“Temporarily stopping LiveWire production allowed us to confirm that the non-standard condition identified on one motorcycle was a singular occurrence,” the company said in a statement. Harley-Davidson didn’t go on to detail what the exact issue with the one motorcycle was.
Additionally, the company says current LiveWire owners can start charging their motorcycles at home again. When news of the issue first came out, Harley-Davidson told customers to only charge their motorcycles at official dealerships.
The Federal Aviation Administration has granted Wing an expanded Air Carrier Certificate. It has permission to “allow multiple pilots to oversee multiple unmanned aircraft making commercial deliveries simultaneously to the general public.” UPS also received FAA certification for commercial deliveries this month, but it will stick to hospitals and medical campuses for now.
Folks in Christiansburg can order goods from Walgreens or Sugar Magnolia through the Wing app, and a drone will drop off their order to a pre-determined location in their yard or driveway. They can also opt in to have FedEx Express deliveries made by drone. The trial follows other Wing pilot projects in Australia and Finland.
The FAA confirmed receiving notice about the messages, noting that Boeing had discovered them “some months ago.” While it didn’t discuss the specific content of the messages, it said they were “concerning” and was reviewing the chats to decide what came next.
Boeing is in the midst of fixing the flaw, in part by requiring that the anti-stall system rely on both flight control computers for aircraft data instead of one. However, it’s still less than clear as to how the company got to that point. The messages may help fill in an important blank and help Boeing fix any institutional failings that may have let MCAS slip through the cracks.
Subscriptions work differently on iOS than other platforms on which Twitch is available. You’ll need to buy an iOS Sub Token through the app, which is good for a Tier 1 subscription for a month. You can redeem up to 12 at a time per streamer to keep a subscription to them going for a year.
The tokens cost a little more than desktop subscriptions to account for Apple’s App Store fees. They’re $5.99 instead of $4.99, but you can buy two for $8.99 until the end of the month. It doesn’t seem you can use Twitch Prime subscriptions through the iOS app either.
After years of remasters and ports, Okami is finally getting a sequel… well, maybe. Two veterans from the game who now work at Platinum Games, director Hideki Kamiya and Ikumi Nakamura (the star of Bethesda’s E3 presentation), have posted a video declaring that “Okami is going to be back” and that they “want to make” a sequel to it. This doesn’t mean Platinum is definitively making a sequel, but its alumini are clearly trying to get Capcom’s attention.
Netflix filed an opposition to the claim, and in a statement, the company said:
“This lawsuit was a frivolous legal stunt designed to censor creative expression. Steven Soderbergh’s film tells an important story about the exploitation of innocent people and the misuse of the world’s financial system. Fortunately, you can now watch The Laundromat — the film that Mossack and Fonesca tried to censor — on Netflix.”
The film, which stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas and David Schwimmer, follows a widow investigating insurance fraud and chasing leads to the Panama City law firm Mossack Fonseca. That firm was the center of the Panama Papers scandal, one of the largest hacks in history, which unveiled shady offshore financing by some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people.
We will have to wait to hear what the California court says, but in the meantime, you can now watch The Laundromat on Netflix.
Unlike the main entries in the series, which are tower defense games, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is more in line with Garden Warfare and its sequel. Teams of plants and zombies face off in battle across six multiplayer modes, but this isn’t a kid-friendly version of Fortnite; think more along the lines of Halo‘s team modes or even Team Fortress 2.
EA encouraged gamers to purchase and play Battle for Neighborville early last month for $30 as opposed to the standard $40 price. This Founders Edition allowed developer PopCap to “polish performance, listen to feedback and establish a more stable launch,” according to the game’s director, Rob Davidson. In other words, gamers got $10 off for participating in a beta test. For $50, fans can purchase the Deluxe Edition, which comes with extra outfits and emojis, plus a digital comic.
PopCap and EA are also working on Plants vs. Zombies 3, and similar to the Founders Edition of Battle for Neighborville, Android users can play a pre-alpha version of the game to test for bugs and gather feedback about the game’s combat. As this a very early, pre-alpha build of the game, we’re not expecting an official release until 2020.
Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is available today as a digital download for PS4, Xbox One and PC via Origin.
