A Witch In Time

HIGH Fast action. Intense enemy design. Impressive visuals.

LOW Puzzles can be offputtingly difficult in single-player.

WTF There are challenge modes to make things harder???

Teagan wasn’t expecting to start her morning tied to a stake and being burnt as a witch. She certainly wasn’t expecting to be rescued by the spirit of a deceased witch and forced to run for her life without time to mourn her fallen brother, Edwin. 

Finding out that she is descended from a line of witches tasked with maintaining the flow of time and preventing the fall of mankind was almost too much to bear.  Now she must master her newfound powers, attempt to save Edwin by going back in time, and also defeat hordes of enemies under the thrall of the mysterious Dark Puppeteer. 

TimeMelters is a game that nearly defies genre classification. 

It’s partially an action title where players control Teagan from a third-person perspective as she navigates through a fantasy equivalent of the Scottish Highlands while battling foes with an array of magic bolts and life-draining powers. 

However, it’s also something of a strategy/tower defense hybrid.  Teagan gains the ability to go into spirit form, allowing her to fly above the map for a quasi-bird’s eye view to activate summoning and infusing powers while time slows to a crawl. 

Alas, the Dark Puppeteer’s forces are legion, and Teagan, while powerful, is a glass cannon. It takes only one enemy slipping through her defenses to kill her.  This is where TimeMelters debuts its game design coup-de-grace in the form of a third aspect — a time rewinding feature that grants the ability to reverse the flow of time and create copied echoes of herself. These echoes will repeat Teagan’s previous actions exactly, up until the moment that echo would have been killed. 

For instance, the player can move Teagan past a group of enemies the previous version of her has already have killed (tenses are hard when it comes to time travel!) allowing her to concentrate on other foes or achieve other objectives the first echo wasn’t able to. It’s even possible to further alter the timeline by using an echo to distract an enemy that the player can now ambush or lead in yet another direction towards a trap.  It’s astonishing to watch in action. 

I know how this sounds, but read it all again — it makes sense, even if it makes one’s head hurt — but the brilliance of this design cannot be understated.  Using time manipulations and copies of Teagan to defy the odds and solve puzzles that would otherwise be impossible made me feel like a genius. However, therein lies the rub.  I am not super-great at three-dimensional, multi-linear thinking, so this was a real challenge. 

Thankfully, handy markers display the numbers of enemies in a group and the route they are currently taking, which then help the player plan the best use of the limited mana and small number of clones Teagan has at her disposal. For instance, she can kill enemies closing in on her position to gain mana, then switch to spirit mode to scour the map for groups she can ambush so she doesn’t have to deal with them later.  While this all takes a little bit of getting used to, it becomes second nature far more quickly than I would have believed when I first started playing. 

…Then I discovered the co-op campaign. 

With a friend joining in via the Playstation Network, two people can take control of Teagan and her brother, traversing the many levels in TimeMelters‘ campaign, though with slight adjustments in the storyline, dialogue and mission structure. 

For instance, Edwin starts one mission at the opposite end of the map from Teagan, providing cover for an NPC who needs to be protected as he slowly meanders towards the mission goal — a task which Teagan had to coordinate on her own alone in the singleplayer version. 

Players share a mana pool and the rewind feature but they otherwise act independently, so planning and coordination are a must. However, this is offset by bringing double the firepower, which makes battles and puzzles much more manageable than in the single-player campaign.

Despite the fact that I was being pushed to creatively think and temporally strategize in ways that games have rarely asked me to, TimeMelters is a must play — especially for players who have someone to share the cognitive load with. 

