“Even with us finishing the game, we were faced with the reality that due to logistics beyond our control, we couldn’t launch The Last of Us Part II to our satisfaction,” Naughty Dog said in a statement. “We want to make sure everyone gets to play [it] around the same time, ensuring everything that we’re doing everything possible to preserve the best experience for everyone. This meant delaying the game until such a time where we can solve these logistic issues.”
It’s at least the second time the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Sony’s plans for The Last of Us Part II. The company pulled out of its showcase at Pax East, as which it was going to let players try a demo of the PS4 game for the first time.
It’s not the only game Sony put on ice today, as Iron Man VR is also on hold. Camouflaj’s PS VR title was supposed to arrive May 15th, but that’s no longer happening. “Logistically, the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve,” the company said regarding both games.
The mention comes alongside other known Amazon gaming efforts, including its Project Tempo game streaming service (potentially slipping into 2021 due to COVID-19) and plans to release its long-in-the-making original games Crucible and New World in May.
There’s no mystery behind plans for two-way Twitch games. They promise to keep viewers both engaged and interested enough to keep coming back, and might give Twitch an edge over rivals like Mixer and YouTube. And yes, this could also provide an opportunity to charge for the games themselves on top of channel subscriptions.
Amazon’s Blink is known for making affordable, easy-to-install cameras like the XT2. Its latest camera continues the trend. At $35, the Blink Mini is Blink’s most affordable product at the moment and a close competitor to devices like the Wyze Cam Pan. For that price, you get an indoor camera that can capture 1080p footage, detect motion and send alerts to your smartphone. With two-way audio, you can also use the device to talk to your pets and, in a worst-case scenario, intruders.
As you might expect, it pairs with Alexa, allowing you to watch both live and recorded footage, as well as arm and disarm the device using only your voice. Each Blink Mini also includes a free trial of the company’s cloud storage subscription through to the end of the year.
Bethesda’s Fallout 76 was met with a tepid response, but people are still playing it. More gamers will likely join the open-world multiplayer title when it comes to Steam on April 14th, along with the Wastelanders update. If you already bought Fallout 76 on Bethesda.net, the publisher’s own platform, you can claim a free copy of the Steam version for free, from now until April 12th. Both old and new players will also get a free Steam copy of Fallout Classic Collection — which features Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics — if you buy Fallout 76 between April 14th and April 28th.
It’s frustrating to have to buy multiple copies of a game, so this is a welcomed move on Bethesda’s part. Also, Fallout Classic Collection is a nice freebie. The early games in the series are drastically different — and more challenging — compared to the modern era of the franchise that started with Fallout 3. The updates that come with Wastelanders will hopefully add some gameplay improvements and new quests to keep existing Fallout 76 players interested.
Wednesday is usually New Comic Book Day but, with everyone on lockdown due to coronavirus, this week’s selection was a little light. The main distributor, Diamond, ceased shipments both to and from its warehouse — a seemingly logical move given that…
The budget agreement creates three classes of e-bikes: pedal-assist bikes that max out at 20 miles per hours, throttle-powered bikes that max out at 20 mph and throttled-powered bikes that max out at 25 miles per hour in cities of one million people or more. All classes, as well as e-scooters that max out at 15 miles per hour, are now legalized statewide. Though, municipalities can still apply additional regulations. For instance, scooter share programs are not permitted in Manhattan, so don’t expect to see Bird, Lime or Jump scooters there anytime soon.
As one example, the company’s Google News Initiative will increase its support for First Draft. The organization has helped journalists cover the pandemic by providing an online coronavirus resource hub, as well as training and crisis simulations. Part of the new funding will also go to fact-checking non-profits like Full Fact and Maldita.es. According to Google, those organizations will focus their efforts on European countries such as Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, where there have been some of the highest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases. They’ll “amplify experts, share trends and reduce the spread of harmful false information,” the company says.
Elsewhere, Google will work with Meedan, a journalism non-profit, and public health experts to develop a database to aid reporters. Notably, the company is also experimenting with how to best feature a dedicated fact check page in the COVID-19 section of Google News.
Besides Google, governments are also working to address the issue. In March, the UK government said it would provide £500,000 (approximately $623,000) to fight coronavirus-related misinformation, with some of that funding going to social media influencers. In both cases, the funding is unlikely to address the problem completely, but it could save lives.
We’ve also seen companies like Samsung and Sony announce efforts to help during the pandemic. Sony, for example, established a $100 million fund, with the money earmarked toward helping front-line medical staff, students learning from home and creatives hard hit by the virus.
Quibi short for “quick bites” is attempting to make short-form, mobile-only videos a thing. It’s enlisted celebrities and has a patent-pending technology called Turnstyle that lets you switch between portrait and landscape viewing modes — though there’s some debate over that. For most customers, the video service will cost $4.99 per month with ads and $7.99 per month without.
There are a few key details. For starters, videos will stream at just 480p. You’ll have to maintain a Magenta family plan with at least two lines, but you’ll only get Quibi on one screen per family. It also looks like T-Mobile customers will have to suffer through Quibi ads, as the deal is valued at $4.99 per month. If you’re still interested, this is a limited-time offer, so you’ll have to redeem it online by July 7th.