At the heart of the vehicle are two powertrains. A four-cylinder 2.0-liter or the punchy four-cylinder 2.3-liter. Both are turbocharged. The engines push out 250 horsepower and 280 foot-pounds of torque or 295 horsepower and 310 foot-pounds of torque respectively. For the money, most will be happy with the lower-power 2.0-liter engine. During my tests, that variant of the Corsair had no trouble charging up hills, onto the freeway and passing slower drivers. You can opt for the larger engine and Lincoln does offer a sporty “energize” mode in its vehicles, but I suspect most buyers will use that mode sparingly as the vehicle itself is really meant to be a cruiser than gunning for the SUV rockets coming out of Germany.
To that end, the interior of the Corsair is a roomy affair even though it’s the smallest vehicle in the automaker’s SUV lineup. The seats were a tad firmer than I like in a luxury vehicle, but I was comfortable during my time behind the wheel. That was probably helped by the ability to turn on the front-seat massage feature without it automatically turning off after a set amount of time. Typically after about 15-20 minutes, car seat massages come to an end. Not on the Corsair. It’s great.
The rest of the interior continues Lincoln’s pursuit of American elegance, with wood trim and nautical or aircraft themes. The Corsair isn’t as over the top as other Lincoln SUVs in this field. The center console control panel has a light aquatic feel, but that’s about it.
Above that console is the infotainment display, and, while it’s crisp and I noticed very little in the way of latency, it looks out of place with the rest of the vehicle. The fonts are too large and the navigation map is cluttered with information that could easily be consolidated. At least it has the information you need and the 8-inch standard touchscreen or 12.3-inch optional display support CarPlay and Android Auto (if you decided to go that route).
It’s unfortunate that the infotainment system is so boring because the dash cluster ahead of the driver is so cool. It features a minimalistic aesthetic and the animations between the drive modes is worthy of showing off to your friends.
Another “hey look at this” feature is using your phone as a key. Tesla and other automakers did this a while ago. But those automakers tend to appeal to a younger audience. Lincoln wants new (younger) blood behind the wheel of its vehicles. The automaker is clearly shooting for a younger demographic here. Yes, even grandparents have smartphones, but it’s their children and grandchildren that will use this feature. Plus, it’s also a great way to loan out the vehicle to friends and family members without giving them an actual key. Up to four virtual keys can be created for use with the companion app.
Having a semblance of peace of mind while your car is being driven by close friends and younger family members is important, and Lincoln has thrown in a bunch of safety features including automatic braking, lane-keep assist and cross-traffic alerts for backing up.
The advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) seems to have gotten a bit of an upgrade since the last Lincoln I drove. It’s better at centering the vehicle in the lane, and following and reacting to cut-ins seems to been finessed. I never had the Corsair jam on the accelerator to get up to speed or slam on the brakes when a vehicle cut in front of it. It’s a more civilized affair.
That’s the deal with the Lincoln lineup. Sure that can go faster in Excite mode, but frankly, they’re unabashed cruisers meant to appeal to folks that don’t necessarily want their SUV to also be a sports car. They want to sit back, turn on the massage seat and go about their day while looking good. The Corsair is the impressive-looking comfy chair of the road is that’s what you’re looking for.
Prior to his tenure at Oracle, Hurd was the CEO of HP between 2005 and 2010. While he was able to double the company’s stock, Hurd’s time at HP was ultimately marred by controversy. In August 2010, Hurd resigned over a sexual harassment investigation. Although HP found that he hadn’t broken the company’s sexual harassment policy, they did ask him to resign over improperly filed expense reports related to the investigation.
If you’re longtime Engadget reader, you’ll also know Hurd for his role in Palm’s demise. Prior to his departure, Hurd oversaw the company’s purchase of the mobile trailblazer for $1.2 billion. While hindsight is obviously 20-20, the relationship was rocky from the start. At one point, Hurd told investors HP “didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business,” and explained that it was instead more interested in the company’s IP, including webOS. At the time, Hurd said the company planned to use webOS in all of its internet-connected devices. Almost exactly one year after Hurd’s departure, his successor, Léo Apotheker, shut down the division. Notably, HP later sold the Palm trademark to a company owned by China’s TCL, which led to one of the most unusual phones to come out last year.
At Oracle, Hurd’s time seemed quieter. He started almost immediately with Oracle after leaving HP, probably thanks to his close relationship with then-CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle has lost a brilliant and beloved leader who personally touched the lives of so many of us during his decade at Oracle,” Ellison wrote today in his email to the company’s staff.