Even at its most frustrating, the brilliance on display here is addictive. It would be goofy to say TimeMelters is the best action/strategy/time clone hybrid involving witches I’ve played all year, so let me broaden it a bit and say that it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year, bar none.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Autoexec Games.  It is currently available on PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Three hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. This game features witches using magical forces to kill both human and non-human enemies.  The protagonist absorbs the souls/spirits of dead opponents to power further magical attacks.  The game features heavy occult themes and not-for-kids moments like burning suspected witches at the stake as well as necromancy used as a secondary attack for the protagonist.  There is blood, but not excessive amounts, and most players have seen far worse in other games.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All story-based dialogue during cutscenes is fully subtitled. The majority of in-game dialog is fully subtitled, with occasional declarations by the main character(s) being voice-only.  These additional declarations do not cause the player to miss anything plot specific, but they do add flavor to the moment. I’d say the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Companies are often caught between wanting to cut emissions but also grow profits. But for airlines, these two different imperatives actually align. Cutting carbon emissions means burning less fuel and spending less money buying fuel. This is why Lufthansa has been copying a trick from the animal kingdom: applying a special film that mimics sharkskin to parts of its aircraft.

When it comes to decarbonization, reducing the emissions of air travel is both a high priority and something of a difficult task. Globally, air traffic accounts for about 2.5 percent of carbon emissions, but since those emissions are emitted at altitude, studies have found that the warming effect may be almost twice as large.

The problem is that it's extremely difficult to rival the volumetric energy density of jet fuel, which contains almost 50 times as many megajoules per liter than alternatives like hydrogen, ethanol, or lithium-ion batteries. That's less of a problem for ground or sea transportation, where weight and volume is less important, but it's a real stumbling block for switching jet airliners to a different fuel source.

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People do risky things at the Grand Canyon. Kenneth Field mapped the consequences: 1 national park, 900 deaths.

Inspired by the book, Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, Kenneth Field created a map that helps tell the stories of more than 900 casualties in Grand Canyon through 2018.

— Read the rest

The post Map of 900 deaths in the Grand Canyon appeared first on Boing Boing.

Before Mariupol, before Gaza, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden and the Blitz, there was Guernica. The little Basque town in northern Spain was once the byword for state cruelty following the 1937 bombing of Guernica during Spain's civil war—an unprecedented air attack on a populated city that shocked the global conscience and inspired Pablo Picasso's most famous work, Guernica.

An atrocity is a weird thing for a place to be famous for, but neither tourists nor locals seem very fazed. Guernica, the painting, is such an abstract depiction of civilian suffering that visitors have no problem posing in front of it. Guernica, the town, is a center of Basque culture. For Basques (who know it as Gernika), the violence that moved Picasso nearly a century ago is merely one chapter in a long history of resilience in their quest for freedom.

Predating the Roman Empire and even the Celtic civilization before it, people along the Bay of Biscay have spoken Basque, a language with no known living relatives. Empires have risen and fallen, but Basque Country has preserved its unique culture and laws. From medieval times onward, Spanish monarchs would swear to uphold Basque traditions under a sacred tree in Guernica.

"It is a republic; and one of the privileges [Basques] have most insisted on, is not to have a king," wrote American Founder John Adams in 1786. "Another was, that every new lord, at his accession, should come into the country 
in person, with one of his legs bare, and take an oath to preserve the privileges of the lordship."

More than a century of Spanish revolutions and crackdowns gradually eroded Basque autonomy. Then, in July 1936, the pro-fascist Gen. Francisco Franco launched a mutiny against the Third Spanish Republic. In a bid for Basque support, the besieged Republicans quickly restored self-government to the region. By April 1937, Guernica was the last pro-Republican community standing between Franco's forces and the major city of Bilbao. With German and Italian air support, Franco moved to take the town.

"Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders," reported British war correspondent George Steer a day after the first wave of bombers struck. "In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history."

"Guernica was not a military objective," Steer continued. "The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race."

Steer's report shocked Picasso, who had been commissioned by the Spanish Republic to make a display for the World's Fair in Paris. He abandoned his previous plans and painted Guernica within a few weeks. The artist's dramatic response to this tragedy—which was controversial at the time seeing as the World's Fair was meant to be a feel-good cultural exhibition—was showcased next to photos of dead children and propaganda films about Franco's cruelty.

