AI is everywhere lately. I think it’s something that won’t blow over or will go away in our lives. In the past few months, I had a craving to write stories again. So, I downloaded one of those AI chatbot apps on my phone and at first, I was afraid that it would be something very niche or something that was a fad. Yet, I found value in these apps and I wanted to talk about them in this article. This article isn’t meant as a review of these apps, but more to open a general discussion of these apps. Since, I think these apps have their place in our lives and can help if they are used correctly. Yes, they also have their pitfalls and dangers. And that’s what I wanted to explore in this article. So, let’s dive right into the world of roleplay and story creation with AI.
What are these apps?
There are a lot of these apps. You have examples like Talkie, Character.AI and Moescape. The idea of these apps is that you create a character that replies to you. In a lot of cases, these characters fantasy characters to play out a story.
Some of the advertisements don’t do these apps any favors. By advertising them as apps where “you can create your own girlfriend” or “combat being lonely”. And it’s a darn shame, since the creativity that you can find on these platforms is amazing.
I personally feel that these apps are the strongest when you look at them what they really are. Apps to let you roleplay a story like old school text adventures. The biggest difference is that you can totally craft the world and have full control of the story line.
This does create a big risk that you fall in an echo chamber. I call it the “main character syndrome”. Where your character in these stories barely get any problem in their way, without it being solved in a few dialogues later. Then again, power fantasies are something that’s quite attractive to people. It’s fun to play a character that can overcome anything and is the best version of yourself. Or where you can say anything you want in an argument.
Some of these apps add additional features for you to play with. Things like a character speaking their dialogue, creating various AI generated images or even love songs. After trying various apps, I personally landed on Moescape. At the moment of writing, this app keeps things quite simple in the character department. Giving great replies and amazing in playing multiple characters.
Essentially, these apps are apps where you can write a story, but AI plays another character and tries to challenge you from time to time to be creative. This is really something where you have to create your own fun.
Limitations of AI
While ChatGPT turned two years old this week, AI isn’t still fully there yet. It still needs quite a lot of processing power and other things to run properly. It’s quite clear that the AI is also quite dependent on your reply.
I notice that the AI in the apps I tried is rarely to never negative towards the player. Which is a tricky thing, especially when you want to create character depth.
I tested this with playing a couple going through a rough patch. And I noticed that the AI always tried to get back together with you. Even when you give it the worst backstory, your mind can come up with. But that’s not the only problem. The AI story memory is quite limited. Sometimes you need to repeat certain parts, like where you are, or what your name is.
Thankfully, almost every app has a regenerate button. This regenerates the message in case you disliked the reply or if it didn’t fit the storyline you are making at all. Some apps even allow you to give feedback to the AI on the generated messages, so the AI knows how to craft more engaging messages for you.
What I personally love about Moescape AI is that you can tweak the settings of the AI quite a lot. You have various different models to play around with to get the best experience. I even tried to play the same 3 scenarios with one of my characters with different models and got very different and interesting results.
Now, how do you make apps like this profitable? I have seen apps that limit the amount of regeneration you can do or have other limitations. Some apps even offer a call feature where you can call your AI bot. Personally, I haven’t tried that yet, since I love playing stories where there are multiple characters involved. And since the calls only answer in one voice, it’s a difficult.
But most apps have ads or limit the more advanced features. I have tried some apps, but as soon as the “BUY PRO NOW” features became too aggressive, I stopped using them. I’m not here to buy the PRO version right away. Let me first try out the quality of your AI and if I like it, I’ll buy a PRO subscription.
There was one app where I almost bought the PRO membership, but it has one major issue that I notice in a lot of apps. The issue of multiple characters.
The perfect app
For me, the perfect AI chatbot app should be able to handle to play multiple characters. I dislike app where the AI only plays one character. It’s not the stories I like to write.
I like to write stories where you can play multiple characters and interact with multiple characters. Yet, with AI, this brings its own can of worms. Sometimes the AI ends their message with a question to a character they are playing. Why don’t they reply on it themselves?
Or better yet, I have a story where you are part of a friendgroup where almost, without fail… One character gets forgotten and barely gets any interactions. So, you are not only playing the story out to its conclusion, but you are also playing a moderator on how the AI is reacting.
At the moment of writing, the app that best fits my needs is Moescape AI. The reason why is quite simple. It has the best models that fit my writing style and the way how I want to go through the story. It allows quite fine control on the settings of the app and the bot. You can see earlier generations when you regenerate replies. You can create a wiki with trigger phrases for your bots to reply too. Like if you set up certain lore, you can use a trigger phrase you set up and the AI will keep it in mind.
But, I’ll keep a review on that platform for a later article. Since, I mainly wanted to focus on how these apps can be used for good. I personally use them to write out various stories I always wanted to write and see if certain arcs would work or if they would fall flat on their face. I find them a great outlet of my creativity.
Sometimes the strange replies, forgotten characters and other weird generation things can pull you out of the story… But, a good writer knows how to solve these things. Sadly, some of these apps can be money traps. So, before you spend any money on these apps, look into it. Test it out and see if it’s for you. Since, I have to admit, I’m somewhat addicted to my stories. I’m so glad I have these apps a chance and I found the app that best clicked with me. If you want to see the characters and stories I came up with, you can find my Moescape profile here: https://moescape.ai/@jonez
I’m curious what you all think about these apps. I totally understand that they seem “weird” but, I urge you to give them a chance and look at them with an open mind. Since, they hold value. Yet, I have talked about some traps in this article. So, keep those in mind as well.
With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about these apps for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.
Today I wanted to talk about a totally new type of game that’s gaining a lot of popularity. In late 2018, a totally new type of game called I’m on Observation Duty got released on Steam. Recently, these type of games are exploding on Steam. A spin-off called The Exit 8 gave a totally new spin on the formula. The games are actually a scary spin on the spot the difference style of gameplay. But, what does attract players so much into this formula? Let’s talk about a few titles, and maybe we find an answer to that in this article. Now, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on these games, similar games and/or the content of this article.
Two main gameplay styles
There are actually two major styles in this genre. A lot of streamers call, one style Observation Duty and the other style Exit 8. Both styles have the same core concept. You need to first look at a room and then notice if anything changes or anomalies appear. The way how you deal with these anomalies differs in both styles.
In Observation Duty style games, the idea is mostly always that you are a security guard watching camera’s. You have to flip through camera’s and report the anomalies before there are too much present in the area. In Exit 8 type games, you play through them while walking through the rooms themselves. You have to walk one direction when there is no difference and another direction when there is a difference. The difference is that you have to make a certain amount of correct judgements in a row. One wrong judgement and you are sent back to level 0.
The gameplay is tricky to explain in words and in an article. I wanted to write this article several times, but I was unable to describe it properly. The best way to describe it in my opinion is a non casual spot the difference game.
Ever since, “I am on Observation Duty” and “The Exit 8” hit the scene… A lot of horror game streamers played through them. They gained a lot more popularity. A lot of new titles came out in a rapid pace with different spins on the genre and interesting innovations. I think it will become more clear when I talk about the games I played through or watched my favorite streamers play through.
During the summer of this year, Klamath and I streamed through these two titles. The Exit 8 is one of the earliest games to my knowledge in the 3D style.
The idea is that you are trapped in a looping metro hallway where you have to reach the 8th exit. Travelers are advised to continue walking when nothing out of the ordinary happens. But when suddenly a poster changed or something else changed, you need to turn back.
Like I said in the introduction, when you make one mistake, you start at level 0 again. The first passage through the hallway is always safe. After that, you have to do 8 correct answers in a row. Now, at least 8, since if your 8th run has an anomaly, you need to turn back. You can only win if you have a hallway that has no strange thing, and you are above the 8th hallway.
Something really nice that this game does is, it doesn’t repeat anomalies. When you defeat a certain anomaly, it won’t repeat until you see all of them or reset the game. This makes the game more unpredictable and replayable.
The anomalies in this game range from extremely obvious like suddenly the hallway flooding… But others are sneaky, like a camera that moved location to the other side of the hallway. So, it was a puzzle. Is this room really the same, or did something change. Since you couldn’t go back to check. And there were various details that added to the complexity of the game.
In May of this year, we got the follow-up to this game called The Platform 8. If you thought that was more of the same, think again. This time, you are in the actual metro, and you have to survive 8 carts. The big change is that you can’t fail with an anomaly this time around since the exit door is locked if you need to find the anomaly first.
It’s a change that didn’t sit well with me at first, but I totally understand why. This game is now turned into a more tense game where you have to survive the crazy things that the game throws at you. The game is shorter than The Exit 8, but I’ll say… This game had me spooked and jump several times.
At it’s core, this game is an Observation Duty game. But with a big twist. You are a security guard at the entrance of a building. There are imposters out there, trying to look like your neighbor, and you have to keep them out.
This game tests your reasoning skills and tests you if you can look at all the clues. The best I can describe this game is: a mixture between Papers Please, and I am on Observation Duty. The added layer of difficulty is that you have a lot to keep track of. Who did you let already inside? Who is on the list and for who do you better call their apartment first?
This game is getting frequent updates with more lore and more modes. Each time I see this game being played by the streamers I watch, the new update impresses me. And I totally understand why this game got so big.
There is this extremely catchy song by longestsoloever. The amount of times I played it on repeat is just getting silly. Give it a listen if you like electronic music, but I warn you. It’s an earworm.
Confabulation, noun. Confabulation is a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world.
This game does a very interesting take on the actual formula. Instead of explaining the differences and anomalies with unexplained events, in this game it’s caused by a mental illness.
The flow of each play trough of this game is the same. But, the puzzles, the changing objects amongst other things are randomized. It’s up to you to make sure that you avoid you going insane and finding the truth of what happened.
This is an Observation Duty style game, but you can walk around in the area instead of watching at camera feeds. There is an extra layer added with the puzzles that add more information and lore of what happened.
I could talk about it more, but I highly recommend you play this game as blind as possible. The story, scares and impact is that much stronger when you don’t know what’s coming and let yourself be surprised. Watch the candles since they give you amazing hints on where to look next.
ATTA -Spot the Oddities in the Strange Hotel-
What if you have to count the amount of differences in a hallway instead of deciding there is a difference or not? Well, then you describe “ATTA, -Spot the Oddities in the Strange Hotel-“.
This game is an Exit 8 type of game with multiple rooms, where you have to count all the errors in a hallway… While various strange things happen. Like a train suddenly appearing and you have to duck for cover.
The atmosphere this game has, where it leaves you with an open ending that raises more questions than it answers, is the cherry on the cake. It’s a more intense game than your usual games. It may be a short run, but it’s a wild and pleasant ride all the way through.
The final game I want to talk about today is called Hospital 666. In this game, you try to escape a cursed hospital. The first level has you running down a looping hallway. The second level, has one side room open.
Now, an impressive option that the game gives you is that you can choose if you want anomalies in the hallway or not. So, if you are in the second level, you can choose if you want things in the hallway to change or only focus on the new room.
Something impressive that this game does as well, is when you make a mistake, you can go back to the hallway to see what the mistake was that you made. You still start from the lowest floor of that level, but being able to see what got you is amazing. Since this game has very crazy anomalies but also various very sneaky ones. Like one is that some smiles faces appear on the wall.