Sayonara Wild Hearts ticks all the hipster mores to ensure it’ll become a keystone title for Apple Arcade, even if it’s not an exclusive to iOS. As we collected our favorite games and thoughts on this new gaming service, I discovered I had played (and liked) more games than anyone else. By an uncomfortable margin. Still, I want to rave about Sayonara Wild Hearts.
Trying to distill the game down to a category, I’d call it a musical arcade racer where you’re either avoiding objects or shooting antagonist bosses. You play as the dreamed-up alter ego of a woman dealing with heartbreak, battling characters based on Tarot cards — all done to an incredibly electro-pop soundtrack that I’ve already downloaded from Apple Music.
Please don’t let that synopsis put you off, though. Behind the polish and cool is a short, satisfying game that begs for repeated plays. Your avatar will battle to restore balance in the cosmic universe and (eye-roll) her heart. She drives, parkours and flies around levels, each with a different song — some more memorable than others. SWH loves to subvert its arcade driving base, sometimes you’ll think you’re playing Rez, or cruising in an open-world game like GTA. Other times, you’ll be timing button presses to battle your rivals in sword combat.
Parallel Universes is my stand-out favorite. It’s a mid-game level where you battle twins that ‘click’ between realities, meaning you’ll have to balance a ride through two different levels, avoiding deadly fans and drops on the way. It’s hard, but satisfying. If you come undone by the same part of a level repeatedly, the cosmic voice of God or someone will ask if you want skip this tricky part. You really have nothing to lose by doing so. You can always replay the level once you’ve completed it. It’s a forgiving game that just wants to be played to the end. The grand finale, and the accompanying medley, is another masterstroke that hit me in the feels.
The game is short but (bitter)sweet, and you can probably finish the whole thing in 90 minutes or so. The touch based controls can occasionally frustrate, too, especially if you’re playing on an iPhone Max with a bigger screen. Some swipes will go unregistered and you won’t be able to swerve enough in time. But I didn’t care and you probably won’t either. It’s $13 on the Switch and PS4. Or you can pay $5 for just a month and play the whole thing. Apple Arcade could really be something that works.
Mini Motorways
There’s something about transport sims that has always appealed to me, but I find the more involved ones like Transport Tycoon or Cities Skylines (sorry, 90 percent of that game is traffic management) utterly overwhelming. Mini Metro, then, with its stripped down interface and mild difficulty curve, was a breath of fresh air. I’ve been a fan since its original PC release, and have since purchased it for iOS and Switch as well.
While Mini Metro begins with a pair of subway stations, Mini Motorways starts with a building and a home. You have to draw a road to connect the two, so the car belonging to the home’s residents can reach the building. Over time, more buildings and homes are added, with different colors, increasing the complexity of your road network. Where it differs from Metro is in its free-form nature — cars will always take the shortest path to their destination, and you’ll end up routing them in seemingly nonsensical ways. Not doing so inevitably leads to traffic jams, which will eventually be your downfall — while the game is quite lenient, if too many cars take too long to reach a building, it’s game over.
You’ll get extra tools to improve your road system along the way, namely traffic lights, which I haven’t made sense of yet, and highways, which are absolutely essential to bypass traffic black spots and keep things flowing. To a Brit living far away from the organized grids of many American cities, Mini Motorways is a shudderingly realistic transport simulator: The random nature of buildings popping up mimics how towns and our cities grew with no thought of how people would one day get around on wheels. Every game, you’ll inevitably end up with some terrible lack-of-planning to circumvent, like the one I’m playing right now, where a purple building just appeared. On the exact opposite end of the map from my only purple houses. With the only path to it being a bridge that’s always backed up. Joy.
Side note: It’s been literally five years since I used it last, but Mini Motorways reminded me that Game Center is a thing. I’ve had fun comparing my high scores to a few ex-colleagues from The Verge. Whether they’re aware of it or not, I will defeat them. AS
Aaron Souppouris Executive Editor
I am, I’m told, a whale. I spent way too much money (like, four figures) collecting characters in Nintendo’s free-to-play Fire Emblem Heroes game before coming to the extremely slow realization that I had a problem. That was my first real exposure to how people could want to loads of money on free-to-play games, but, thanks to the combination of having a teenaged son and the rise of Fortnite, it’s not been my last.