What was once "unparalleled" too soon became routine. Following the raid on Guernica, the Imperial Japanese military launched a massive invasion of Shanghai. (A photo of a Chinese boy in the rubble, titled "Bloody Sunday," became another symbol of the brutality of air wars.) World War II saw air warfare escalate dramatically, culminating in hundreds of thousands killed in carpet bombing, firebombing, and atomic bombing.

Today, Guernica is a sleepy, peaceful town. Franco's death in 1975 marked Spain's return to a constitutional monarchy, restoring significant political autonomy to the Basque people. The Guernica town hall flies both a Spanish flag and a Basque flag while most other buildings don't bother with the Spanish one. A nearby gift shop sells Basque nationalist souvenirs—keychains with Basque crosses, fridge magnets with pastoral scenes—while Basque-language punk rock emanates from the speakers.

A replica of Guernica sits near the holy tree where the (now elected) leader of Basque Country once again takes the oath of office, and tourists flock to take photos next to the mural. What was once a jarring disruption to cultural tradition is now cultural tradition itself.

The post Guernica's Recovery From Ruin appeared first on Reason.com.

As anyone who has traveled by plane in the last decade can attest, one of the few—perhaps only—things that make modern commercial flying tolerable is a strong onboard libation. For those lucky enough to travel internationally, the booze is sometimes even free. But could this last vestige of mile-high sanity be snatched from us like a water bottle at an airport security checkpoint? 

Newly released research argues that it should be. The study, published in Thorax by researchers from the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Germany, concludes that in-flight alcohol can increase the risk of heart attack. While the topline conclusion sounds concerning and compelling, the research itself is less so. 

The researchers used a sampling of a mere 48 people between 18 and 40 years of age, half of whom slept in a sleep lab that mirrored normal on-ground conditions while the other half slept in a lab that simulated high-altitude cabin pressure. On the first night of the test, everyone was instructed to go to bed. On the second night, each group was given the assignment of drinking booze and then passing out. (How one qualifies to become a test subject for a study of this kind is unclear at the time of this writing). The researchers then monitored each group's heart rate and sleep patterns.

The results showed that those who consumed alcohol and slept in the high-altitude simulation experienced the most heightened heart rates and the lowest oxygen-blood levels while sleeping. The researchers conclude that those with existing cardiac and pulmonary conditions could be in danger—as well as those with sleep apnea and other respiratory ailments—but even healthy individuals were at risk.

"Even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases," the researchers state. "Our findings strongly suggest that the inflight consumption of alcoholic beverages should be restricted."

One might be tempted to brush this off as merely the work of a few teetotalers from across the pond, but as students of the temperance movement know well, prohibitionary brush fires can start with the smallest of sparks. In fact, the in-flight booze ban movement has already begun to catch on in America. 

During the COVID pandemic, reports of unruly and intoxicated airplane passengers getting into physical altercations with flight attendants led several airlines to suspend their on-board alcohol service entirely. Despite this built-in market reaction—after all, no airline wants to be the arena for a drunken brawl in the clouds—numerous federal lawmakers inevitably joined the booze ban chorus.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D–Ore.) called for a ban on to-go alcohol from airport bars in 2021 after he allegedly watched a fellow passenger order three shots of alcohol in a to-go cup from an airport bar and then board the plane. Sen. Ed Markey (D–Mass.), citing reports that anti-mask passengers were the ones creating the on-board ruckuses, went on record in support of banning the hard stuff at least temporarily.

The study claiming to show heart and other health risks will likely further embolden the no-alcohol-on-planes crowd. Lost in all of this is the reality that, as Rep. DeFazio's anecdote shows, many of the unruly passengers that caught media headlines involved those who were already intoxicated upon boarding the plane or brought their own alcohol on board.

Under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, it is already illegal for consumers to imbibe alcohol they bring onto a plane: "No person may drink any alcoholic beverage aboard an aircraft unless the certificate holder operating the aircraft has served that beverage to him." The rule goes on to state that airlines cannot permit already intoxicated passengers to board their planes or serve them more alcohol onboard. 