In between the levels, there is a boss fight/puzzle that separates the floors from each other. They can be a bit janky, but the developer has updated and optimized the game quite a lot, and it is a lot better. Now, he is currently creating a sequel taking place in a school. And as somebody who works in education, I can’t wait to play through that.
Final thoughts
These games are only a handful of games in the genre. I have given a quick rundown of the games mentioned in this article, but if you are interested, I’m willing to talk more in depth about these titles. My intention with this article is to promote these titles.
Each game listed here is between 5 to €10 and is an amazing ride. These games are short little romps but are bursting to the seams with creativity. I always think, now, I have almost seen everything this genre has to offer. But, then I’m surprised with a new gameplay mechanic or a new setting that changes the atmosphere completely.
So, depending on how well this article does… I might write more of these. If you found amazing titles like this, feel free to send them my way or leave them in the comment section down below. But, for now, I’m going to leave you with my usual outro. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.
Wikipedia – Nintendo Microsite
After the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that we would never see a new game in the style of the 2D Zelda game. Yet, I have been proven wrong when this game was announced. To be very honest, I didn’t have very high hopes for this game. Especially since this game was announced this summer and released in late September. I felt that this game going to be a game to fill a gap while the developers are working on a much larger game. Now, the game is released, and I have played through a fair chunk of it. So, what is my opinion on this game? Well, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this first impressions article, while I all invite you to leave a comment of your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.
Renewing the Echoes
After a short introduction where you play as Link, the main story of this game is introduced. There are all consuming interdimensional rifts appearing all over Hyrule, and it’s eating various people in the kingdom.
Link gets eaten by one of those rifts while freeing Zelda and when Zelda tells her father, the king, about these rifts… A new rift appears and replaces the king with an evil clone of himself. Zelda gets thrown in the dungeon and there she meets a fairy named Tri. This fairy gives Zelda a special staff where she can summon objects into the world using echoes. With those echoes, she escapes the dungeon and sets out on an adventure to save Hyrule from doom before the land is fully consumed by the rifts.
Something I always love about the Zelda games is that there is a different core mechanic at the base of the game. In this game, we get two things. We got the rifts to another dark world, but we also got the magical staff, which we can use to summon various echoes into the world. These echoes mean you can tackle this game in various different ways. But I’ll talk more about that later in this article.
In terms of story, this game is hitting all the same beats as your typical Legend of Zelda game. It might be disappointing, to some, that in this game there is no voice acting anymore apart from the grunts and various emotional noises. Personally, I think it adds to the charm of this game. That’s because the characters in this game are way more expressive. While the story isn’t going to leave you at the edge of your seat of “what’s going to happen next”, it’s still well quite enjoyable, and the more expressive characters add quite a lot to the charm and atmosphere of the game.
Something I really like is how in this game, you are free to explore the world at your own peace. This game isn’t limiting you to go in a certain order. While this game isn’t fully open world like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, it’s somewhere in between. You can tackle parts in a different order. Like the first two major dungeons can be done out of order. Each area is its self-contained puzzle, and everything you need can be found in that general area.
In my introduction of this article, I said that I was afraid that was afraid that this game would be a short one where you were able to beat it in a few hours. That it was going to be a game that’s supposed to hold players over for the “next big 3D Zelda title”. To my surprise, this game is rather lengthy for a 2,5D Zelda game. It clocks in at 25 hours of casual playtime, which is, to my knowledge, one of the longest 2,5D Zelda games.
Climbing with beds
Something I find myself doing quite a lot while playing this game was climbing the area with beds. I summoned various beds stacked on top of each other to climb a wall. Since, I wanted to know if the developers hid a secret on that cliff face.
The exploration of this version of Hyrule is a blast to do. While you visit a lot of familiar places and meet your usual suspects like the Zora and the Gerudo, it’s a treat seeing them again. The only thing I missed a bit is showing the impact of the rifts. Something that this game only tells through dialogue was how things got impacted by the rifts. I wish it was shown a bit more visually. Like different animations of the characters before and after. But maybe, Tears of the Kingdom set the bar a bit too high for those expectations where each major area had a certain curse.
In terms of gameplay, this game really leans into the echoes mechanic. It also remembers that Zelda is a princess and didn’t really have combat training. So, you have to use summoned enemies to your advantage to let them fight for you. Now, you do have a sword, but you can only use it when your power meter has charge. I always reserved that for the dungeon bosses or when the situation got pretty dicey. Since recharging that meter is either done with potions or by defeating monsters from the rift world. These enemies aren’t exactly common in the overworld, and the energy bar drains fast.
In general, this game hits the same general gameplay beats as all other Zelda games. You go from dungeon to dungeon, learning a new technique or skill, defeating the boos and moving forward to another dungeon. There are also side quests in this game, that give you a nice reward. In this game, you also have a nice system to keep track of these side quests, like in Tears of the Kingdom. Something they also brought over from that game is the cooking system to a degree.
That’s something I personally feel mixed about. Maybe it’s me, but I feel the ingredients are quite rare to come by and there is no real way to farm certain ingredients like in Breath of the Wild. I have to admit that it adds a certain charm to this game, but I feel it’s a bit under implemented here. Like when you first meet the potion creators Deku shrubs, they talk about recipes… And I had a hard time finding any.
Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can also eat most of the ingredients without cooking them. While I personally dislike the fact you have to do two clicks to consume an item, I do understand why they did it. To avoid you consuming them too much. Yet, this is a change from the two previous games and I honestly really feel it’s a set backwards. A fine solution would be to give the player an option to switch between both systems.
Grezzo playset
This game was co-developed by Grezzo. Their previous original Zelda game was Tri Force Heroes. But, this game looks very similar in graphical style to the remake of Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch from late 2019.
This game looks like a plastic toy set and it looks amazing. While I was playing this game, I felt amazed at how expressive they were able to make everything without breaking the illusion that this is a toy set brought to live by our imagination. I don’t have a lot of complaints about the visuals and animations. And most of my complaints aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
Just like, I don’t have any complaints about the music and sound design of this game. If you take the music and sound design in a vacuum, you would say that it sounds just like very other Zelda game. It sounds like a remix of the familiar melodies we all know and love from the Zelda games. But, this isn’t a problem, since it sells the illusion that you are a child playing with a sort of Playmobil toy set of Hyrule and trying to recreate the sound effects and music of the game.
In terms of controls, this game plays like a dream. I rarely had problems with the controls and something I really like is the fact that with one press of a stick, you can see a view from on top when you feel the camera is blocking something. Now, there is one thing that I do have some things to criticize about. And that’s about the jumping.
It’s pretty difficult sometimes to judge how high Zelda can jump. I had moments in combat where I wasn’t aware I could jump on a higher ledge until I saw an enemy jumping backwards on that ledge. I also got tripped up several times with how far Zelda can jump. Her jump is shorter than I think, and the amount of times I jumped into a pit misjudging the jump is quite a lot. Something that would have helped is something a small landing shadow when Zelda was coming down. Then again, that must have been a nightmare to implement… So, maybe I should keep her shorter jump just better in mind.
Now, something else. Something I really like is how this game has two difficulty modes. I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and I have to say, I’m happy that I did. This game can lure you into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t say that this game is hard, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. You really need to keep your wits about you and think fast sometimes.
Being aware of what’s around you is also quite important since this game loves to hide things in little side area’s and using the map system is a must. I love how you can put pins and such on the map. Yet, I have to admit that I still keep notes in my phone like: “treasure in Gerudo dungeon, need to check later”.
The more I play through this game, the more I realize that the critiques I can make about this game are more on the minor side. Like how it feels like a waste of time when you are scrolling through a long list of echoes when you just want to find one. An easy solution would be to give the player an ability to favorite certain echoes. But then again, the sort function in the quick menu has “most used”, “recently learned” … So, it’s kinda that.
Now, you have two save slots in this game. So, you can play through this game and let a friend or a sibling play through a different slot. Now, this game also autosaves for you frequently, in case you forget to save. The game also keeps like several autosaves in case you want to return to an earlier point.
Something I really like is how this game also has a quick travel system. The system works similarly like an owl statue in Majora’s Mask or a water vane in Link Between Worlds. It makes it easy when you feel stumped by a puzzle and want to return later. The fast travel locations are very fairly placed all over the land.
While I went quite critical in this game, the more I played it, the more it won me over. This game is a new 2,5D Zelda adventure game I hope we were going to see again. The last new, non remake 2,5D Zelda game was released almost 11 years ago. And, I’m so happy to see a return to this style. I’d love to see a this style also making an appearance very so often since it’s clear there are still various unique ways to explore Hyrule and tell a story about the Hyrule legend without going fully 3D.
Apart from a few small complaints you read in this article, I honestly don’t have any major complaints about this game. This is a game I’m going to finish for sure, since I’m enjoying my time with this title quite a lot. If you are into the series, I highly recommend this title to you. If you enjoy exploration and playing with unique mechanics, I also think this game is for you. This game is totally worth it’s price tag and it pleasantly surprised me.
And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.
Today, I want to talk about a new game that’s going to come out later this year. It’s called Cave Hikers. It’s being developed by Porcupine Parkour. This small Croatian based studio reached out to me to review their demo in July. I would have written an article about it before, but I have been suffering from a writing burnout. Thankfully, I’m slowly getting back in the groove. And I’m going to make it up to the developers by publishing an article on their game today. Let’s take a look at the demo together, shall we? And I have a small surprise in store later.
Demo review
In this demo, you get an introduction to the gameplay. If you ever played a game like My Brother Rabbit, you will feel right at home in this game. This is a point and click game where you go from screen to screen. Each screen has a small puzzle or hidden object moment for you to take part in.
This game feels like playing through a children book. The voice of the narrator sounds like a (grand)father telling a story to their children. It’s extremely charming, and the story book art style really helps to sell this story.
Overall, there is no real tutorial in this game. Yet, the gameplay is quite simple. You learn quite quickly that this game is controlled with only the mouse. The menu system exists out of icons that make the game a lot easier to localize.
The demo is rather short but gives a very good impression of the full game. This game looks like it’s something I’m going to play. It’s a charming point-and-click game with hidden objects that feels nostalgic. Since the demo is so short, I don’t have a lot to talk about in terms of feedback.
The art style, voice acting, animation is all pretty well done. I only have a few minor complaints. The first complaint is that clicking to unmute the music or sound effects can’t be done right away. It doesn’t always register right away. And the second complaint is the in some rare spots, like with the red crystal at the end of the demo, the hitbox of placing it in the crusher is too tiny.
So, the game describes itself as:
Cave Hikers is a relaxing and humorous 2D interactive cartoon mockumentary that follows three characters through a cavernous world, on a quest to find the mystical “cave with an infinite ceiling”.
And I think it fits the game pretty well. Like I have been saying, the humor and charm of this game is there, and it’s pretty clear that maybe from some very minor things, this game is going to be an extremely charming game.
Now, how interesting would it be if I asked some questions to the developers of this game? Well, I had a few interesting questions in mind, so I went and asked them. Here are their replies.
Interview with the developers
– What games inspired you take to make this one?
It was mostly HOPA style games, which are usually made by much larger companies with inexpensive artists and a pseudo-realistic and kitsch-y style. So we went more in line with our own kind of art style, with some inspiration from Amanita games.
– What’s your process in creating puzzles?
