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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Thank you Zane, a powerful man and a super hero dad. He’s one of the best #BeLikeZane