Free Games

• Epic Games

  • Pathway

    • 2020
    • Isometric strategy adventure game set in the wilderness in the 1930’s that has you exploring the strange unknown. Unravel long-forgotten mysteries of the occult, raid ancient tombs and outwit your foes in turn-based squad combat

• GOG

  • The Witcher 3, if you own it on a connected account like PS4, Xbox, Steam, etc

    • 2015
    • Action RPG that focuses on narrative and worldbuilding as you go through the land taking on quests and slaying monsters, all the while searching for your missing adoptive daughter before she’s caught by the Wild Hunt
    • The free edition will match what you own on the connected service, either base game or GOTY edition. Players that bought the DLC separately unfortunately don’t get any consideration

The Supreme Court of the US issued a historic decision on workplace protections, ruling 6-3 that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal under an existing Civil Rights era law

• The existing law, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, bars discrimination on the basis of sex. The justices has determined that it extends beyond just the gender you were assigned at birth to your orientation and identity as well
• Before this, LGBTQ+ workers in more than half of the US had no legal protection against discrimination, and could be fired, demoted, or paid less because of who they are
• Even multiple educators lauded as Teacher of the Year in different states were discriminated against, bullied, threatened, and fired because of their identity and what they do in their spare time, like counselling LGBTQ+ youth or other non-heteronormative community outreach
  • One was even placed on administrative leave for mentioning her same-gender fiance during a welcome-back presentation to returning students

A new company called OpenCore Computer, with no official affiliation with the OpenCore Bootloader, has launched a commercial Hackintosh computer that has Apple’s lawyers salivating

• The OpenCore Bootloader is a piece of software developed by enthusiasts that, in theory, would allow you to run macOS on standard PC hardware
• Apparently a group has taken advantage of that free software to create OpenCore Computer, who claims that they hope to make Mac Pro style workstations more accessible. And you can get a pretty solid system for a bit over $2G USD
• The problem is that Apple’s licensing agreement, since macOS is completely free, is that it should only run on official Apple hardware. Building your own Hackintosh is a grey area at best, and doing it professionally is solidly illegal
• They seem to know that their work is fishy right from the get-go too, with payments only accepted in Bitcoin to try and get around the licensing in regards to accepting payments, and using an escrow service so that they get your coins through a middle-man after shipping
• At the end of the day, if you want a Hackintosh you’re probably better off going on Reddit and following a pre-existing guide. It’s not terribly hard, especially for a hobbyist. And someone who needs the full performance of a Mac Pro would be better off either buying the real deal or switching to Windows, since I doubt the after-market support is up to snuff

EA revealed the upcoming Star Wars: Squadrons, and the details they’ve let loose so far are a radical departure for the company

• There’s not a lot about gameplay yet, but the trailer looks really cool
• The biggest shocks are that it’s cross-platform, has a single-player campaign, supports VR, will sell for $40 USD with no microtransactions, and is releasing on Steam rather than Origin
  • If they throw in stick and throttle support this could be a legitimate competitor with the likes of Elite: Dangerous
• The news, unfortunately, has left many people that were still hoping for a Titanfall 3 disappointed that the “Where Pilots come to play” promo material was completely unrelated

Reddit user RobertAPetersen has set up a really slick shortcut for iOS for if you get stopped by the police

• Triggered by telling Siri “I’m being pulled over”, it pauses your music, turns down screen brightness, turns on Do Not Disturb, sends a text to the contacts of your choosing with your location letting them know you’re being pulled over, then starts recording video with the front-facing camera
• And after you’re done recording it will send the video to any contacts you specify and give you the option to upload it to the cloud
• This is a really good idea even for just my low-level paranoia about police, and I’m white. For people of colour these kinds of tools are a godsend for accountability that clearly just isn’t there in law enforcement

8 years after its successful Kickstarter campaign and still with no release in sight, Star Citizen has now become the most expensive game in history