It’s a strange process. As we started making the game in our free time for fun between odd jobs and more “serious” projects, we made a number of locations, creatures and simple mechanics. First we take a look at what already exists on the screen, then we intertwine the narrative with some clicking and potential puzzle elements. Then we play around with it until we are happy with the amount of “work” the player needs to do before accomplishing the goal.
Sometimes it includes a bit of moon logic. First, we make it clearer through conversation clouds and drawings. Then, whatever is unclear or hard to find for testers, we explain further through the Narrator.
– What are the funniest bugs or whoopies that happened during development?
For a while, we had a splash screen that looked exactly like the main menu, which created a lot of confusion! That was because the engine was upgraded, and also we started working with a much better programmer, we consolidated it into a coherent menu.
As for actually funny bugs, at one point we had Valeriano’s secret twin showing up at the cutscene. It took a while to realize we accidentally put two Valerianos of which one was outside the camera view.
– What engine did you use and why?
It’s Construct 3. At first, we made this project for fun and the Animator wasn’t exactly a programmer, so he used a really simple engine. (Un)fortunately, the project got out of hand and got some funding. Now we have a real programmer, but he had to learn Construct with all its limitations, but it’s also a really simple engine so we can still make a lot of the game without much hassle.
– What are some things you learned during developing this game?
Something that we re-learned time and time again… a game is easier to build if you have the whole team and a proper plan. Because otherwise you leave a lot of work and frustration for “future you”. We also learned that Construct can be a lot stronger than we initially thought… but also that it can be really stubborn in some areas.
– How many people worked on this game?
It first started with Sven the illustrator and Zvonimir the animator. At first, we were building a completely wordless game. But some testers were a bit confused at what the characters are really doing. So we hired Tom Bennet as the narrator and also Lea Konjetić to compose original music for the game. In the last six months, Fabjan the programmer also joined the team and superpowered our development process. All in all, five people, excluding all the translators.
Final thoughts
I’m very happy that games like these are getting more attention. Hidden object games have a strange reputation of being “too casual” or “boring”. Yet, I dare to argue there is something to love in these games. Especially when a game is created with this much passion and love.
I want to apologize to the developers again for taking such a long time in creating and article about the demo. But, I’m happy I did today. Since, if you have any interest in playing this game after reading this article, go and play the demo. Or share this article with somebody you think will enjoy playing this game. The demo takes roughly 15 minutes to finish.
I wish the developers a lot of luck and success with their game and when it’s fully released, I’m going to play this game and most likely review it on my blog. And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Thank you so much for reading this article, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed making it. I hope to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.
For the first time in World of Warcraft history, Blizzard has given both tickets to Beta and early access periods to War Within Epic Edition buyers, and the early access has just begun!
The early access period for the World of Warcraft: The War Within has begun, and players who have purchased either the physical collector’s edition or the Epic Edition digital bundle can dive right into the action four full days early. World of Warcraft launched a specialized cinematic trailer to prep Azeroth inhabitants for the upcoming expansion, which can be seen below.
World of Warcraft: The War Within launches globally on August 26, but for those who have early access, It starts today. More info can be found on the official website.
BlueSuburbia takes you to a place that is filled with a lonely kind of menace – an oppressive fear that crushes you as it tells you that no one will come save...
The post ‘BlueSuburbia’ Stirs Up a Deep, Solitary Fear appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Trailer Tuesday analyzes signals from outer space, helps a pip find its place on a die, and rushes to create an anti-shrinking formula before you get too tiny. Voices Of The...
The post Trailer Tuesday – The 100 Super Voices appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Moonstone Island is a slice of life adventure game where you can fly to dozens of islands to gather local oddball creatures, grow gardens, and romance the locals. Moonstone Island is a...
The post ‘Moonstone Island’ is a Creature-Collecting Life Sim appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
At today’s gamescom Opening Night Live, fans were treated to a bevy of new game reveals and amazing trailers that gave a glimpse of what’s in store from Xbox. This included big news like the release date of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, gameplay from the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign, and the announcement of early access starting soon for Towerborne. But that’s not all! Fans were also given more details on Diablo IV, Starfield: Shattered Space, and more!
With Opening Night Live 2024 complete, gamescom is officially underway, and Xbox will be on the ground floor with one of its most dramatic-looking booths ever – we can’t wait for you to see it! Not only will we have many of the games mentioned here on display, but many titles for both Xbox and Windows PC will be playable, like Ara: History Untold and Age of Mythology Retold, as well as games from our partners like Genshin Impact, Star Wars: Outlaws, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, giving you the chance to explore all the different ways you can play your favorite games across Cloud, Console, and PC.
Catch up on all of today’s news and reveals from Xbox below:
Coming September 4, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam, or play it day one with Game Pass.
During Opening Night Live fans around the world were treated to a new Age of Mythology: Retold trailer. Focusing on Arkantos, the hero of the game’s 50+ campaign missions, we hear the voice of Athena, coaxing Arkantos to adventure. Showcasing stunning graphics and mythological magic, the trailer gives us another taste of how much players have to be excited about. The trailer also showed the bacchanal of chaos that comes in the final Wonder Age, a new addition to Retold.
Whether you choose to play through the campaign alone or with friends, vs AI or in ranked multiplayer, every game will be different. Advanced Access starts August 27, 2024, at 5pm PT for those who pre-order the Premium Edition and full global launch kicks off on September 4, 2024, on Steam, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X|S. You can learn more about what it’s store by checking out our hands-on preview of Age of Mythology: Retold here on Xbox Wire.
Windows PC, Steam, or play it day one with Game Pass.
Ara: History Untold helped kick off gamescom 2024 with the world premiere of its launch trailer at Opening Night Live. The trailer, featuring a combination of live action and gameplay, puts the player in focus, inviting you to explore, create, rule, and conquer in the world of your imagination. Ara: History Untold is an upcoming grand strategy game where you build a nation and lead your citizens throughout history as you compete head-to-head with rivals to prove you are the greatest ruler ever known. Create your own story of history when Ara: History Untold launches on September 24, 2024. Pre-order and pre-install today! It’s your world now.
Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, Steam, Battle.net, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, or play it day one with Game Pass
We got a look at highlights from one of Black Ops 6’s signature Campaign missions, “Most Wanted”, as Frank Woods’ team attempts to locate and retrieve legendary operative Russell Adler. Beginning with a covert infiltration of a political fundraiser (with a cameo from Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton no less), we then see a descent into a CIA Black Site, and a bike riding escape sequence worthy of a classic action movie.
Along the way, we see how Campaign developer Raven is innovating – while this is a classic set piece-driven CoD mission, player choice is at the forefront. There are multiple options for how to get access to the Black Site, and you can choose to go loud or quiet as you infiltrate – it’s your mission. This is just a taste – we’ll learn much more about Black Ops 6 MultiplayerandZombies when the Call of Duty NEXT event kicks off on August 28, before Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches on October 25.
and Call of Duty®: Warzone Mobile***:
— Woods Operator Pack – unlock the Classic Woods Operator Skin. Plus, get access to unlock the Zombie Woods and Numbers Woods Skins.
— Reflect 115 Camo Pack – unlock the Reflect 115 Weapon Camo. Plus, get access to 9 acquisitions for Modern Warfare® Zombies.
Includes:
– Cross Gen Bundle of Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6
— Includes Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game
Forced to go rogue. Hunted from within. This is Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6.
Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.
The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.
In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.
Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.
*Requires active subscription to Game Pass Ultimate or Game Pass Console. Subscribers must login to Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III or Call of Duty®: Warzone on Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S by October 25th, 2024 to redeem the Woods Operator Pack and Reflect 115 Camo Pack.
**Actual launch date(s) and platform availability of MP Beta subject to change. See www.callofduty.com/beta for more details. Minimum Open Beta duration is 2 days. Limited time only. Internet connection required.
***Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III or Call of Duty®: Warzone on Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S required to redeem. Sold / downloaded separately. Must be redeemed by October 25, 2025.
Activision may modify or discontinue online service in the future, which may impact the continued availability of online gameplay. Online services may be discontinued due to factors including number of players.
Additional storage space may be required for mandatory game updates.
For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com.
© 2024 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS, CALL OF DUTY WARZONE and MODERN WARFARE are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. This product contains software technology licensed from Id Software ('Id Technology'). Id Technology © 1999-2024 Id Software, Inc. Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PC via Battle.net, Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
The first expansion for Diablo IV releases worldwide on October 8, and game director Brent Gibson took to the gamescom stage to introduce the Mercenaries – a new feature coming to Vessel of Hatred. Mercenaries are your companions in battle, who grow in strength and can be customized to support your playstyle. Each mercenary is unique in the role they serve, so no matter your class or build, you’ll find a mercenary that’s right for you!
The team also introduced the Dark Citadel, a new co-op PvE experience that will put everything you know about combat to the test through a gauntlet of cooperative puzzles and mechanics, as well as the Kurast Undercity – an intense new multistage, time-attack dungeon that gives you the control over the challenge as well as the loot you will find!
There’s a lot to uncover with these new upcoming features, as well as across the Diablo universe, so Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson, lead game designer Rex Dickson, systems designer Aislyn Hall, and Diablo Immortal’s executive producer Peiwen Yao will be joining us on the Xbox broadcast live at gamescom to share more about what’s to come.
– Standard Edition launches October 8th, 2024.
Pre-purchase any digital Edition of Diablo® IV: Vessel of Hatred and receive:
– Alkor the Snow Leopard Pet – for immediate use in Diablo® IV*
– Mother’s Lament Legendary Gem – for immediate use in Diablo Immortal®**
Diablo® IV: Vessel of Hatred – Standard Edition includes:
– Vessel of Hatred for Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S***
Uncover the next chapter of Diablo® IV in Vessel of Hatred and continue your fight to thwart the diabolical plot of the Prime Evil, Mephisto. Battle as the all-new Spiritborn class and call upon mystical Spirits to empower your battle. Expand your map to the new region of Nahantu and traverse through its lush jungles. Take on new enemies, dungeons, and PvE co-op challenges, recruit new Mercenaries, and more. Plus, explore a plethora of base game updates that will introduce new power and continue to enhance the world of Diablo® IV.
*Mount or pet feature (as applicable) must be unlocked in-game before the item can be used.
**Diablo Immortal® downloaded separately.
***Available upon Vessel of Hatred release.
Diablo® IV base game required to play. Battle.net® account required. Internet connection required.
For more information, please visit Diablo.com.
© 2024 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Diablo, Diablo Immortal and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S and/or other countries. Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam, or play it day one on Game Pass
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Steam on December 9, 2024. Step into the shoes of the legendary archaeologist as he sets off on his latest global adventure. Play it on day one with Game Pass, or up to three days early by pre-ordering the Premium Edition, Premium Edition Upgrade, or Collector’s Edition.
The release date was revealed alongside a brand-new trailer. Get a new look at Indy’s journey around the world and the tools at his disposal as he faces off against sinister forces. From the whip and revolver to his trusty journal and camera, you’ll need everything he’s got to unravel the mystery of the Great Circle. Learn more here on Xbox Wire.
: Digital Premium Edition Pack with the Traveling Suit Outfit and Lion Tamer Whip, as seen in The Last Crusade.
***
Live the adventure with the Premium Edition of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle!
INCLUDES:
• Base Game (digital code)
• Up to 3-Day Early Access**
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants Story DLC†
• Digital Artbook
• Temple of Doom Outfit
***
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.