Full-motion video (FMV) games, or interactive movies, have been around ever since the CD enabled PC games to use more than a few floppy discs’ worth of data. Most histories mention Night Trap and Sewer Shark, both rescued from the failure of the VHS-based Control-Vision by Sega. Sadly, those two Mega-CD titles often drown out discussion of more interesting early PC titles, like 1994’s Tex Murphy: Under A Killing Moon. That game combined FMV, virtual environments and a point-and-click detective game in a way that worked surprisingly well.
These days, no discussion of FMV games can begin without the obligatory mention of Bandersnatch, the Black Mirror special broadcast on Netflix. The interactive movie wasn’t Netflix’s first attempt at branching video, but it’s certainly the highest-profile in recent years. In the gaming world, these games have always bubbled along, catering to a small audience of fans. An outfit associated with FMV games is Wales Interactive, which previously made Late Shift and The Bunker, and is now behind The Complex.
“After a major bio-weapon attack on London,” says the game’s blurb, “two scientists find themselves in a locked-down laboratory with time, and air, running out.” That’s actually a little bit of a misdirect, but I don’t know if that was intentional on the part of the studio or an error.
You play as Dr. Amy Tennant, a doctor who previously helped save lives during a civil war in a fictional Asian nation that probably isn’t Myanmar. After you learn you can’t save everyone, you now work as a nanotechnologist working on a miracle cure to save… everyone. But things in your perfect life go awry at the, uh, complex in which you work, and the nanotechnology you’re working on gets out.
For reasons I won’t go into to avoid spoilers, you’re locked in a bunker below the building in a race against time to escape alive. With enemies both inside and outside, can you prevent a pandemic, save a life and get out before the air runs out? Well, the game doesn’t really focus on those questions — and the idea of actually doing any medicine is quickly forgotten about. In fact, Dr. Tennant spends a lot of time standing around saying that she wants to save her patient, but never actually does anything that might help.
You wouldn’t call the story muddled, but it does make some interesting choices about how it sets up its tale. After all, with doctors racing to (ostensibly) save a person’s life, there’s a lot of time spent having video chats about how important it is to get working. But the broader backstory, focusing on the not-too-vast conspiracy that prompts the crisis, gets far more attention.
Like Bandersnatch, the PS4’s Until Dawn and its ilk, the game offers you a number of decisions that you’ll need to make under time pressure. Those decisions will apparently affect the outcome of the game, as well as your relationships with each of the main and incidental characters. Depending on how you play it, your friends will become foes and vice versa, or at least that’s the plan.
From my playthroughs, that doesn’t seem all that true. The story hit the same beats no matter what I did. In one run, I did everything I could to alienate a character and they were still prepared to sacrifice themselves for me by the end. You can check how much a character likes you at any point by hitting (in my case) the PS4’s touchpad. And whatever those metrics showed me, it didn’t seem to radically alter the outcome of the game.
This is the brick wall that a lot of FMV titles wind up running into: The limits of what the storytellers can produce. A number of decisions that I tried wound up directing me to the same destination to push the story along. Several of my choices were instantly overruled by other characters or became redundant as soon as I’d made them anyway. One example: there are two video clips on a USB drive you’re meant to choose between watching. Either way, another character will immediately cue up the other one straight after.
My initial playthrough took around 90 minutes, but subsequent ones (thankfully, you can press R1 to skip a clip you’ve already seen) cut it to 30. Playing it in this abbreviated state serves to highlight how few moments actually make a real difference to the plot. It doesn’t help that some of the endings take sharp left turns that make little sense with relation to the game you’ve been playing. Imagine Little Women, but with a John Woo-style gunfight tacked on the end for reasons.
The Complex does deserve praise for making the most out of its presumably limited budget. Whereas older FMV games couldn’t stretch to extravagances as chairs, this is very competently made. You’d not blink if you saw this going out as a weekday night drama on TV for the bulk of its runtime. It’s only towards the end, where digital effects are very obviously used in place of real ones as a cost-saving measure, do things get shakier.
And it’s hard to criticize the game’s acting and staging too much because the nature of an FMV game is for lots of awkward pauses and talking to camera. Sadly, the slightly stagey nature of those titles is a feature rather than a bug, and it’s a tough job to make it feel more natural.
Fundamentally, it’s a mostly entertaining way to spend $13, and an evening, but I doubt that you’ll feel too compelled to find all nine endings unless you’re a real obsessive.
Art Transfer is a new feature in the Google Arts & Culture app that lets you apply the characteristics of well-known paintings to your photos, from the bold swirls of Vincent van Gogh to the surreal brushstrokes of Frida Kahlo. It’s powered by an algorithmic model that doesn’t just blend images or overlay your photo, but instead produces a unique recreation of the image inspired by the specific art style chosen. And it all happens right on your device — no cloud involved.
To try it out, open the camera menu in the Google Arts & Culture app and choose “Art Transfer.” Take or select a picture, then scroll through dozens of masterpieces to choose the art style you want to use. You can even use the scissors icon to select which bits of the image you want to apply the style to.
Wednesday is usually New Comic Book Day but, with everyone on lockdown due to coronavirus, this week’s selection was a little light. The main distributor, Diamond, ceased shipments both to and from its warehouse — a seemingly logical move given that…