The new worlds have terrain generated on an entirely new scale, with even better looking vistas than the original trailer
  • Some rare solar systems now have multiple stars
  • Flora, fauna, and atmospheric conditions have changed throughout the universe, with a massive increase to variety and possible combinations
    • There are even some entirely new categories of alien species like beetles, butterflies, wild robots, and massive sandworms
  • Better cloud and weather variety, with coverage and colour varying over time and matching what you see from space
  • New environments like swamps, marshes, volcanoes, firestorms
  • New hubs called Archive Buildings on planets serving as vaults for data, treasure, and ruins
  • Dangerous new infestations infecting planets with anomalous lifeforms and vegetative growths
  • Abandoned and ancient settlements to discover
  • NPCs can now land on planets and offer contraband tech for sale
  • Greatly enhanced terrain detail
  • Improved teleporters
  • Overhauled interface and menus
  • Meteors
  • Gravitational anomalies
  • Tornadoes
  • Lightning
  • It’s kind of absurd how much they’re adding to their game at no additional cost to the players

In one of the largest purchases in gaming history, Microsoft has acquired ZeniMax Media for $7.5B

  • ZeniMax owns a bunch of game studios like Tango Gameworks, Machine Games, id Software, Arkane Studios… and Bethesda Softworks
  • This one move singlehandedly puts a lot of amazing games under the Microsoft umbrella, and hopefully right on to GamePass
    • Doom, Quake, Rage, Dishonored, Prey, Wolfenstein, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout
      • Doom Eternal has already been confirmed for the service starting on October 1st
    • Not to mention that with Microsoft having bought out Obsidian Entertainment a couple years back, the team behind Fallout New Vegas could have access to the franchise again
  • I can see this sparking all kinds of antitrust hearings though, since this will give Microsoft a huge grip on the game development industry
    • They’ve announced they’ll be honouring all existing agreements for cross-console titles, but time will tell what kind of exclusives the Xbox Series 2 X Elite One will have

Though Apple’s delayed iOS 14’s app privacy changes, publishers are still angry about other privacy-improving measures like their new Intelligent Tracking Prevention

  • When active it blocks cross-site tracking, and it’s on by default for all users and all browsers (not just Safari), so it’s put a huge damper on ad tracking online, both on iOS and Mac
    • My favourite part is how Safari shows a privacy report every time they open a new tab, detailing all the trackers that have been blocked and where they came from
    • Since I installed the update it’s blocked 95 separate trackers, with the most heinous being Google trying to track me across 45 different websites
  • One big thing to note here is this doesn’t block any ads. Ads are displayed regardless of these new options, unless you have a separate blocker in place
    • All this is doing is stopping the trackers that companies use to gather information about you and which sites you visit, that they can then either use to try and target the advertising or sell to other companies
  • With this in place, websites are going to have to start asking for your information instead of just harvesting it silently without consent

TikTok isn’t going to be banned in the United States after all, after Trump gave the green light to a new deal between Oracle, Walmart, and TikTok owner ByteDance

  • Oracle and Walmart will reportedly take a 20% stake in the new company, TikTok Global, which combined with American companies owning 40% of ByteDance technically gives the US majority ownership
  • But the original demand for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US operations over national security concerns isn’t happening, so it’s not quite clear what was actually accomplished here
  • A related ban on the WeChat app was also shelved after a judge halted Trump’s order to drop it from app stores in the US

Reddit users are already reporting issues with the combined Facebook Oculus login, with many accounts being disabled with no apparent recourse

  • The largest issue that I’ve seen is for people that previously had a Facebook account but then deleted it at some point. After creating a new one with the same or similar information it gets flagged, and often times even after providing the requested information the accounts are still blocked
  • Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but when it stops you from playing games you’ve purchased on the headset you own, it gets a lot messier
    • These bans don’t just affect online play, like most console bans would, but actually remove your ability to access your single player games locally
  • Time will tell how many users are leaving the Oculus ecosystem, but this is a prime time for other headsets to soak up all those potential new customers