While my family’s Fortnite spend is largely under control thanks to the Battle Pass system, I’ve seen other free-to-play games get their hooks into my son multiple times. The most recent example is probably best told in two screenshots.
The first, from October 8th:
The second, from October 10th:
Cheers, Pewds.
Mobile free-to-play cash grabs are skewing the gaming industry and, at their worst, ruining lives. While games like Fortnite limit purchases to cosmetic items, in many mobile titles, micro-transactions are woven into the fabric of the game. They’re necessary to play for longer than a few minutes, or to let you avoid a task designed to be boring and repetitive. In multiplayer games they can unlock characters and items that are more powerful, meaning you likely need to pay to reach your goal.
There are many ways to fix these mechanics, such as instituting a cap where, once you’ve spent a certain amount of money on micro-transactions, you own the game and all of the content therein. The problem is that these morally bankrupt methods earn companies a lot of money. Nintendo is estimated to have booked $500 million in revenues from Fire Emblem Heroes within two years of the game’s release. For context, that’s likely double the amount of Fire Emblem: Awakening, Fates and Three Houses, the series’ three highest-selling games, combined.
Apple Arcade offers another solution: flood the market with high-quality games at a very low price. Developers are paid upfront to bring their games to Arcade, meaning they can turn a profit while making the games they want to make.
I was always going to subscribe to Apple Arcade — I actively seek out “pay once” games, especially since the Fire Emblem debacle. What I didn’t factor in was that a single Arcade subscription extends across your entire family. This means my son has dozens of titles to try instead of playing an endless stream of games designed solely to extract his (or, as is more frequently the case, my) money.
My only concern moving forward is one of sustainability. Apple has reportedly thrown $500 million at the project just to get it off the ground. While it has the profit margins to continue to do that indefinitely, Apple also has shareholders that, at some point, will start asking questions if Arcade doesn’t turn into a revenue stream. This isn’t an imminent issue — Apple will definitely continue pushing hard on this for months and years to come — but for Arcade and other similar services to have a chance at fixing mobile gaming, lots of people are going to have to subscribe.
Skate City
Alto’s Odyssey developer Snowman isn’t exactly the most punctual — it’s been almost three years since the company first announced Skate City. While it took much longer than planned for Snowman and Scandinavian design firm Agens to get the game out the door, it was worth the wait. Skate City manages to nail the essential skateboarding vibe of effortless cool through its visual design and music, and it’s also the classic “easy to learn, hard to master” game.
The learning curve is just right — it presents a host of different moves in a fashion that’s pretty simple to pick up. But if you want to master all 90 of the main challenges in the game, you’ll need precision, creativity, and a bit of luck. You’ll also need to play most of those challenges a bunch of times to get a three-star rating, but the game rarely feels overly frustrating or unfair.
Skate City is probably best on the iPad, where’s there’s more room to pull off tricks, but it works well on the iPhone, too. And playing with a controller on the Mac or Apple TV is great — basic tricks are quite easy, but there’s still enough complexity in chaining multiple moves together that it doesn’t feel too simplistic. It’s not as complicated as the delightful OlliOlli games for the PS4, but it’s far more involved than the Alto games. If you’ve ever enjoyed a skateboarding game in the past, Skate City is certainly worth a look. NI
Nathan Ingraham Deputy Managing Editor
There are a lot of things I’m enjoying about Apple Arcade so far, but one of the more unexpected delights is how many of these games work wherever I want to play. I don’t just mean that I can play on my phone any time I want, either. Apple and its developers’ commitment to making Arcade games work on the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV means that I can be assured of playing these games in basically any context that I choose, be it on my phone on the subway, on my couch with an iPad or on my Mac when I’m supposed to be getting work done.
Mini Motorways from Dinosaur Polo Club is one of the best examples of this. Not only can I play on any device I choose, I can also pick up sessions regardless of where I started them. There’s a “resume” option in the game’s main menu that shows all games you currently have going on all your iCloud-enabled devices, which makes it easy to continue a game I started on my Mac on my iPad.
Naturally, not every Arcade game is going to work as well on the Mac as it does on an iPhone or iPad, and vice versa. A game like Skate City was built with touch control in mind, and it also translates well to a game controller — but don’t try playing it with a keyboard, because it’s going to be ugly. Mini Motorways, on the other hand, might be best played with a mouse and large display, though it’s still quite playable on an iPhone. Some games aren’t available at all on the Mac just yet, though Apple has said the catalog will eventually be identical across all of its devices.