Therefore, a complete ban on in-flight alcohol would simply be another example of the government implementing more rules to address behavior that is largely already illegal. It also would clearly incentivize more passengers to sneak their own alcohol on board—something that already happened when airlines suspended alcohol service during the pandemic. It doesn't take a libertarian to understand that if you ban a legal product—like in-flight alcohol service—you will inevitably create a more robust black-market workaround. 

A better approach would be to allow airlines to continue selling and serving in-flight alcohol. Like servers at a bar, flight attendants can monitor how much alcohol each passenger has consumed, instead of supercharging an uncontrollable airborne BYOB free-for-all. As for potential health concerns, passengers should be empowered to make their own decisions based on knowing themselves best. Most people already do this in situations such as avoiding air travel after scuba diving or major surgery, and there is no reason they can't do the same in determining whether to drink before or during a flight.

Some clever travelers have pointed out that the above-mentioned FAA regulation merely says that a person cannot drink alcohol on an airplane unless it is served by airplane staff. This technically suggests that you can bring your own alcohol on board—as long as it's in a mini bottle—and simply ask your flight attendant to serve it. At least a few airlines appear to be open to this.  

Now might be the time to find one such airline, book a flight, and enjoy this Prohibition-era 12-Mile Limit cocktail in defiant—but technically still legal—protest:

Prohibition-Era 12-Mile Limit Cocktail

Ingredients:

• ½ oz rye whiskey
• ½ oz cognac
• ½ oz rum
• ½ oz grenadine (real grenadine, not red syrup)
• ½ oz lemon juice 
• Lemon wedges (for garnish)
• Ice

Instructions:

1. Obtain two mini bottles of liquor, each under the 3.4 oz TSA liquid carry-on limit.
2. Fill one mini bottle with ½ oz rye whiskey and ½ oz cognac, topped off with your favorite rum.
3. Fill the second mini bottle with ½ oz grenadine and ½ oz lemon juice. Store this bottle in the fridge until leaving for the airport.
4. Bring both mini bottles on board with you in your carry-on.
5. Ask your flight attendant to pour the contents of the liquor-filled bottle over a cup of ice.
6. Add the grenadine and lemon juice mixture to the cup.
7. Garnish with lemon wedges.
8. Stir with the provided plastic stirring stick.
9. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your cocktail (while you still can).

The post Oh God, What If Congress Bans Drinking on Airplanes? appeared first on Reason.com.

Animal Well is a game that communicates almost exclusively in riddles, even when it comes to its core gameplay mechanics. Take fast travel, for example. At the start of your journey, you might wonder if fast travel is even possible. You don’t even get a map until you’ve explored the opening sections of the game, so…

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With Assassin's Creed Shadows having just been announced, now seems like a good time to catch up on prior entries to the long running Ubisoft open world series. The only problem, though, is that almost everyone has a different opinion on which Assassin's Creed game is best. Some laud Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag for its pirate focus and naval combat while others recommend the grand adventure of Assassin's Creed Origins or the memorable characters of Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed 2, and their spin offs. Rather than try to narrow down which of these games to pick up, you can just grab a collection of all of them right now thanks to a Steam bundle that massively discounts the series.

There's a bridge in Japan that's so steep it's known as the Rollercoaster Bridge: the Eshima Ohashi bridge in Sakaiminato, which connects that city to nearby Matsue. Approaching the bridge from afar, it can appear nearly vertical to drivers.

If I were a passenger going up this bridge, I may have to shut my eyes until I reached the end of the incline.  — Read the rest

The post Would you drive up Japan's Rollercoaster Bridge? appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's a bridge in Japan that's so steep it's known as the Rollercoaster Bridge: the Eshima Ohashi bridge in Sakaiminato, which connects that city to nearby Matsue. Approaching the bridge from afar, it can appear nearly vertical to drivers.