YOU ARE INDIANA JONES
Live the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITS
Travel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces.
WHIP-CRACKING ACTION
Indiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery.
THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
*Game Pass members get access to all pre-order content as long as Game Pass subscription is active.
**Actual play time depends on purchase date and applicable time zone differences, subject to possible outages.
†DLC availability to be provided at a later date. Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam.
To the people of the Settled Systems, House Va’ruun is a mystery. Some call them fanatics. Zealots, even. They are seen as violent aggressors. But there’s so much more to this secretive faction. In Shattered Space, the first major expansion for Starfield, you will visit the homeworld of House Va’ruun, hear their story, and make choices that will determine their future. Shattered Space launches on September 30.
In addition to the Shattered Space release date reveal, Opening Night Live also showed off the new REV-8 land vehicle that’s landing in Starfield in the latest update. The update goes live just a few short hours after Opening Night Live and will be available to all Starfield players. Just visit a ship technician and add the REV-8 module to your ship to start touring planets in a new way.
Early Access begins September 10 on Steam. Coming 2025 to Xbox Game Preview on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Game Pass.
Towerborne showcased a brand-new trailer during Opening Night Live that gave us a fresh look at its striking, vibrant world and crisp, action-packed gameplay. The latest game from Stoic (Banner Saga Trilogy), Towerborne seamlessly blends the best parts of side-scrolling brawlers and action RPGs to create a unique adventure where you take on the role of an Ace, a hero who must protect humanity’s last sanctuary from malevolent forces that lurk outside the tower walls.
You can experience Towerborne starting September 10, 2024, when early access begins on Steam; later via the Xbox Game Preview program on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and with Game Pass in early 2025. To learn more about Towerborne and how Stoic is bringing their latest creation to life, check out our Xbox Wire piece here.
PC via Battle.net
2024 is a year of anniversaries for the Warcraft universe, which is turning 30 in the same year. Hearthstone celebrates 10 years, Warcraft Rumble approaches one year, and of course, World of Warcraft… which turns 20 years old in November! Feel old yet?
World of Warcraft: The War Within launches globally on August 26 and is the first installment of The Worldsoul Saga—the most ambitious story arc in WoW history. With four new zones to explore, as well as ongoing gameplay and system updates to support players of all types, this is the perfect time to celebrate the last 20 years of WoW as Blizzard prepares for the next 20 years and beyond!
Overwatch 2 is also getting in on the celebrations, revealing their new in-game collaboration with World of Warcraft. In mid-September, skins featuring some of the most iconic World of Warcraft characters will be made available, including Widowmaker as Sylvanas Windrunner.
Keep an eye on the Warcraft X account for more information about how you can celebrate Warcraft’s anniversaries alongside Blizzard, and join the Xbox broadcast live from the show floor at gamescom where we’ll be speaking to senior game director Ion Hazzikostas and associate art director Tina Wang about all things World of Warcraft!
The post gamescom Opening Night Live 2024: Everything Xbox Revealed appeared first on Xbox Wire.
At the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, fans of 2002’s Age of Mythology came out of the woodwork in droves (us included) to express their excitement for the upcoming remake – Age of Mythology: Retold. The original game is now over 20 years old, and while it’s remained at the forefront of fans’ minds, it’s perhaps less remembered than the Age of Empires series from which it sprung.
Now, however, Retold is one of the most anticipated releases of the season – and that comes, in part, because developer World’s Edge is going beyond the expected, even for a full remake. This isn’t just the game that we all remember with a fresh coat of paint – it’s bringing brand new game modes, tweaks to classic units, and even brand-new playable factions down the road. Age of Mythology: Retold isn’t just for long-time fans, it’s an RTS for everyone.
Ahead of Gamescom, we had the chance to speak with Kristen Pirillo, Senior Game Designer at World’s Edge to uncover why the studio and its partners are poised to deliver a much-anticipated – and incredibly comprehensive – refresh of a classic that could otherwise have been destined to be remembered only by a select few.
While Age of Mythology has been left alone for over two decades, Pirillo shares that there’s a smaller, but deeply passionate community of players still actively invested in the game: “This interest sets Age of Mythology apart from a lot of other games. It may be the least talked about, but it also has the highest brainworm potential.
“The Age of Mythology crowd is just particularly passionate and incredibly inventive – it was just a matter of waiting for the right time, and using all of the learnings from other Age titles.”
Age of Mythology: Retold, at its heart, aims to be the game that these fans have been asking for – a faithful recreation of the original, with all the quality-of-life changes that modern development can offer. Retold called for an ambitious vision – the team really wanted to lean into the larger-than-life elements of huge mythological armies, monsters, and bombastic God Powers in a way that were previously limited by the tech of the time.
This is immediately evident in the game’s visual design, especially when comparing unit models from the original game to their shiny new versions in Retold. The art team had a strong vision of what the game should look like – epic proportions, atmospheric worlds, and of course, horrible monsters. Pirillo describes this process using the Argus as an example, an Atlantean monster unit.
“In Age of Mythology, it’s just a rough sphere with some tentacles, but in Retold, we can do so much more,” Pirillo shares. “Now it’s got a ton of eyeballs that all move independently, it slithers around, and it’s just kind of gross. But the idea is we want to amp everything up and really maximize the mythology.”
Aside from straightforward improvements, Retold also brings significant changes to the original – never clearer than in the use of God Powers. God Powers in the original game are extremely powerful abilities that can only be used once per battle, whether it’s to immediately nuke an enemy from existence or significantly boost your resources. The issue was that they were so powerful, that players often saved them up, and ended up never using them at all. In Retold, these powers are now reusable, more reminiscent of Ultimate abilities in a hero shooter, changing the stakes of a match while letting you indulge.
And the core to all of the team’s work, while it seems obvious, is that modern technology just allows you to have more of absolutely everything at one time. More units, more monsters, more God powers exploding across the map; Age of Mythology: Retold can support the carnage that players have always wanted to unleash.
“One change that is huge for me is the increased population cap, so you can have absolutely massive armies,” Pirillo adds. “These armies can be made up of lots of different types of units. Some armies can just be monsters, and that’s just not something that the original game could handle. Even if you don’t win, it’s extremely satisfying to watch.”
The benefit of 20 years of feedback from such an invested community is that changes can be made to accommodate every type of player for the better. For instance, in the original Age of Mythology, the Norse faction was considered to have a higher bar to entry, and this is something that the team wanted to tweak for Retold to make the faction more approachable for everyone.
“We’ve added more content within the base game for the Norse, new units and buildings, and a lot of the existing things have been rebalanced,” Pirillo says. “It’s also much less punishing if you make a mistake.”
There’s also a new God Pack coming with the premium edition of Age of Mythology: Retold – the Freyr God Pack, which will unlock a major God and several minor Gods, giving players even more avenues to get started with the Norse adventure.
“You’re not locked into one play style if you play as the Norse now,” Pirillo adds. “You’re not stuck just playing offensively or following one build order – there’s a lot more variability on how the match can go, and so many more branches of strategy.”
There’s also now a villager priority system, so if you’d prefer to not have to keep checking on the nitty gritty parts of economy management and focus entirely on the battles and the story, you can set that to run automatically. When Pirillo shares that Age of Mythology has been built with the community, it is meant quite literally. The team sifted through 20 years of feedback shared about the game, trawling old school internet forums to find common frustrations that could be tweaked, as well as creative suggestions from those early days of play that may not have been easily implemented back in 2002.
“Our designers really did their homework, and lots of them are fans of the original game too,” Pirillo says. “It feels like being Indiana Jones, going back to archaeological levels of the internet to find what was good or back then, and bringing it into Retold.”
Age of Mythology: Retold is set to be a welcome and well-planned homecoming for those long-time fans, but it’s also going to be a great starting point for those that have never played the original game too. What’s even better, is that the game will continue to evolve as long as there’s still exciting mythology to add, and as Pirillo notes, there’s about two millenniums worth of it to tap into.
“You don’t have to be good at RTS to enjoy the story,” Pirillo says. “You don’t have to be good at RTS to just enjoy the carnal satisfaction of building 25 huge Stag Beetles and storming through your friend’s town. It’s whimsical fun that anyone will enjoy.”
Age of Mythology: Retold comes to Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass September 4.
The post Beyond a Remake – How Age of Mythology: Retold Revives and Retools a Beloved Classic appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Hey Insiders, let’s talk Game Pass! Starting today, we’re offering Xbox Insiders the option to try out and provide feedback on our new membership, Xbox Game Pass Standard.
We created a new membership option in the Game Pass family to give players more choice in how they discover and play games and provide different prices and plans so players can find what works best for them. For those looking for a larger library with hundreds of games to play on your console, plus all the benefits of Game Pass Core including multiplayer access, Game Pass Standard may be the option for you. Game Pass Standard also includes select member deals and discounts, including up to 50% off select games.
Hundreds of great games will be available with Game Pass Standard at launch. Players will get access to select titles as part of the new Game Pass Standard library, with more games being added throughout the preview period. Once you join the preview, you can look up the Game Pass Standard library to find your next favorite game.
During this Xbox Insiders preview, you can sign up for just $1. Any renewals during the preview period will also be $1 per month. At launch, Game Pass Standard will be available for $14.99 USD per month (pricing varies by market).
If you’re looking for other console membership options, Game Pass Core has a select collection of over 25 Game Pass games, online multiplayer access, and select member deals and discounts. Game Pass Standard includes everything available in Game Pass Core, plus hundreds of great games. If you are looking for those benefits plus day one titles, specific entries to Game Pass Ultimate library, access to EA Play, cloud gaming, Perks, Quests, and additional discounts for games in the Game Pass library, Game Pass Ultimate might be the best option for you.
Some games coming to Game Pass Ultimate (day one games or other game entries) will not be immediately available with Game Pass Standard and may be added to the library at a future date (can be up to 12 months or more and will vary by title). We’ll continue to share with all Game Pass members when games are being added and available to play for each plan.
If you’re interested in joining the Insiders preview, please go to the Xbox Insider app located in the Microsoft Store. Terms and Conditions are located there. Game Pass Core members with less than 2-months stacked onto their account, Game Pass for Console and PC Game Pass players who are a part of the Xbox Insiders program can participate and share their feedback.
As always, huge thank you to all our Insiders – you are a wonderful community, and we appreciate all your feedback. If you’re an Xbox Insider looking for support, please join our community on the Xbox Insider subreddit. Official Xbox staff, moderators, and fellow Xbox Insiders are there to help.
We’re excited to hear from those that join Game Pass Standard during the preview, and we’ll have more to share on availability for all players coming soon!
The post Xbox Insiders: Everything You Need to Know About Xbox Game Pass Standard appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Bethesda's first big expansion to Starfield, Shattered Space, will launch for PC and Xbox Series X/S on 30th September.
We got a quick look at the upcoming addition tonight during Gamescom Opening Night Live, in a trailer that mostly focused on the REV-8 land vehicle included in August's free game update.
Ahead of launch, marketing for Starfield felt fairly sober and dramatic - it's fair to say tonight's video takes a more upbeat tone. Previously, Bethesda's Todd Howard said that the lack of land vehicles was a deliberate choice - but it's now something that's being walked (or driven) back.
