Free Games

• Cross-platform

  • Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is available for free until May 10 on PS4, PC, and Xbox One

• Twitch

  • Old School Musical

    • 2015
    • A rhythm game that takes you through 50 different chiptune tracks on a tour of old favourite retro games to teach you where all the bugs in those classic games come from

• Epic Games

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent

    • 2010
    • Survival horror adventure game that has you exploring a dark, foreboding castle while trying to avoid monsters and maintain your sanity

  • Crashlands

    • 2016
    • Action-adventure RPG originally built for iOS and Android described as a story-driven crafting game comparable to Don’t Starve, wherein you need to collect items in order to make weapon and armour

• PS4

  • Cities: Skylines

    • 2017 port of the 2015 PC game
    • Open-ended city building simulation in the spirit of SimCity after the critical failure of EA’s 2013 franchise reboot

  • Farming Simulator 19

    • Pretty much what it says on the tin- it’s a full farming simulator with huge American and European environments, over 300 vehicles and machines, online co-op play, and a surprisingly large mod community
    • This entry brought in horse farming as well as oat and cotton crops

• Xbox

  • V-Rally 4

    • 2018
    • Rally racing game with 51 different cars that takes you from through Monument Valley, Niger, Romania, Malaysia, and more

  • Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr

    • 2017
    • Action RPG with a top-down view and a focus on melee and ranged combat set in the Warhammer 40K universe, frequently compared to Diablo

  • Overlord 2

    • 2009
    • Action RPG that has you destroying or conquering the land by commanding your hordes of minions and taking down the Roman-styled “Glorious Empire”

  • Sensible World of Soccer

    • 2007 HD enhanced version of the 1996 Amiga classic
    • 2D European football game with a comprehensive manager mode, with data on 1,500 teams and 27,000 players. This game is notable as the only sports game included on the list of “the ten most important video games of all time”, as compiled by the curator for the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford along with notable game designers and researchers

Apple and Google’s new exposure notification framework, previously referred to as contact tracing, is continuing to evolve and and develop

• They’ve settled on the different name because of what it is- a framework for notifying people if they’ve been exposed. It’s a tool that can be used in conjunction with contact tracing, but because they’re focused on privacy as a top priority that’s not a part of the developing specifications
  • More details have been coming out with the framework’s introduction into the iOS 13.5 beta, and it sounds like notifications will be handled by phones  downloading a new list of identifiers for positive tests regularly and then notifying you if any of them match ones you’ve come into contact with
  • Users will be able to opt out of exposure notifications under Settings, Privacy, Health
• Germany, originally set on developing a home-grown contact tracing app with centralized data available to health authorities, has changed course and now is working with the Apple-Google approach
  • Also running with the decentralized plan is Switzerland, Estonia, and Austria
• The UK, unfortunately, is dead set on having their National Health Service manage all the data and not working within those parameters
  • The NHS says it has a way to make the software work “sufficiently well” without users needing to keep it active and on-screen, without “excessively affecting battery life”, but that “excessively” has me concerned
    • Apparently it will work by having the app wake up in the background every time another device running the same software is detected. Then it runs some code to log the contact before going to sleep again
    • Australia said they also had a workaround, but they’ve since acknowledged power consumption problems as well as interference if users have other Bluetooth and location-tracking apps open
  • Not to mention the fact that they’re so set on taking all this data in that I worry they’re not giving full weight to the privacy argument- if you’re going to expect your citizens to use this app, you can’t treat it like an ankle-bracelet on a felon.
  • I get that having all the data kept in-house seems like a good idea, but Apple and Google are pretty smart and they’re building a seemingly solid platform that allows for notifications and battery performance without compromising integrity and privacy

Good news, Google Stadia has now launched PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds! Bad news, it’s filled with terrible bots!