If I were a passenger going up this bridge, I may have to shut my eyes until I reached the end of the incline.  — Read the rest

The post Would you drive up Japan's Rollercoaster Bridge? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Just when you thought air travel couldn't get any weirder, this video showing a passenger contorting herself into the overhead compartment before takeoff will prove you wrong.

According to witness Monique Guzman, fellow flyers on a Southwest flight from Albuquerque to Phoenix seemed unfazed by the bizarre sight of a woman cozying up amid the carry-on luggage. — Read the rest

The post Woman caught hiding in Southwest overhead bin before takeoff (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's a bridge in Japan that's so steep it's known as the Rollercoaster Bridge: the Eshima Ohashi bridge in Sakaiminato, which connects that city to nearby Matsue. Approaching the bridge from afar, it can appear nearly vertical to drivers.

If I were a passenger going up this bridge, I may have to shut my eyes until I reached the end of the incline.  — Read the rest

The post Would you drive up Japan's Rollercoaster Bridge? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Just when you thought air travel couldn't get any weirder, this video showing a passenger contorting herself into the overhead compartment before takeoff will prove you wrong.

According to witness Monique Guzman, fellow flyers on a Southwest flight from Albuquerque to Phoenix seemed unfazed by the bizarre sight of a woman cozying up amid the carry-on luggage. — Read the rest

The post Woman caught hiding in Southwest overhead bin before takeoff (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you upload a photo to GeoSpy, it will use AI and computer vision to try to determine the location where the photo was taken. I decided to test it out with a few photos from my personal library. Instead of using the original photos, I used screenshots to remove any geolocation metadata and to make the photos low-resolution, preventing the vision software from reading street signs or license plates. — Read the rest

The post I tested GeoSpy's photo location detection skills with my personal photos. Results: Wow! appeared first on Boing Boing.

A 30-year-old gentleman from England was ordered to pay United Airlines $20,638 for being an unruly passenger. He was also arrested.

The pricey incident occurred in March on a flight from London to Newark, when the lead flight attendant asked Alexander Michael Dominic MacDonald — who was "arguing loudly" with his girlfriend — to lower his voice. — Read the rest

The post Unruly passenger ordered to pay United Airlines $20,638 for acting like a jerk appeared first on Boing Boing.

The tire fell off, reports ABC 7 News out of San Francisco.

A tire fell off a United Airlines flight departing from San Francisco International Airport to Osaka, Japan Thursday morning, officials confirmed.

"At approximately 11:35 a.m., United Flight 35 departing to Osaka lost a portion of landing gear tire during takeoff," a United representative said.

— Read the rest

The post Tire falls off jet departing San Francisco, crushing vehicles in parking lot appeared first on Boing Boing.

Italian aviation officials blocked a British Airways flight from leaving Milan for London after a surprise inspection found some of the seat cushions were too thick and too wide. Seat cushions on exit rows over the wings are supposed to be smaller to create more room in case of an evacuation. The air crew called out serial numbers for the correct seats and had passengers see if any of the cushions on their seats matched those numbers. They were able to locate enough cushions to swap out for those over the exit rows, and the flight departed after a delay of an hour.

The post Brickbat: This One Is Just Right appeared first on Reason.com.

United Airlines received its first Airbus A321neo airplanes in December, and it has already had to ground them. But United wants you to know there were no safety issues—rather, it has to do with a 1990 Federal Aviation Administration rule requiring "No Smoking" signs to be operated by the flight crew, even though smoking on airplanes has been banned for decades. The A321neo has software that keeps the "No Smoking" sign turned on continuously during flights. In 2020, United got an exemption to that rule for all of its planes that keep the sign on continuously. But that exemption only applies to the aircraft it listed at the time. United has since applied for an exemption for the Airbus A321neo, and it says the FAA has agreed to let the airline fly those aircraft while it evaluates the application.

The post Brickbat: Grounded Already appeared first on Reason.com.