This Week In Gaming History

September 19 – 2019 – Sonic Racing – iPhone

  • The world’s fastest hedgehog is back in SONIC RACING!
    • Take control of one of 15 playable characters from the Sonic universe and compete in the ultimate multiplayer racing experience.
    • COLLECT power-ups, SET traps and ATTACK competitors all while driving at high speed. Ready, Set, RACE!
  • Couldn’t find reviews for it

September 20 – 2005 – We Love Katamari – PS2 -North America

  • After the success of Katamari Damacy, the King of all Cosmos and his son, the Prince, have gained quite a bit of fame.
    • To keep all of the fans happy, the Prince is once again sent to Earth to roll stuff up with a katamari (a clump of stuff); this time he’s taking requests from the fans as to what should be rolled up!
  • This was my (Josh’s) first Katamari experience.
    • The game was raved about on G4/Tech TV, which I (Josh) lived on having satellite TV, but not high speed internet.
    • The original was hard to get and this game was more distributed in North America, from what I experienced

September 21 – 2004 – Star Wars: Battlefront – PS2/Xbox

  • For the first time in gaming history, after countless games depicting various aspects of the rich Star Wars universe (including some we never wanted to see), players have the chance to step into the boots of the average soldier in the wars that raged across the galaxy.
    • Gameplay is based on the successful standards set by Battlefield 1942, but combat in Battlefront is even more massive and heated, vehicles are more predominant and the familiar starships are also included.
  • This game sold approx 3.61 million copies on PS2 and 1.75 million on Xbox, having the sequel earn the badge “Sequel to the Best Selling Stars Wars Game Ever”. However, the release of Star Wars Battlefront in 2015 did sell more, the sequel dis not do as well. I feel it was because this remake list the essence of what made the first one great.

September 22 – 2004 – Katamari Damacy – PS2 – North America

  • Thought it was interesting the sequel came out less than a year after the orginal
  • The King of All Cosmos accidentally destroyed the stars and—having recovered—wants the prince to rebuild them.
    • Unfortunately the prince stands a little less than half a foot tall, so recreating the stars will require some effort.
    • Enter the Katamari, a sphere the prince can push around our world to “roll up” items increasing the Katamari’s size until it’s suitable for the King.
  • This game had amazing reviews when it released. 90% and higher
    • Its strange and cute as hell with a soundtrack that will infect you mind, highly recommend any version if you can try it out or get a copy.

September 23 – 1989 – American Dream – NES Japan only

  • In this casino game, there is a choice of two game modes: “game” and simulation.
    • In the simulation mode, the player controls a pachinko ball named Pachio-kun, who walks directly into a casino where he can exchange money for tokens and try his luck at the slot machines. In the “game mode”, he is brought in a helicopter onto a top-down “world map” area.
    • He is told that this is Brooklyn, New York, and begins to roam the area, gradually gaining access to different casino houses. There are also random encounters, during which he is able to bet some money and directly operate a slot machine from the world map.

September 24 – 1993 – Myst – Windows 3.x, Macintosh

  • Myst is a first-person point-and-click adventure where the player controls a character known as The Stranger.
    • Magically transported into the world described in the book, he needs to explore Myst Island and solve its mysteries.
    • The game is presented as a series of static scenes where the player acts with the environment by clicking and manipulating objects. There are no enemies and it is not possible to die.
    • Through Myst Island, the game is further divided into mini-worlds set in different ages accessed through different books.
  • That is all I (Josh) know as I would play this game for about 5 – 10 minutes at school, and never knew what I was doing.