• Everyone with a Gmail account still has a free two-month trial of Stadia Pro, which now includes the ability to play PUBG on the service
• Unfortunately it looks like they’re filling matches with bots- players with underscores in their names that don’t actually jump out of the plane, but appear randomly through the world with pre-filled inventories
  • The game normally drops 100 players on an island to fight it out for supremacy, but ArsTechnica had matches with 98 or even 99 bots
• I can get why they have bots, to ease new players in without throwing them to the wolves that have been playing religiously for years, but this really seems like a terrible way to do it

Oculus Quest Follow-up

• Knuckle grips are great and really help with Beat Saber
  • AMVR
• Battery pack counterweight works well, but hampers the pick-up-and-play a bit
  • Anker, Aukey
• Prescription lenses are really comfortable
  • WidmoVR
• The Room VR is a creepy escape room that’s a lot of fun
  • Casting to my phone turned it into a co-op game, but the visibility is a little rough with fast movements causing lag and text not being very readable
• Oculus store really needs a way to gift games to someone

Josh’s day was ruined very early

• Now its like I have cataracts in my left eye playing VR
• I tried a rubbing alcohol and water solution and it helped a LITTLE bit

• a redditor had a family member clean their quest with a shirt or something abrasive.
• polyWatch is a product that fixes surface scratches
  • polyWatch Plastic Polish offers a simple and reliable solution for removing scratches from plastic watch crystal.

• I’m nervouse about adding anything like that to the lenses

Josh guested on Podzilla 1985’s Mr 100 and the 5 Star man

Assassins Creed Valhalla

• Trailer opens up on a viking village in Norway.
• The trailer follows the protagonist Eivor
• It seems that the viking religion plays a part in the game
  • Unsure of it being supernaturally or just spirtually

• A viking raider from Norway, leaving to the shores of England
• Eivor is able to be male or female as the player prefers

• The English are shown as terrified of Viking settlers and trying to show them in a bad light
• At the time of the game 870 AD, England is not united, and is run by many kings
• The game seems to be about Viking trying to settle on England
  • And fighting for the territory already held by the Saxons.

• He is the main antagonist to the vikings in the game and history

• Longships are used to strike and retreat quickly
• Some battles of soldier to soldier combat on fortifications
• Raiding, where the objective is to steal resources rather than fight an enemy

• You will be able to dual-wield any one handed weapons
  • Even dual-wield shields
• And I feel there will be the ability to steal the weapons from the enemy
• There is a face-off where Eivor is tossed around by a very large opponent
  • Heavily armored and seems to wield a claymore as a long sword
  • Avor wins with the “surprising” reveal of a hidden blade gauntlet
    • It is strapped to the top of his arm, rather then concealed below
    • It doesn’t mean Eivor is a born an raised assassin, but it is confirmed that they are working together

• The usual skill trees and gear collecting to fit your playstyle
• You will also be forming strategic alliances
• Wins in combat and conversation both pave your path the greatness.
• You get to grow and customize your settlement
  • recruit clan members
  • upgrade structures
  • make a barracks to get better recruits
  • have your blacksmith improve your weapons
  • new customization options at the tattoo parlor
  • and they promise more
• Seems like in Blackflag, you will be able to send your recruits on missions for your friends
  • create and customize your own viking mercenaries
  • share them online
  • share in the spoils when they help your friends in their own sagas
  • all while recruiting your own player made mercenaries
• There are also side quest activities
  • hunting
  • fishing
  • dice
  • drinking games
  • and the traditional Norse competition of flyting
    • basically Viking rap battles

Tidbits

• The Last of Us Part 2, originally slated for release back in February and then pushed to May 29th, has been delayed once more to June 19th of this year
  • This latest delay is due to the COVID situation, but has some really bad timing considering there was a massive story leak purporting to show the entire game just a few days ago. People wanting to avoid spoilers will need to be careful for the next couple months
• Google has launched its second-gen Pixel Buds this week, bringing a couple of my favourite AirPods features to Android
  • They use a pairing process Google calls Fast Pair- you just hold the case near your phone and open it, then a screen pops up to automatically pair them and link them to your Google account
  • They’ve also brought the wireless earbuds into their Find My Device app, similar to Apple’s Find My app that lets you ring them and see the last location they were connected
• The latest iOS beta software will now detect if you’re wearing a mask and skip from FaceID to the passcode prompt faster
  • You can also speed up the passcode prompt before this releases if you tap on the text saying “Face ID” on your screen while it tries to identify you
• Huawei, for the fourth time, is taking heat for advertising campaigns that make it look like photos are being taken with their phones but in reality the photos are being taken with professional Nikon or Canon DSLR cameras and lenses
  • Their excuse is that they never actually say the photos are taken with the phones they’re advertising, but when you have you model hold their hand out toward the camera as if they were holding it you’re definitely setting some expectations on purpose