Developer Ustwo Games has revealed its widely acclaimed Escher-esque puzzler Monument Valley will return for a third outing on 10th December, and it'll be exclusively available to Netflix subscribers on Android and iOS devices.
Monument Valley 3 is described as protagonist Noor's "most extraordinary adventure yet", and it'll see players searching for a new source of power before the light of the world fades forever.
It promises "stunning new art styles and impossible landscapes", alongside "innovative mechanics and fresh ways to approach challenges". And one of its biggest new features comes in the form of sailing, with players able to roam the world - and solve some of its puzzles - by boat.
Those Xbox players among us who have been waiting to get their hands on open-world adventure RPG Genshin Impact, I have good news.
At this evening's Gamescom Opening Night Live, the team revealed Genshin Impact will be making its way to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass on 20th November. It is available to wishlist now on the Microsoft Store.
The news was shared along with a new Natlan gameplay trailer (below). Earlier this year, Genshin Impact was once again accused of cultural appropriation from fans and voice actors in response to the reveal of its new cast of Natlan characters.
Dying Light developer Techland has shown off a new game in its zombie series that began life as a DLC for Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
Announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live, Dying Light: The Beast is a solo or four-player co-op experience pitched as a "tight" 18-hour ride through a fresh area of the franchise's world.
Dying Light protagonist Kyle Crane, once again voiced by Roger Craig Smith, returns here, a decade on. In-game, Crane has been in captivity, and experimented on. The upside? You have zombie DNA powers to unleash that beast on enemies.
Sony is pulling Horizon Forbidden West from its PS Plus subscription service in the coming weeks.
The first-party Sony game is now listed under the 'Last Chance to Play' section on PS Plus, along with the likes of NieR Replicant, Marvel's Midnight Suns and Alien Isolation.
This upcoming removal of Forbidden West comes just a few months after Horizon Zero Dawn was also removed from the service, which as Tom wrote at the time seemed a surprising move by Sony.
Hunt: Showdown 1896 - the huge new update that necessitated an engine upgrade and introduced all new UI - has just hit an all-new concurrent player peak of over 60,000.
Up until the 1896 update dropped on 15th August, the extraction shooter's simultaneous player record - set back in October 2023 - sat at a modest 42,000ish players.
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Just when Geoff Keighley had started to fade from your memory, he comes rubber-banding back with a vengeance - snap! It's Gamescom week and it kicks off with Opening Night Live this evening from 7pm UK time (other Opening Night Live timings here). A pre-show with additional announcements will begin at 6.30pm UK. We'll be watching and reporting on it live, as always, right here, so you can either keep abreast of announcements while you do something else, or you can join in with your thoughtful and amusing comments. Please keep us company. Please.
What do we expect to see today? Well, probably Geoff Keighley, but also the new Indiana Jones game, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Dune Awakening. We're also expecting Little Nightmares creator Tarsier to unveil its new project, which could be exciting. On top of that: Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred, Civilization 7, hero shooter Marvel Rivals, Lost Records (the project made by the creators of Life is Strange), Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (which was recently delayed), and Black Ops 6. Keighley's best pal Hideo Kojima has also been tweeting enigmatic silhouetted pictures of actors who are presumably playing roles in Death Stranding 2.
And before you ask, "Yes, there will be new game announcements," Keighley said on X.
The creator of the now-defunct Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 mod, H2M, has opened up about what happened when Activision slapped the mod with a cease and desist, admitting, "the past couple of days have not gone to plan".
Although the mod - which upgraded Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode - was announced over a year ago, the cease and desist arrived the day before the mod was scheduled to be released last week, forcing the project to "shut down [...] immediately and permanently".
Shortly thereafter, unhappy Modern Warfare 2 fans jumped onto the Steam page to express their dismay.
A flurry of Pokémon news has confirmed a launch date for the long-awaited Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, and a look ahead at what's next for Pokémon Go.
Pokémon TCG Pocket, a digital version of the phenomenally-popular trading card game, will go live via the iPhone App Store and Google Play for Android worldwide on 30th October.
As previously announced, you can open two packs of Pokémon cards for free per day - just enough to get you hooked - and it's interesting to see the pack-opening mechanic front and centre in the game's trailer below.
Modern military shooters are in a strange place at the moment. Battlefield is licking its wounds after stepping on the landmine that was Battlefield 2042, while Call of Duty is running around like the dog that caught the car, the massive success of Warzone leaving the mainline series at a loss with what to do with itself.
It's a chaotic, uncertain time in one of multiplayer gaming's biggest spheres, and the various shenanigans of EA and Activision have left room for something new to make its mark in the genre. Enter Delta Force: Hawk Ops, which you'll be shocked to hear is not a Trauma Team-style game about performing surgery on birds of prey. Instead, it's a free-to-play military shooter in the Battlefield/CoD mould, based on the series that predates either, and it could be the shot of competence and stability that the genre sorely needs.
Currently running a month-long Alpha, Hawk Ops provides access to two of its three game modes. The first of these, Havoc Warfare, is a classic large-scale attack/defence scenario similar to Battlefield's Rush, with the attacking team trying to capture a linear sequence of control points, and the defending team attempting to hold back the tide until the attackers' collective pool of lives runs dry.
Dead Cells today has received its final major update, The End is Near, after seven years of development.
This will be the 35th update to the game, which has received a number of DLCs to expand gameplay and reference other popular games, from Castlevania to Hollow Knight.
The End is Near expands on the curse mechanic, with three new mobs, three new weapons, and three new mutations.
Ubisoft has cut 45 staff across two of its North American studios, as part of its third round of redundancies so far this year.
The company has laid off workers at both Ubisoft San Francisco, the developer of XDefiant, and Red Storm Entertainment, which had been working on the now-cancelled The Division: Heartland live service game.
"Last week Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment informed their teams of a restructuring that will result in 45 employees leaving Ubisoft," a spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Eurogamer.
Ubisoft has updated the PC requirements for its upcoming Star Wars adventure, Star Wars Outlaws, and released a new teaser showing off what kind of performance PC players can expect when the game releases on 30th August.
Taking up a modest 65GB, the settings shouldn't be too punishing for those looking only to meet the minimum standards – although you will need to have DLSS or FSR – but those pushing for the "ultra" experience will need a decent rig.
Check out the details below:
Vampire Survivors' free Darkasso update is now available on Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox, and mobile devices.
"It's been a while since we added a new major feature, so we tried not to spoil the contents of this patch immediately," Poncle teased in the patch notes. "Hope it worked to keep the contents a bit of a surprise."
New additions include nine new extra achievements, a new challenge stage and relic, two new "special character skins", and five new Arcanas to spice up your experience.
Destiny developer Bungie says it has addressed an issue where players have had their usernames changed by its "name moderation tool".
After "actively investigating" the issue for 24 hours, Bungie advised that while it had "identified the issue that was forcing a high number of Bungie name changes", it was "continuing to investigate" what happened and how "to address player accounts that were impacted".
Although Bungie acknowledged that a "high number of account names have been changed", the studio stopped short of confirming exactly how many players were affected.
If you cast your minds back to October 2021, you may recall the news that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was set to make its way to the VR headset, Oculus Quest 2. While details on the project were thin on the ground at this time, it was said to have been "many years in the making".
However, not quite three years since that initial announcement, Meta has now said work on the VR port is "on hold indefinitely".
In response to a YouTube commenter inquiring as to the whereabouts of GTA: San Andreas VR, the official Meta Quest Vr account replied: "GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects."
The Elder Scrolls mobile game, The Elder Scrolls: Castles, is set to launch on 10th September.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles - which was quietly released into early access in September 2023 - is now open for pre-registration on both Apple and Android.
From the same "award-winning team" behind Fallout Shelter, The Elder Scrolls: Castles lets you reign supreme over your very own castle and dynasty within The Elder Scrolls universe.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered mod, H2M, has been cancelled following a cease and desist demand from Activision.
Although the mod - which upgraded Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode - was announced over a year ago, the cease and desist arrived yesterday, a day before the mod was scheduled to be released later today.
"Today, our team members received a Cease & Desist order on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the H2M-Mod project," the team explained on Twitter/X.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has said he has "no regrets" over his company's decision to break Apple and Google's terms of service back in August 2020 - something that saw the hugely-popular Fortnite booted off both iPhone and Android storefronts.
The carefully choreographed stunt sparked four years of legal wrangling over Apple and Google's app store policies - and has ultimately led to Epic Games launching its own mobile store today on Android worldwide and on iPhone in mainland Europe, thanks to policy changes demanded of Apple by the EU.
"We've probably lost a billion dollars not having Fortnite on iOS the past four years," Sweeney said, in a briefing to press ahead of the Epic Games Store on mobile going live. "But what's the price of freedom?"
Kaitlyn Dever, the actress portraying Abby Anderson in the second season of HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, required extra security during filming for her own protection.
This comes from fellow castmate Isabel Merced, who is playing Dina in the show. Speaking with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, Merced discussed the strong emotions the series can spark within some that have resulted in volatile reactions from so-called fans.
When Horowitz said he was concerned about Dever, and the toxicity she will likely receive "through proxy of being Abby", Merced stated there are "so many strange people" who "genuinely hate" the character. This is despite her being completely fictional. And, because of this, Dever was required to have extra security during the filming for the second season.
Genvid's experimental choose-the-outcome, episodic Silent Hill series, Ascension, has won an Emmy.
Genvid CEO Jacob Navok marked the award with a heartfelt post on Twitter/X, stating the Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media Programming for Silent Hill: Ascension was a "testament to the dedication" of the team.
The enhanced version of classic point-and-click adventure Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars now has a release date: 19th September.
This "Reforged" version will be available across PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Series X S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Windows, macOS and Linux).
The game's redrawn visuals have been upgraded to 4K, but there's also a new story mode UI including subtle hints aimed at new players.
Back in June, developer IO Interactive revealed it was resurrecting and reworking Hitman 3's VR mode, first released for PSVR in 2021, exclusively for Meta Quest 3 - and the studio has now shared first gameplay, showcasing this Reloaded edition's various enhancements.
On a basic level, Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded is the same game that earned itself a Eurogamer Recommended badge back in the day, meaning players can don goggles and immersively sneak through likes of Dubai, Dartmoor, Berlin, Chongqing, and Mendoza.
However, Reloaded - which is being developed with XR Games - is more than just a straight port of Hitman 3 VR's scrappy but enjoyable previous release. It also introduces a new flat-shaded artstyle, more "fluid and natural" movement options, an overhauled UI, and - perhaps most notably - dual-wielding, so players can use a different weapon or item in each hand.
New World: Aeternum, the latest expansion/do-over for Amazon's middling MMO New World, is having an open beta on 13th September ahead of its full PC and console release in October.
Aeternum, if you're unfamiliar, emerged back in June, amid some confused messaging that didn't entirely make it clear exactly what it was. And, truthfully, Amazon's marketing remains as baffling as ever. The gist, though, is that this is the same MMORPG released back in 2021, albeit with new features and a bit of finessing ahead of its debut on Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
It's got a pacier story (told through in-game cinematics and pre-rendered cut-scenes), combat improvements, cross-platform play, enhanced controller support, and more - while still retaining its other MMO bits like classes, crafting, and questing. Then there's New World's first-ever large-scale PvP zone, a new 10-player raid, end-game solo trials, and other additions.
