Free game

• Epic Games

  • The Bridge

    • 2013
    • Winner of the 2012 Indie Game Challenge awards for Achievement in Art Direction and Achievement in Gameplay
    • Billed as Isaac Newton meets M.C. Escher, The Bridge is a logic puzzle game that has you manipulating gravity and exploring impossible architectures

More details on the FBI/Apple encryption argument, courtesy of Daring Fireball

• The GrayKey device doesn’t actually break an iPhone’s encryption, it just exploits software flaws to remove the password attempt limit and then brute-forces it
• That does mean that it will depend on the passcode used on the devices
  • A four digit passcode would take about 7 minutes
  • Six digits takes on average 11 hours
  • Eight is 46 days
  • Ten would take 12.5 years
  • If the passcode uses numbers and letters, then a six character passcode would take about 72 years to guess
• So it’s a little unfair of us to say that the FBI can definitely crack the devices involved in crimes. On the plus side, that means if you use a passcode with both numbers and letters your data remains safe while Apple refuses to hand over a back door

Early adopters of Google’s Stadia platform, that paid $170 plus a monthly subscription for the privilege of testing the service, are starting to get chapped with the lack of updates

• The service has been out for two months and still falls short of many of Google’s promises
• The idea was that you could pay a subscription to play triple-A games in your browser, but at the moment the only access is available by buying the Premiere Edition which uses a special controller and a Chromecast Ultra
• Meanwhile Google has gone largely silent, giving no word on when people can expect some of the promised features or highly anticipated releases
  • The Stadia doesn’t have voice chat, which even the Switch has an attempt at
  • Games promising 4K resolutions still aren’t hitting that target
  • Integration with YouTube doesn’t have a date for release
  • No word on when players can expect cross-platform gaming, either
  • And the big one, the promised free base version of the service, is still completely uncertain
    • This is the big sore spot, with a lot of people saying that the service could work really well for demo or trial versions if they didn’t have to pay a premium for access
• So far it’s a subscription-based digital storefront with 26 games, only one of which is an exclusive- the other 25 are already available for other consoles, in many cases for less money
• It really hammers home the Google philosophy- release services in beta, let them simmer for a few years, and then see if you still have a userbase. Then flip a coin on whether or not to shut it down anyway

Sony’s quietly launched a $40 controller attachment that turns any Dualshock 4 into a pro controller

• The DualShock 4 Back Button Attachment plugs in to the bottom of the controller and, adding only a little weight, gives you two paddles on the back sitting naturally under your middle or ring fingers, so that you can press buttons without having your thumbs leave the analog sticks
• One really nice thing about the added device is it works with no extra configuration or drivers- on your PS4, PC, wherever, the controller just now has two extra programmable buttons that can act as any of the other buttons on the controller
• And the easiest part is that it actually has an OLED touchscreen on the back of the device where you can assign the buttons and save up to three profiles, all configurable on the device itself
• Unfortunately it’s proven to be very popular- it was released the day of recording and it’s already sold out at multiple stores, with Amazon’s only remaining offering being sold at an extra $10 premium
• All in all it sounds like a pretty slick device, and though it’s coming kind of late in the PS4’s lifespan there’s speculation that the DualShock 5 will have extra buttons and Sony has said the PS5 will be backward-compatible with all the PS4’s accessories

According to their latest app updates, EA is fully retiring their Tetris apps for iOS and Android

• As of April 21, 2020, they’re shutting things down so that, from the sounds of it, even people who have kept the apps installed won’t be able to run them
• People looking for their Tetris fix won’t have to look far though- The Tetris Co. announced that they have a new version available as a free download on both the App Store and Google Play
  • It’s pretty bare bones, with one game mode and control scheme compared to EA’s three modes and two methods of control, but they promise that this is just a foundation for much more to come
  • They also have plans to bring Tetris Royale, a mobile adaptation of the Switch’s Tetris 99, out of beta and into full release
  • Unfortunately at the moment the new core game developed by N3twork is pretty choked with ads, and the in-app purchase to remove them is $7, so with all that working against it the reviews are looking grim- 1 star in the app store, and the Google Play store has reviews complaining of bad controls and required internet connectivity.
    • It sounds playable, but a large step back from EA’s mobile Tetris games

Last week we asked:

• Dovahkiin
  • The Dragonborn from Skyrim
  • Would made a neat level and great soundtrack addition

• With the addition of the Altair costume for Mii Fighters, is Ezio on the horizon?

Tidbits

• Designers of the Jaws Board Game and Disney’s Villainous are working on a horror board game based on The Shining
• Adobe Flash’s days continue to be numbered, with the latest Safari browser beta explicitly ending support for the web plugin
  • At the moment it’s disabled by default, but can still be installed and manually activated. Soon that won’t be the case for the built-in macOS browser and you may need to download Firefox or Chrome to do so
• Beginning this February, new installs and updates of Office365 Pro Plus will include a Chrome extension that forcibly changes the default search engine from Google to Bing
  • The worst part is how purpose-built that extension is- if you already use Bing, it won’t even be installed.
  • If you want to change it back you’ll need to either find a new toggle that the extension adds to Chrome or remove the whole extension itself
  • From users to sysadmins, many are calling the change invasive and uncalled for. And I’m hard-pressed to disagree
• Black Mesa, the glorious remaster/remix/love letter from fans to the original Half Life, has officially released their reimagined Xen chapters and is due for a full release early this year
  • Black Mesa has been around for years now but didn’t include the Xen portion of the game due to the sheer amount of work the developers wanted to put into it- the original chapters didn’t really feel like the same game, and they wanted to put even more polish into them than they did with the improved and expanded Earth chapters
  • In related news, in the ramp up to Half Life: Alyx Valve has made every previous official Half-Life game free to play until it comes out this March

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