September 25 – 2007 – Halo 3 – Xbox 360

  • Finish the fight
  • If GoldenEye for N64 is the first successful FPS on console, Halo is the franchise that made FPS on console actual competition for PC.
  • Halo 3 added equipment such as a gravity lift, a shield drain field, a shield recharge field, land mines and a bubble shield which can be penetrated by players, but not gunfire. One piece of equipment can be carried at a time and it can be deployed anywhere.
  • This game definitely sold 360 consoles. And the demo for this game sold copies of Crackdown. Which was my first experience spending a weekend not sleeping to play countless matches on High Ground

Tidbits

  • Microsoft has unveiled the storage expansion options for the Xbox Series consoles, and 1TB will set you back $220USD
    • Standard external drives will work for backward-compatible games, and games for the new gen can be stored on them, but they will only actually run on the fancy Playstation memory card style game drives or internal storage
  • iOS 14 has yet another great privacy feature that flew under the radar, with the addition of data breach notifications for any account credentials you have saved
    • Going in to Settings > Passwords > Security Recommendations will flag any passwords that are known to be compromised and also highlight reused or easily guess passwords
  • Microsoft’s Xbox lead Phil Spencer took to CNBC this week to assure everyone that they’re committed to bringing Game Pass to iPhone, so they may be willing to jump through the new hoops that Apple has put in place for the cloud gaming service
  • Innersloth, the makers of the recently popular hidden role game Among Us, have announced that instead of making Among Us 2 they’ll be reworking and updating the current game
    • Among the planned improvements are better servers, colourblind support, a friends/account system, and a brand new stage

Hades mini-review

  • Supgergiant Games, the team behind Transistor and Bastion, basically combined Diablo and Rogue Legacy into a great new roguelite
  • You play as Zagreus, the son of Hades, fighting his way out of the underworld
  • Left early access this week and hit Steam, Epic Games, and the Nintendo Switch
  • It’s a ton of fun on the Switch and works really well with the console
  • Gameplay feels deep and responsive, with good power boosts both per-run and permanent that keep the game moving and help with incremental improvements
  • And the story is good too, with new voice lines and information coming up through each run keeping things fresh and interesting
  • All that along with an excellent aesthetic and solid voice acting makes it a delight to play
  • It never feels like a repeated slog, with something new shown every time you start another run
  • For <$30 it’s an easily justified buy

 

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PS2J 309 News – Dance Dance Immolation

  • July 17, 2020
  • Tagged as: 13.6, 25, 6.2.8, action, adhesive, Adventure, AI, Alan, alchemist, alyx, android, anniversary, Apple, Apple Watch, Asa, assassin’s creed valhalla, assault, audio, auroa, backdoor, bahrain, barack obama, battery, bill gates, bird, Bitcoin, bmw, brawlhalla, Brazil, brightness, bug fix, camera cover, carkey, cat recruitment, catch, cco, child, class-action, clearance, covid-19, crew, damage, dance dance, dark ages, Diablo, director, display, dns, double, dungeon crawler, ecg, elite squad, Elon Musk, email, employee, Encryption, end-to-end, Epic Games, era of chaos, experience, explore, fanily, far cry 6, forward, Free Games, games, ghost recon breakpoint, giancarlo esposito, gizmodo, grabbity gloves, green light, gunplay, gus fring, hack, half-life, halo 3, Hardware, Health, health ambassador, hr, hyper scape, immolation, internal, inventory, iOS, iPhone, jeff bezos, joe biden, Josh, Journey, Kanye West, legion, light sensor, Limbo, login, Macbook, mask, master chief collection, maxime béland, might & magic, mike bloomberg, moff gideon, Multiplayer, narrated, news, nfc, oculus quest, open beta, paper, PC, pcgamer, presentation, puzzle, raid, rainbow six siege, random, register, resign, resistance, resume, RPG, saskatchewan, satisfying, Sci-Fi, security, series 5, server, sexual misconduct, Shooter, sling, soundtrack, south africa, Steam, story, stream, symptom, sync shots, team, the division 2, tom clancy, torchlight ii, tracking, truetone, Twitch, Twitter, two-factor, tyrant, Uber, Ubisoft, united states, Update, Valve, vane, vast, verified, vice president, Viking, virtual desktop, wallet, walmart, watch dogs 2, Windows, xr
http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/http://ps2jshow.fushigiyami.com/podcasts/PS2J-309-DDI.mp3

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

 

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