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Fans were jubilant when Persona 3 received a remake earlier this year, but this turned to disappointment when it became clear its Episode Aigis epilogue DLC was not included. Multiple versions of Persona 3 have been released since the game's initial PS2 launch in 2006 - namely Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, each with unique additions. The release of this year's Persona 3 Reload was an opportunity to provide the definitive version of the game, but without Episode Aigis fans were upset it would remain incomplete.
That's why Atlus relented and has now additionally remade Episode Aigis: The Answer with all the trappings of Reload - though no doubt the fact it's the fastest-selling Atlus game ever was also persuasive. Finally, fans will get the complete story experience they've craved (though still without the alternative female protagonist from P3P). But after going hands-on with the DLC, I'm still left with a lingering question: what exactly was the main game missing?
I played Persona 3 for the first time this year and really enjoyed its twisted teen drama, even if the series as a whole is starting to feel formulaic. Yet after receiving the true ending, the story felt complete and I wasn't left with unanswered questions. So what kind of answer can The Answer provide?
UPDATE 6.45pm UK: This evening's big new Dragon Age: The Veilguard trailer has landed, confirming what we knew already - that BioWare's upcoming RPG will arrive at Halloween. Also in the trailer? Well, Dragon Age fans will get to see a very familiar face - we'll let you watch for yourselves and read more below.
Yes, that is absolutely Morrigan, the fan-favourite returning character voiced once again, it sounds like, by Farscape and Stargate SG-1's Claudia Black. It certainly looks as if Morrigan's clothing here is inspired by her mum Flemeth - which probably isn't good news.
Excited yet?
UPDATE 20/8/24: Well, there you go. Following last week's Deadline report, Amazon has officially unveiled Secret Level, a new "adult-animated anthology series featuring original stories set within the worlds of some of the most beloved video games".
It's a 15-episode series from the creators of Love, Death & Robots, and it'll feature stories inspired by Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, PAC-MAN, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, Warhammer 40,000, and a variety of PlayStation Studios games.
And if that takes your fancy, you'll be wanting to circle 10th December on your calendar - which is when the series arrives on Prime Video - then check out its teaser trailer below.
Sony has announced August's PlayStation Plus games.
Those on the subscription's Extra tier will get the following titles:
In addition to the above, those on PS Plus Premium will also get access to the below:
A week ago we looked at the slightly underwhelming AMD Ryzen 9600X and 9700X, which were marked by modest gaming performance increases in some titles, more significantly better content creation grunt and slightly better thermals. Now it's time to look at the second half of AMD's Zen 5 quartet, the £459/$499 Ryzen 9 9900X and £609/$649 Ryzen 9 9950X. These are powerful 12-core and 16-core parts that ought to be more of interest to content creators than gamers, so do they make a better case for Ryzen 9000? And does either one manage to exceed the top-level gaming performance of the 7800X3D?
Unfortunately, after four days of frantic benchmarking and troubleshooting, I'm not sure AMD has succeeded on either of these points. Our Ryzen 9900X and 9950X testing has been marked by confusingly poor gaming performance, including performance regressions versus the 7900X and 7950X, alongside a few examples of genuine uplifts that nonetheless don't go far enough to making these CPUs worth recommending.
This review does at least mark the debut of two improvements to our benchmarking suite compared to last week's reviews, which itself marked the introduction of an entirely new automated benchmarking system for Digital Foundry - and therefore only included a more limited selection of games than we've offered in the past.
Among Us developer InnerSloth has announced a collaboration with Dungeons and Dragons web series Critical Role.
This collaboration means players can now bedeck their little space beans with a number of items worn by those intrepid members from Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or Bells Hells. I am talking about Artagan's Incredible Brows Visor or the Dust of Deliciousness Nameplate, to name but two.
"Getting to work alongside the wonderful crew of the hit TTRPG show Critical Role to bring some of their magic to Among Us for Gilmore's Curious Cosmicube has been mind blowing," InnerSloth said. "Be sure to go to our in-game store and spend some Stars before the Cosmicube is gone."
In our house I am the master of channels. I am the one who unsubscribes from services we’re not watching, re-subscribes to services when there is something for us, and makes sure we don’t get signed up until a show we’re interested in has a full season available.
A mere four years ago we were at a point that felt almost like a renaissance of streaming content… we were all stuck inside and in need of something to do and streaming channels were there to deliver. And then we got a vaccine, decided the pandemic was over, and realized that maybe we didn’t need a subscription to 17 different streaming services.
Netflix
Meanwhile, all the players who got into the streaming service game, having been lulled by the seemingly effortless success of Netflix, found themselves in a bit of a bind as they found this was not a cheap and easy path to riches even as people began trimming back on their subscription count. This led to the need to raise prices, which drove even more people to dump their offering.
Still, the strong will prevail and, after some closures and a series of mergers… there are still probably too damn many channels. More than we can afford to subscribe to continuously, so this is where we are at.
After more of four years of peaks and valleys and industry strife, these are the channels we end up watching.
These are the services which we remain subscribed to pretty much always. They have, on some level, a reason or a proven value to keep them around.
This is the one service we subscribe to continuously and watch most regularly, and it is largely because they throw more content at us than any two or three other services combined. Sure, a lot of it is garbage, and most of it isn’t for us, but every Friday night they have a selection of content added to their service to choose from.
Add in that they drop a full season at a time so you can binge to your heart’s content and that they have probably one of the best apps by most measures, and you can see why I never bother to put Netflix on the bench.
Finally, their app works. It is fast, responsive, comprehensible, and doesn’t assume I can read the tiny title card from across the room. It also skips the “previously” section if I just watched the previous episode and lets me skip the beginning and end credits successfully.
That said, they just announced that they are cancelling my $12 a month plan and enrolling me in a $7 a month plan with ads. Netflix promises it will just be a couple of ads at the beginning of some programming, but we’ll have to see how it goes. The other alternative is $18 a month for no ads, and then we’re getting into the “you need to prove your value every month” zone of streaming services.
I think it is just called Prime Video honestly, but I always put “Amazon” in there to remind myself that this is part of our Amazon Prime subscription, which is something we keep even when we’re not watching any of their shows.
So, technically, it is the other service we subscribe to continuously, but if my annual Prime member ship was just for it, I would cancel it in a heartbeat. But I get other benefits from my Prime membership that make it worthwhile, so technically we subscribe to Prime Video.
The problem is that while they occasionally pull off something good… the recent Fallout series is a “prime” example… there otherwise isn’t a lot of new content there, and much of what is new isn’t very good. If you missed some straight-to-video bad science fiction film, Prime is apparently where they all end up.
It is also very much in the business of bait and switch, where they will get a series from another service like Starz or MGM+ and show you a season… or, in one case, the first season MINUS the final episode… the prompt you to subscribe to that service… through them, of course, so they get a cut… which does not make me happy. I have gone off and subscribed due to this at times, though I always go directly to that service, like Starz, and contract with them direction so Prime does not get a cut.
This is, in part, out of spite, but also because the Prime Video app isn’t great. It is not the worst, but it is at best mid-pack. It is slow, it can be hard to see, browsing for shows is not great, and it is really hit and miss about whether it will let you skip the “previously” or opening credits and just hates when you try to skip the end credits to start another show. This is likely, in part, to them just showing a lot of content from other services, which they put the minimal effort into adapting to their app.
Finally, despite paying for access to Prime, if I don’t want to get ads during shows, I have to pay extra. This, as you might expect, irks me and I will not pay their ransom. The only upside to this is that they don’t show ads on all content, though amusingly some content an ad comes up to tell you the video will be ad free thanks to a specific sponsor, for who an ad then plays.
TL:DR – Not great, but comes with a package I never cancel.
Apple is in an interesting niche in that it is just cheap enough and the content is high enough quality that I don’t rush to cancel our subscription. There isn’t a lot of new content, and they are still wed to the “let’s stretch out people’s subscription time by showing one episode a week because maybe, this time, we’ll have the next Game of Thrones and everybody will need a full week to discuss the show” routine, which I find irksome.
Our house rule is we don’t start watching anything until it is six episodes in.
The app is also not the best. When you have something selected on scree it makes that item about 5% larger than it was when not selected, so I often have to move the selection a couple of times to see what has focus on screen. It is a pain in the ass to just go watch the next episode if you stopped at the start of the credits last time you watched a series. It wants to resume from exactly where you left off unless you fish around in the app to fine the page for the full series that has the episode list.
But the app does at least run pretty well for us. I will give it that.
And, like I said, there isn’t a ton of new content. It is the Anti-Netflix, which just throws a constant stream of new content at you. So we spend a lot more time watching Netflix because we’ll take a chance on an episode or two of something new or watch some potentially bad movie on a Friday night because the commitment feels low and there are many other options if we bail.
I almost forgot about this. I give public television a regular monthly payment which gives me access to their regular lineup of shows and whatever they import from the UK via Masterpiece Theater. We used to have half a dozen public television channels in the SF Bay area that each had their own varied content. They all got scooped up by KQED in San Francisco over the years. We almost never watch this these days, unless I want to go back and re-visit one of the Ken Burns documentaries, but technically we’re continuously subscribed. At least when you stream you are not interrupted by pledge drives every few months.
Also, I should mention this because, due to the fact that Comcast is our only internet provider option and that they make sure that internet bundles are cheaper if you include cable TV, we still have cable TV at our house. But on the rare occasion when we want to watch it, we watch it using the app on our Roku Stick. And, live TV with ads… this is how animals watch TV, right? Just sitting there and being force to watch whatever is “on” at that very moment? How did we survive this?
These are the services that we are often subscribed to, but which get turned off now and then when we run out of content.
I will echo what I have heard many other say, which is if I still had pre-teen children in the house, I would never unsubscribe from Disney+. It is also the one stop shop for all things Star Wars and the MCU and the entire 35 year life of The Simpsons.
But our daughter is now a college graduate and my nostalgia for the Disney catalog and the other properties they own isn’t all that strong. So we’re willing to unsub from this one when we’re done with whatever the latest Star Wars series is. And, because Disney+ is still locked into the “one episode a week” ploy to get people to string out their subscription for an extra month or two, we don’t subscribe until a season is set.
The app itself is pretty good. It does group up content well enough and is responsive and doesn’t crash on our Roku stick.
Some very decent original content. Will subscribe when a new season of something is out. They do adhere to the “one episode a week” thing, so I wait until seasons are complete. They do also get Fox and FX stuff, and at one point I watched literally all of the available episodes of Bob’s Burgers while also watching all available episodes of Archer, both of which feature H. Jon Benjamin voicing the lead role, which was quite a trip.
The app is okay, though it isn’t well organized. They like to put the “continue watching” piece of the UI way down the main page and prefer to promote their new stuff, so you really have to bookmark the things you like and go to your personal page to get what you want out of the app.
One of the relics of the premium cable channel era, somewhere down the list from HBO and Showtime, its once niche with us is the period piece dramas like The White Queen, The Spanish Princess, and The Serpent Queen get us to subscribe for a while. They also feature a lot of movies, but everybody has a lot of movies and they are almost never the ones I am in the mood for at any given moment, so somehow that rarely works out.
