Free games

• Epic Games

  • Nuclear Throne

    • 2015
    • Top-down roguelike shooter that has you going through procedurally generated levels either solo or in co-op, working your way ever closer to the Nuclear Throne

  • RUINER

    • 2017
    • Top-down cyberpunk shooter where you play a silent, masked protagonist attempting to rescue your kidnapped brother from the failing conglomerate that controls the entire metropolis

• Twitch

  • Double Cross

    • 2019
    • A Mega Man style action platformer that has you controling Zahra Sinclair, an agent of RIFT who can jump, walljump, and use her proton slinger to grab objects or swing herself around

  • Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition

    • 2015 remaster of the 2012 title
    • Action hack and slash RPG that has you exploring open-world regions, solving interactive puzzles, and kicking butt in a kind of God Of War / Ocarina Of Time hybrid

  • Planet Alpha

    • 2018
    • A side-scrolling adventure platformer where you’re pursued by relentless enemies and must harness the power of night and day as you struggle to survive

  • Sword Legacy: Omen

    • 2018
    • Turn-based tactical RPG in a re-imagined King Arthur mythos where you play a vengeful knight in search of the long-lost Excalibur

  • Turmoil

    • 2016
    • Simulation game inspired by the 19th century oil rush in North America, where you start from scratch to become a successful oil entrepreneur

• Xbox One

  • Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter

    • 2016
    • Adventure mystery game in the same series as Crimes & Punishments, that has you exploring crime scenes and examining clues to link deductions and attempt to find the culprit

  • The Final Station

    • 2016
    • A side-scrolling shooter with a train simulator and exploration elements, where you have to balance taking care of the train and its passengers with exploring the apocalyptic world at each train station in order to keep moving

  • Star Wars Jedi Starfighter

    • 2002
    • A single-player or co-op spaceflight combat game set just prior to Attack of the Clones and during the Battle of Geonosis

  • Joy Ride Turbo

    • 2012
    • Combat kart racing game similar to the Mario Kart series

• PS4

  • Nioh

    • 2017
    • Action RPG developed by Team Ninja where you play an Irish sailor pursuing a sorceror into the final battles of the Sengoku period in Japan

  • Outlast II

    • 2017
    • First person survival horror game that has you trying to find your wife while beset by a village of deranged end-times cultists with no way to fight back

AirPods Pro review

• Very comfortable, though with the in-ear design it’s slightly harder to get them seated right (but I had pretty much perfect ears for the old style, so others may see it as an improvement), and the noise cancelling is solid
• Transparency mode is ridiculously good, and it automatically switches to that when you’re just using one so you don’t have one blocked up ear
• Announce messages seemed like a gimmick until I was busy on my computer and Siri read my incoming texts unobtrusively
• The case looks bigger, but the just turned it on its side and stretched it a little, so it totally still fits in that 5th pocked on jeans
• Also enjoying improvements from Gen 2, since I’m coming from G1- Hey Siri and wireless charging are handy to have
• If you’re in the market for some new ANC headphones these are solid, but if you’ve got a good pair or are already using AirPods 2 then they’re a little harder to justify

Blizzard president J Allen Brack took a moment before the Blizzcon opening ceremonies to apologize for their punishment of professional Hearthstone player Blitzchung’s public support of Hong Kong’s protests

• In the toothless statement he went on to say though that “Blizzard had the opportunity to bring the world together in a tough Hearthstone esports moment”
• A few problems here:
  • It wasn’t a “tough Hearthstone esports moment”
  • He passed up another opportunity to “bring the world together” by saying anything at all in support of Hong Kong
  • He said nothing about the groveling they did to China on social media after the fact
  • And they still punished not only Blitzchung but also the commentators that were interviewing him

Overwatch 2 was announced, as expected, and we’ve got all the details

• So it looks like this is kind of a pseudo-sequel; they’re releasing an updated game UI with revamped/remastered graphics and gameplay, along with multiple new heroes, maps, and a game mode, all for free for existing Overwatch players.
  • The new Push game mode, coming to quick play and competitive, has the two teams competing over a neutral payload that gets pushed in either direction based on who controls it
  • There will be four new maps: Toronto, Gothenburg, Monte Carlo, and Rio De Janerio
  • We also got a sneak peak at a couple of the upcoming heroes- Sojourn, the first Canadian OW hero that uses a cool gun that looks like a covenant sniper rifle, and Echo, an omnic that’s been teased in the base game for a while now
  • All skins, cosmetics, and other progress will carry over seamlessly
• Where Overwatch 2 itself comes in to play is a new look for all heroes, a new co-op story mode and hero missions, and new hero talents for the PVE modes
  • The new modes seem to be permanent co-op modes like Halloween Terror or the Archives missions
  • Hero talents will have you levelling up and customizing hero abilities and ultimates to suit your playstyle
• One nice thing with the new stuff coming is they can grow the canon inside of the game itself- right now we get lore dumps online but it has no real impact in-game
  • Overwatch re-forming and characters meeting or reuniting will have actual impact, instead of the current PVP grab-bag of characters having amusing interactions inside the dropship
• If you want all of that stuff, you’ll have to buy the new… expansion, I guess? Plug-in? when it comes out at some point in the future for some currently undisclosed price
• All in all it looks like they’re doing a fair amount to breath new life into the 3.5 year old shooter, though you’ll end up buying it again to see everything they have to offer

Tidbits

• Real-time multiplayer is coming to Mario Kart Tour, but for now it will be limited to a beta offering only for Gold Pass subscribers
  • There aren’t any details on if it will require a subscription once it’s fully released, but if it does I can see it being a pretty sparse game with the subscription price costing more than their main console offering, Nintendo Switch Online
• Sony’s PS4 is officially the second best selling console of all time, with about 2/3rds of the sales of the PS2
  • It’s doubtful that it’ll ever be number 1 though, as even though Sony says they’ll support it until at least 2021 the PS5 is expected to hit in 2020’s holiday season
• DeepMind’s AlphaStar AI has officially hit Grandmaster status in Starcraft II, beating 99.8% of ranked human players with all three races, and I for one welcome our new robot overlords
• Rudy Giuliani, one month after being named Trump’s cybersecurity advisor, apparently had to go to an Apple Store to wipe and restore his iPhone after getting it locked down from 10 unsuccessful passcode attempts
  • Many experts criticized the move, saying that there’s too much risk of employees gaining access to sensitive government information on the phone or in his iCloud backups
• I don’t know how I missed this, but ghostwriter is getting rebooted on Apple TV+!
  • 90’s kids might remember the series running from 92 to 95 on PBS

Alan recommends QCode podcasts (Carrier, Edge of Sleep)

Literally Misleading

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