• With them still pre-selling copies of the game and different in-game rewards like ships and skins, they’ve managed to surpass the development costs of both GTA V and The Old Republic with a whopping $350M invested to date
• At this point with all that money and still just sitting at Alpha 3.9 they really have no incentive to ever release, and I’m beginning to think that my $30 pledge for a ship and lifetime insurance might just amount to the JPEGS they already emailed me
  • On the plus side, since I backed it so early they gave me a bunch of extra stuff like a BB-12 Manned Maneuvering Unit and a Preacher Armament Inquisition XXII Gatling. So that’s something, whatever those are
• In the time since Star Citizen was first funded, Elite Dangerous was Kickstarted, developed, released, given DLC, and is now considered to be an older game

Mei added to Heroes of the Storm

• The louder people in the Heroes of the Storm fan-base cries out
  • Very similar to the complaining of Fire Emblem characters being added to Smashm
  • I am happy for any character added to either game, more the merrier
• She is a Tank character, which is different from her Overwatch role of DPS
  • Strong with Crowd Control, Mobility and Survivability
  • Weak against Siege and Burst Damage
• Her active trait is Cryo-Freeze
  • Mei encases herself in ice gaining a temporary decaying shield and heals up to 35% max health
• Q is Snow Blind
  • Throws a snowball that hits enemies in an area
  • Deals damage, slows by 35% and Blinds for 1.5 seconds
• W is Blizzard
  • Snowball creates a blizzard at target location for 2 seconds
  • Enemies take damage every .25 seconds, are slowed by 7% and stacks up to 35%
  • When the Blizzard ends, enemies take extra damage and  and are stunned for 1.25 seconds
• E is Icing
  • Mei slides quickly in the targeted direction
  • When the effect ends enemies at Mei’s location are knocked back
  • They also take damage and are slowed by 80%, decaying over 1.5 seconds
• Mei’s first Ultimate is Avalanche
  • After a .5 seconds, a massive snowball rolls forward and consumes enemy heroes in its path
  • At the end of its path it deals huge damage to enemies and stuns them for .5 seconds per hero
• Mei’s second Ultimate is Ice Wall
  • After a .75 delay an impassible wall emerges and traps enemy heroes in it
  • After 2.5 seconds, the wall crumbles and trapped heroes are freed and slowed by 75% decaying over 3 seconds

Pokemon Snap 2

• From the Pokemon Twitter
  • We got a minute teaser
• Shows it will be similar to the original
  • • Taking pictures from a safe capsule on a track
      • The one in the trailer uses a invisible tack seen through augmented reality for the character inside
    • Apples are going to be used as bait again
    • Digital camera upgrade
      • Tracks subjects like newer smartphones can
• New Pokemon featured
  • Seems like an Alola area with all kinds of pokemon
  • The first game did not feature all original 151
    • It will be interesting to see all that are actively in the game
      • And those referenced, like Mewtwo was a constellation
    • Also a pidgeotto swoop on a magikarp

Tidbits

• Google has committed $175M toward supporting black businesses, and announced plans to increase underrepresented people in its leadership by 30% by 2025
  • It’s a start, but with black employees accounting for less than 4% of their workforce Google still has some work to do with diversity
• The European Union has opened anti-trust investigations against Apple this week, following complaints by Spotify and Rakuten over Apple’s 30% cut on subscriptions and ebook sales through apps on its platform
• Slay the Spire has released on iOS, and it’s a ton of fun with a bunch of asterisks
  • It’s a roguelike deckbuilding card game and not bad for $14 CAD, and I’ve been playing it a lot, but the mobile port is missing a lot of polish
  • It’s very faithful to the original, which is great in some ways for people who want a familiar experience but not so great in others- simple things like trying to read your cards is a bit of a mess, since they magnet directly under your fingertip, and on an iPhone without a home button if I’m trying to swipe the game close there’s a good change it will accidentally play a random card while I try
  • Also, it might work a bit better on an iPad but on my phone the text is pretty dang small. The resolution and controls seem pretty much unchanged from when I played it on PC, which is unfortunate because it’s a lot of fun
  • It initially launched at a full 5* rating, but while it’s maintained the top spot in card games on the app store it’s already slipped down to a 3.8 because of these issues

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Thank you to Dalton, to whom we send a hearty, YO!