We originally came here to watch Yellowstone then found that this is where all of the Star Trek content lives as well as having a cross programming agreement with Showtime, so there is kind of a lot here. However, we can get a bit burnt out on it as well. We’ll watch a few seasons of this or that then stop watching for a while, at which point I will turn off the subscription. But we do return.
This is the channel for all things Walking Dead, which my wife is still into because of the soap opera-like drama. As I noted previously, after a season or two of zombies, people really became the main enemy, while zombies would only show up when the plot demanded. Decent channel, not too expensive, and AMC has quite a bit of original content. When something pops up we’ll subscribe for a while.
These are the services that we only subscribe to for very specific reasons, then cancel ones we’re done.
You would think they would be better at this whole streaming things, having been in on that business since the HBO Go app, their first cut at streaming, launched back in 2010. Then again, the whole thing hasn’t been the same since the end of Game of Thrones.
The old HBO business model was to get people subscribed based on a few prestige series and maybe first access to films that had recently left the theaters, which worked well enough in the age of cable TV and the early days of streaming. Now films don’t see to be the draw they once were, there are a ton of competitors, and they haven’t quite hit another big winner.
I mean, they can get a show like Succession that gets a lot of awards, but I think Netflix puts out a show about once a month that gets as many or more viewers, and a hit on Netflix will get 5-10x the viewers.
And at one time we would stay subscribed to HBO for years at a stretch. Now, however, with the consolidation under the Max brand and the removal of back seasons of some shows, and other shows entirely, and their lack of anything really new and good… we went back last to watch season 4 of True Detective and it was okay, but I cancelled the service once we were done
This was an okay service the first few times we have subscribed, and they did a credible job with the Olympics recently. I mean, I cannot blame them directly for NBC cutting away from the opening ceremonies to watch the US team standing around waiting to get on their boat. I know the French are… uniquely French I guess… but they’re still more interesting that Snoop Dogg trying to engage random strangers in conversation or Kelly Clarkson repeating “Oooh, look at that” over and over. And past that, if you wanted to watch very specific competitions, they let you. So maybe the most accessible Olympics when it came to video.
But beyond the Olympics it has been degrading as a service. They are going hard on ad revenue with a cheap subscription. The problem is that I am fully willing to buy the more expensive ad free option, but they now show you the version of the content that has been cut up for ad injection… without the ads. What this means is that every so often the show pauses for nearly a full second while the server apparently has to decided on the fly whether or not an ad gets played or not, then moves on when the result comes back negative.
That doesn’t sound bad, until you learn just how many ads Peacock thinks they should inject into 30 minutes of television. It quickly becomes annoying out of all proportion to the actual duration of the interruption. It isn’t completely unwatchable, but it just pulls me out of the show and makes my brain think, “Oh, here is another place where they would have put an add had I not given then an extra $8 for a month of service.”
Also, “ad free” did not apply to Olympic coverage, and I am still salty about that.
Services we have tried once and haven’t really felt the need to return to.
I am lumping these two together because they share the same problem, which is the US view of British television after having been raised on US public television cherry picking the very best and putting it on in front of us via Masterpiece Theater. We think everything produced in the UK is sophisticated and urbane, performed by actors who are veterans of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with performances delivered in that very specific BBC news reader accent, written by over educated graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, which holds a mirror up to life while making historical and literary references that mean we have to keep Wikipedia to hand in order to keep up.
Some of us grew up on a diet of things like I, Claudius and House of Cards and Monty Python and it skewed our perception.
So a pair of channels filled to the brim with British television content seems like heaven.
The problem is that Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abby are not the prototypical British programming, the pinnacle to which the island strives; Benny Hill is. And even that is a huge cut above the average. There are a lot of simply unwatchable, predictable, crap shows on Acorn and Britbox.
Finding that for every Prime Suspect there are a dozen dreadful police procedurals out there, often hampered for US audiences with incomprehensible UK regional accents and slang, is enough to burst the myth of British television superiority. You’re just as bad as us at this TV thing and it is a miracle when you can build a season of television on even three hours of actual content. At least in the US when we crank out mediocre content, we get 8, 10, 16, even 22 episodes out the door.
I’ll go back to letting US public television cherry picking for me, thank you.
So yeah, we’ve been through both of these channels and found that the good stuff we’ve seen already elsewhere and the rest… is usually not the good stuff.
We subscribed to this because of a Prime Video bait and switch with the show Monsieur Spade. They had some content worth watching, but not enough to keep us subscribed and, lacking another screw job from Amazon, there isn’t anything there we’re dying to watch. I think all the Bond films are available there… but I also have them all on DVD so I am excused from every having to watch them because there are just right there, I could watch them any time I want.
Technically not a subscription service but a free ad supported venue, one of my nieces that works in Hollywood… I have two such nieces… was working as a producer here so we gave it a try. Oh man, ads suck, and injected ads suck at least 3x as much because if they don’t have enough ad buys, they will just show you the same damn ad two or three times back to back.
If the future is ad supported, they need to work on that. It is awful. Anyway, my niece has another job so I do not feel the need to engage with Tubi anymore.
We wished for a bright future of on demand entertainment where we could select and watch anything we wanted. But we wished on the monkey’s paw, and as the finger curled down, we were given a patchwork landscape of competing services, shifting content availability, and difficult UIs.
I think the biggest problem is just know what there is out there to watch. My least favorite thing these days is to sit down on the couch and have my wife ask, “So what should we watch?” This portends me using the remote to scroll through large sections of half a dozen services to find something that looks good.
This, btw, is why Netflix wins so often for us. They at least always have something new, something we’re willing to invest at least a bit of time into. And after about fifteen minutes of my wife vetoing this or that I’m ready to just put anything on so I can stop this futile quest for content.
Using the Roku for streaming helps, as it will search all channels and services for programming and find it. But you have to know what you are looking for. If you are doing the streaming equivalent of channel surfing on a Friday night there are just too many places to look.
I know we don’t want to go back to half a dozen channels where you watched what was on or nothing at all, but there was a simplicity to it and a limited scope where you could glance at the TV listings and just decide to read a book or go play a video game.
So what are you watching these days? Which channel scratches your itch? And is there any decent new science fiction shows out there? Is Orphan Black: Echoes any good? Might have to re-up AMC+ if it is.
And, if it is dead, what I am still doing here?
I jumped into blogging back towards the end of 2006 when the popularity of the medium was, if not at its peak, certainly close to it… though some where saying it was already past its prime by then.
We were probably long beyond the point where having a blog made you special in any way, and getting past where blogging about a topic might get you a career move or a book deal. I mean Julia & Julie was already a book (and later a movie) before I started blogging (though that was a blog on Salon, so perhaps not representative of the medium), as was that one about the life of being a waiter and a few others.
And while blogging being a more common practice makes it harder to be noticed and called out as special, it didn’t mean the medium was dead. And I wasn’t looking for a career move out of blogging in any case. As documented, I already managed that with a BBS back in the early 90s and by the time I started a blog I had a career and a position that paid better than any equivalent in video games… plus a family and a mortgage that would be difficult to sustain had I any talent in video game development.
So the medium was perhaps dead by the time I started in the sense of being an easy way to be discovered as a stepping stone to something else, though that was not entirely uncommon for some time after I started.
Still, it was a heady time. There were lots of blogs around no matter what topic you were delving into and more showed up every day. I jumped into the MMORPG sub-genre zone, the state of which was immortalized by Michael Zenke as he took the 2007 XKCD online communities graphic and made a little map of our corner of the blogosphere. Look at us.
The community of old
Some of those site persist. Heartless still posts and Raph still keeps his blog going. A few still stand, like Kill Ten Rats and Terra Nova, but get no updates. Others are around, but on different mediums. Lum, perhaps the ur MMO blogger, left behind the many iterations of Broken Toys and now has a substack or something like it… I don’t know, Substack had a nazi problem at one point and I don’t remember where he landed… while Damion Schubert of Zen of Design mostly trolls people on Twitter with bad opinions about Star Wars.
More though are just memories, shadows on the Internet Archive. Long was the reach of VirginWorlds and its podcast at one time, but now the site stands no more.
During that era being an MMO blogger of any quality and sufficient quantity could push you into the belief that you might actual be relevant that to the genre, that your opinions might matter. They didn’t, but community managers, always looking for some way to escape the inbred echo chamber that official forums tend to become, seemed keen to pay bloggers some attention now and then if only to break up the perpetual complaining of their site regulars.
Brent from VirginWorlds got a card
People could afford to be picky. You could take a stand, take a side, champion a cause or a very narrow point of view and get a following. I got kicked out of the EVE Blog Pack for not being sufficiently devoted to the topic. (Also, JFC there is a kind comment from Gevlon on the post at that link. That belongs in a museum!) Dedicated WoW bloggers would not talk to me because I wrote about other games. We argued with each other. SynCaine and I used to have at each other in what became known as the Friday Blog wars. I was nearly part of a holy war because I was insufficiently effusive about Warhammer Online, only to have most everybody dump the title and walk away a couple months later.
It was a happy and chaotic time and, not coincidentally, the peak era for Google Reader, the handy, easy to use, free RSS feed reader that Google killed in 2013 because they wanted everybody to use Google+ instead… and then Google+ was so flawed that they killed that too.
Sure, new venues show up. There were podcasts, and for a while podcasters were all the rage, taking the limelight from all but the most famous bloggers. And then there was Facebook and YouTube and Twitter to contend with, and even Tumblr seemed to be a thing… until Verizon bought that and screwed it up.
XKCD, again on the pulse of the internet, had a comic about that too!
But all of those got along pretty well. I appeared on quite a few podcasts, syndicated my blog feed to Facebook, made some YouTube videos, and even did things on Tumblr. I just got my 11 year badge on my Tumblr account in June.
Then came Twitch, and I kind of want to blame the demise of blogs on that. Certainly if we look at the annual page views for my blog for all the full years from 2007 to 2023, things start to go down hill not too long after Twitch becomes a thing in 2011.
Page view for TAGN by year
I mean look at that line. It feels like the body blow of Twitch and the demise of Google Reader conspired against me, to mix a metaphor.
And I am especially prickly about Twitch because it now dominates the attention of community managers, still keen to escape their self contained forum hell and whatever sub-reddits they are being assailed from. The peak of my ire remains the EVE Vegas 2018 where I gave a presentation about the EVE Online blogging community and the value of the written word in recording the vibrant history of the game… and they put my presentation up against the Stream Fleet broadcast, which meant about six people sat and tolerated my plea… honestly, I should have bought them all a cocktail for enduring me… while literally everybody else, all CCP team members included, went to the Twitch event.
My sole recorded contribution to the discourse is this meme.
Highlight of my Presentation
Okay, there were a few more people than that. But still, as a metaphor for the state of blogging in the eyes of the community team it was unparalleled in its poignancy.
And that is certainly one way to look at things. The written word out maneuvered by a bunch of shallow attention seekers like Asmongold, who probably couldn’t string together three coherent sentences about a day at the zoo without checking to see which animals were trending and should be featured in his latest tirade against the people who dumbed down zoos so that they are no fun anymore.
Or, you know… maybe it is my topic of choice.
I mean, if you look at the arc of my so-called popularity, it might very well describe the ascendancy of MMORPGs and their eventual fall from the top of the food chain.