It sounds kind of basic when you spell it out, and plenty of games have had universal versions that work on both the iPhone and iPad, but $5 a month to get a wide swath of quality games is a solid deal — the fact that I can play them on any Apple device I have nearby is just a nice added bonus. Of course, it’s a boon for Apple, too, because anything that makes the Arcade easier to use means it’s more likely you’ll keep paying every month.
Where Cards Fall
Snowman actually launched two long-delayed games on Apple Arcade: Skate City, and the far more unconventional Where Cards Fall, which Snowman designed alongside The Game Band. Where Cards Fall mixes a totally unique puzzle mechanic with wordless but evocative scenes of the adolescent characters you guide through the game. It’s an odd combination, but building different houses of cards to guide your avatar through a colorful and detailed world is extremely satisfying. If you enjoyed Monument Valley and its mysterious, impossible architecture puzzles, Where Cards Fall evokes a similar mood.
Like Skate City, Where Cards Fall works just fine on an iPhone but really sings on an iPad’s larger display. There’s a lot of detail in this world to see, and moving and adjusting various houses of cards is a lot easier with more screen real estate. But overall it’s a great pick up and play wherever you are, regardless of what device you’re using. There are tons of stages, and it works equally well if you want to just play a few puzzles while on the subway or dig in for an hour or two. NI
Nicole Lee Senior Editor
I’m what you might call a hardcore casual gamer. I’m not into titles like Call of Duty or Fallout 4, but I really love fun little puzzle games, especially the kind that I can play on my phone, like Two Dots and Dr. Mario. Unfortunately, most modern mobile games are in the “free-to-play” category. They’re free to download, but advancing through the game often means coughing up real-life money for in-game currency, which you can then use to buy upgrades. No, you don’t need to buy them, but I often feel pressured to do so all the same.
On the other end of the spectrum are paid titles like Monument Valley and Old Man’s Journey, which don’t quite have as many levels, but have a deeper storytellingcomponent. I absolutely adore these sorts of games, but I go through them so quickly — often finishing the entire game in just an hour — that they leave me wanting more.
Apple Arcade, however, presents me with a very compelling alternative. For just $5 a month, I have unlimited access to quality mobile games, many of which are as beautifully compelling as the aforementioned paid titles. And, of course, they don’t have the trap of in-app purchases that free-to-play titles do. At last, I thought, this was the happy medium; the Goldlilocks of mobile gaming.
When I finally had access to Apple Arcade, I went ahead and downloaded the first puzzle game that looked interesting to me. It’s called Possessions by Lucid Labs and it’s touted as “a zen puzzle about perspective and life.” In it, you’re tasked with placing objects in a room by rotating the space around and changing your perspective. So, in one angle, it seems like a lamp is floating in mid-air. But if I rotate the scene appropriately, the lamp will “fit” into place next to the couch, and will no longer look like it’s floating.
In the beginning, you only have to fit in three or four objects. In later levels, you have to fit even more. As you advance, the tasks get progressively more difficult — in one scene, for example, you have to “assemble” a broken-up bicycle before it can be put in its place. All the while, I was impressed with the beautiful 3D illustrations along with the serene, blissful audio. As an option, you can also solve the puzzles using AR — instead of just swiping at the screen, you’d physically move around the room to place the objects. As I usually play the game while sitting in the train where this is obviously not a good idea, I have not tried this mode out, but I think it’s an interesting idea.
What I find especially intriguing is that, as I play through the levels of decorating this home, the game takes me through the ups and downs of the family that’s living in it. At first, it seems that it is just a single person living there. But soon he finds a partner, and then they settle down. The house slowly goes from one with a minimalist aesthetic to one that’s filled with children’s toys. It gets harder to figure out what goes where. There’s no dialog or description text at all, but I could still tell through playing this game that this person’s life was getting more complicated — perhaps a little too complicated.
I haven’t finished Possessions just yet, but already I’m excited to play more. Not just to finish the puzzles, but also to find out what’s next in the game’s storyline. Will it end happily ever after? I guess I’ll just have to pay another $5 this month to find out.
Images: Apple (Arcade devices); Annapurna Interactive (Sayonara Wild Hearts); Snowman (Skate City, Where Cards Fall); Dinosaur Polo Club (Mini Motorways); Lucid Labs (Posessions)