I mean, WoW hasn’t been on fire since the run up to Cataclysm and has felt the pinch of declining subscribers since Warlords of Draenor, which is when the panic really set in down in Anaheim. Star Wars: The Old Republic was in some ways the last gasp attempt to get an old school subscription model expansions and so on MMORPG off the ground… and it had to go free to play.
If you go look at EVE Offline, the site that tracks the New Eden online user count and has done so for ages now, you will see that the peak of online concurrence was in May of 2013, when 65,303 accounts were logged into the game. That was before free to play, the peak of EVE Online’s paid popularity.
Maybe in my pursuit of the same topic over and over again for 18 years I have ended up in an internet backwater, no longer of interest to any sort of mainstream audience. Maybe it is merely MMO blogging that is dead.
Or maybe it is the written word, or the long form written word that has fallen out of favor… not that I would call what I do “long form” in a world where Stephen King exists. Magazines are dead, newspapers are dead, books are not dead but not as popular, and we like to get our daily doses of news and gossip in the short little squirts of social media.
Maybe it is the words… or the quantity of words? Maybe I would be more popular if I just kept to 140 or 280 or 500 or however many words are the limit of the modern attention span.
Should I eschew words and just do pictures? Take the ultimate path against the trend against reading?
No, that can’t be it. I literally have another blog that is just pictures and it isn’t even a tenth as popular as this, my bloviation platform. Though, then again, it is pictures from an MMO… a pretty, spaceship MMO, but an MMO all the same and those aren’t so popular any more as noted above.
Of course, the real question at the heart of this is not whether or not blogging is dead, but whether or not it matters.
I have said on a number of occasions that I would keep doing what I am doing, cranking out an excess of words on the trivial or obscure twists of fate and business in a niche sub-genre of the PC gaming market even if I had no readers.
I am not sure that is 100% true. Zero readers might be too much quiet. But I’ve kept going at the same pace… hell, an increased pace if words per post are any measure… even as readership has declined. For a brief peak period I could count on as many as 2,500 page views in a day on a regular basis. Now I’m happy if the number breaks 500, and I suspect that I would continue to cater to an audience that added up to just 100 page views a day, even if most of them were comment bots.
The writing isn’t the joy… the writing is work and I often stare at my drafts folder and say, “Nah, not ready to finish that one. That one is for another day… or maybe never.” Then suddenly something will come up and I will be inspired and I will crank out 500 or a thousand words in a quick burst of energy, a flurry of words and typos flooding the screen, and I will press the Publish button and off it will go, another post done.
And there is the pleasure, the having written. The ability to go back and filter through what happened a year ago, five years ago, and so on, the act of going back and reading something you wrote in a different era to see if or how your opinions have changed. Did I soften on this expansion or that release? Am I nostalgic for some title I panned? Maybe?
Sometimes I kind of want to go back and try Warhammer Online. Not enough to play the pirate server version of it, but I think about it sometimes. Was it really that bad? Did I miss something in it? Is the me of 2024 more or less likely to play something like that?
Probably less likely, in all honestly. My patience for the genre has constricted quite a bit.
And occasionally somebody else comes along and finds some old post of mine, some piece of history from the genre and gets a kick out of it or is reminded of some past venture. Just the other day Asher Elias, leader of the Imperium, was writing something up and said that he was happy to have found some written records of old Reavers operations somewhere on the web.
Preserving a small sliver of the player lore of New Eden is just part of the job.
And anyway, how can blogging be dead if all these people showed up for Blaugust? Look at them all! Here, in 2024, in an age where some people can’t string together three sentences on what they did over the weekend without injecting a meme or an emoji, 117 blogs made the list.
I mean, two of them are mine, and one of those is just pictures of internet spaceships, but still, that is quite a turn out for our little corner of the internet.
As always, if you can find the time, please visit some of our participants. We all like a page view or three when we can get them.
Google introduced the Pixel 9 series just last week, and if you’re anything like us, you rushed to get your pre-order in. The first of those orders are just about to start arriving, giving Pixel’s biggest fans their first hands-on look at this new hardware. And while there’s clearly a lot to like about the phones, we’re curious just how far that same enthusiasm will extend to Google’s latest packaging.
For years now, Google’s placed an emphasis on trying to be environmentally friendly when it comes to hardware. That’s involved a lot of recycled plastics, not just in devices themselves, but also for their accessories, like cases. That trend has continued when it comes to packaging, and if you’ve opened any Google products anytime recently, you know to expect a whole lot of cardboard, with minimal plastic.
With the Pixel 9, Google’s taking that approach to its next logical step, and the company shares that all its latest Pixel, Nest, and even Fitbit packaging involves no plastic, whatsoever.
If you’ve caught an early unboxing, though, you might already have some concerns. Rather than the sort of premium-feeling box we had on the Pixel 8, with a top that lifts straight off for a nice presentation, the Pixel 9’s colorful outside packaging slides off like a sleeve. Inside, there’s a much more utilitarian box, which strongly gives off “recycled” vibes.
Google probably hopes that shoppers see that, and understand that it’s communicating the company’s commitment to environmental concerns. But new Pixel 9 owners might also find themselves wondering if there might have been a way to hit those same zero-plastic targets, while also feeling a bit more like there’s something worth $800 (or more) within.
The company goes on to highlight some of the advancements in materials that have empowered it to deliver this packaging design, including new, extra-strong and durable paper for the exterior box, and a reformulated molded fiber pulp formula for the inserts that hold the actual gear.
What do you think about Google’s efforts here? Do you appreciate how it’s trying to be green? Or does this environmentalism feel a bit performative? Let us know in the comments.
Before countless leaks, we all expected Google’s next-gen foldable to be called the Pixel Fold 2. That would be a logical name for the successor to the Google Pixel Fold, after all. Instead, we already have a rebrand — the Pixel 9 Pro Fold aligns the new foldable with the broader Pixel 9 series. It’s a bit odd, though, least of all because it obscures which foldable generation Google is in. Maybe that’s the point?
There’s no clear-cut rule for naming products, of course. Samsung is content with an S and Z distinction between its classic and foldable phones. OPPO has the Find N series for its foldables compared to the traditional Find X flagship range. However, Motorola bundles all of its best phones under the Razr moniker, and HONOR’s Magic series accounts for all its flagships, foldable or not. Still, Google’s sudden about-face is harder to explain. Does it want us to believe the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is just a foldable version of the 9 Pro? Because it really isn’t.
Despite the name, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is not just a foldable version of the 9 Pro.
Perhaps the most exciting change to the range is that the compact Pixel 9 Pro and larger 9 Pro XL sport the very best smartphone technology Google has to offer. The Pro moniker designates feature parity, providing Google’s best performance, camera suite, storage options, build quality and protection, and all the other capabilities you’d expect from a premium flagship. However, that promise only applies to Google’s non-foldable phones.
The Fold dilutes this Pro tag. As is typical for foldables, you trade down water and dust resistance from an IP68 rating to IPX8, meaning no protection against dust ingress. If you’re a heavy media user, you can’t buy the Fold with more than 512GB storage (but at least it comes with 256GB minimum); only the non-foldable Pros come in a 1TB configuration. The 6.3-inch external display isn’t as good as the regular Pixel 9 Pro either; it has a lower resolution, lower peak and HDR brightness, and only drops from 120Hz to 60Hz rather than as low as 1Hz to save power on static content.
The Fold is slower to charge too; it’s capable of just 21W of power versus 27W on the Pro and 37W on the XL. The wireless charging situation is even worse. The Fold is capped at a bog standard 7.5W, far off the 21W available to the 8 Pro via the Pixel Stand (2nd gen) and even slower than the 15W Pixel Stand and 12W Qi charging available to the baseline Pixel 9. The Fold doesn’t support battery share either, so it can’t be used to power up your other flagging gadgets.
| Key Downgrades | Pixel 9 Pro | Pixel 9 Pro Fold |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | 256GB, 512GB |
| IP Rating | IP68 | IPX8 |
| Display (external) | 2,856 x 1,280 LTPO OLED 495 PPI Up to 2,000 nits HDR Up to 3,000 nits peak brightness 1-120Hz refresh rate | 2,424 x 1,080 OLED 422 PPI Up to 1,800 nits HDR Up to 2,700 nits peak brightness 60-120Hz refresh rate |
| Wired Charging | 27W | 21W |
| Wireless Charging | 21W - Pixel Stand (2nd gen) 12W - Qi | 7.5W |
| Battery Share | Yes | No |
| Rear cameras | Main 50 MP Octa PD ƒ/1.68 aperture 82° field of view 1/1.31" image sensor Ultrawide 48 MP Quad PD Autofocus ƒ/1.7 aperture 123° field of view 1/2.55" image sensor Telephoto 48 MP Quad PD ƒ/2.8 aperture 22° field of view 1/2.55" image sensor 5x optical zoom Super Res Zoom up to 30x | Main 48 MP Quad PD ƒ/1.7 aperture 82° field of view 1/2" image sensor Ultrawide 10.5 MP Dual PD Autofocus ƒ/2.2 aperture 127° field of view 1/3.4" image sensor Telephoto 10.8 MP Dual PD ƒ/3.1 aperture 23° field of view 1/3.2" image sensor 5x optical zoom Super Res Zoom up to 20x |
| Selfie camera | 42 MP Dual PD ƒ/2.2 aperture 103° field of view Autofocus | 10 MP Dual PD ƒ/2.2 aperture 87° field of view |
| 8K Video Boost | Yes | No |
| Ultrawide and Telephoto Video Boost | Yes | No |
| Cinematic Blur | Yes | No (only Pan) |
| Action Pan | Yes | No |
But perhaps the biggest offense is found in the camera department. Yes, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has a competent triple-camera array, but it’s not in the same league as the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL. The main, ultrawide, and telephoto sensors are all notably smaller in the Fold and offer inferior autofocus, meaning more noise in low-light environments and a greater reliance on Google’s admittedly excellent software to plug the gaps. While probably not noticeable in daylight, these differences are bound to show up in more difficult shooting situations and when using features like Astrophotography.
For a brand that prides itself on photography, the Fold has a lot of downgrades compared to Google's best.
The lower-resolution telephoto camera also can’t take 10x “optical quality” crops and only supports Super Res zoom out to 20x compared to 30x on the other two. That means inferior-looking snaps when zooming in at concerts or trying to snap distant wildlife. Likewise, the selfie camera is closer in resolution to the affordable Pixel 9 than the much-upgraded sensors in the Pro and XL, but it doesn’t list autofocus either, again hinting at weaker performance in difficult lighting.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Fold also doesn’t receive 8K cloud-based video upscaling, putting it in the same basket as the significantly cheaper Pixel 9. It can’t take full-res (48MP) photos, there’s no cinematic blur, no action pan. Ouch. For a brand that prides itself on media capture, the Fold has a lot of downgrades compared to Google’s best setup.
This isn’t to say the Fold is miles off the pace of the non-folding Pros. It still has the remainder of Google’s best software features and Pro camera controls. Plus, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold opens up a whole new world of multitasking and content viewing on that large inner display. It’s also improved over Google’s previous attempt, providing more years of support, a thinner frame, and a portrait-oriented inner display.
This is still a flagship foldable, but with an eyewatering $1,799 price tag and a new Pro moniker, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re buying the absolute best of everything that Google has to offer. However, looking past the rename, it’s clear that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold doesn’t match the rest of the 9 Pro series in every facet, particularly photography. That’s a letdown.
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