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Wednesday, January 25, 2023
'GoldenEye 007' will hit Switch and Xbox on January 27th
One of the best-loved Nintendo 64 games is coming to Switch Online's Expansion Pack this week. Back in September, Nintendo revealed that GoldenEye 007 was coming to the service and now that day is almost upon us. You'll be able to start playing the game on your Nintendo Switch starting on January 27th. The game will be available on Xbox on the same date.
It's unusual to see a licensed game arrive on Nintendo's subscription service, but GoldenEye 007 is one that many fans have been looking forward to replaying (or even playing for the first time). It remains to be seen how well Rare's classic first-person shooter will hold up almost 26 years after it debuted on the N64. Hopefully, Rare has improved the janky controls and awful framerate from the original game.
There are some new additions to the Switch Online version, though, including a widescreen mode and online multiplayer. So, you won't necessarily need to cram around the same TV to take on your friends in a "slappers only" deathmatch.
Rare is also bringing a "recreated" version of GoldenEye 007 to Xbox consoles this Friday with dual analogue stick support, 4K resolution and "a consistent refresh rate." Oddly, there's no online multiplayer on the Xbox version, though there's still four-player splitscreen support. You'll be able to access it through Xbox Game Pass. Owners of the Rare Replay collection can download GoldenEye 007 to their Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S at no extra cost.
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Acura will sell its EVs exclusively online starting in 2024
Honda has big plans for the new year and electrification will play a huge part of that, the company's recently-promoted SVP of Sales, Mamadou Diallo, told reporters on Tuesday. Expect to see a lot more Honda and Acura hybrids on the road this year, ahead of a major EV push come 2024.
Overall, Honda is officially aiming to move 1.2 million units in 2023, with Acura shooting for 160,000 units, a 20 - 25 percent increase over what they sold in 2022. And although the company managed to maintain a single-digit days' supply of vehicles throughout last year, it enters 2023 with a glut of cars and trucks and a 17-day supply. As such, dealers are going to be looking to move a lot of that inventory before this year's models start arriving so fingers crossed, we could potentially see some Tesla-level price cuts in the near future.
"In 2023, we will see the strategies we've been talking about, including growing sales of light truck models, increasing volume of hybrid-electric models and the start of digital sales at Acura," Diallo said in a Wednesday press release. "All this leads toward our vision of 100-percent electrified sales by 2040 to fulfill our ultimately goal of zero emissions by 2050."
The ZDX and ZDX Type S will be Acura's first full-EV offerings and serve as the harbingers of the company's new, exclusively online EV sales strategy. Diallo didn't have much additional information regarding how the system would work — such as whether haggling was allowed or how individual vehicle prices would be set — but assured the assembled journalists, "as we get closer to [the ZDX debut], we certainly will be discussing this a little bit more with our dealer body and the press in general. For right now we're still finalizing all those details." Acura joins Ford, Volvo, GM and VW in shifting its electrified vehicle sales to the digital marketplace.
For its part, Honda is planning a significant increase in its hybrid vehicle production in 2023, starting with the newly-redesigned Accord and Accord Hybrid (they'll also be Honda's first with Google Built-In). The company "will continue to increase hybrid sales through core models as an important step in bridging customers to full electrified vehicles while reducing GHG emissions," the Wednesday release reads. Honda anticipates a solid half of this year's CR-V and Accord sales to be of the hybrid variety and its efforts bolstered in 2024 with the introduction of a new Civic hybrid. Sales for the all-electric Prologue begin this year with deliveries set for 2024.
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TMNT: The Last Ronin's Ben Bishop Talks Designing Turtles for The Lost Years
Today sees the launch of TMNT: The Last Ronin - The Lost Years, a new anthology series looking back at the past and to the future of IDW’s beloved apocalyptic Ninja Turtles offshoot. But it’s not just a return for these beleaguered iterations of the turtles, but for Last Ronin artist Ben Bishop—and the continuation of…
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Microsoft 365 Services, Including Outlook and Teams, Are Down Around the World
It’s not just you. Microsoft 365 services, including popular apps like Outlook and Teams, are down in countries throughout the world. Microsoft is aware of the problem and has rolled out fixes to address it.
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The Morning After: Ticketmaster wants Congress to fix its bot problem
In November, millions of Taylor Swift fans logged on to Ticketmaster to grab tickets for her 2023 tour. However, the site crashed, rendering verified users unable to purchase. Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, explained that while 1.5 million people had signed up as legit customers, over 14 million hit the site when tickets went on sale – many of which were bots.
Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the company "learned valuable lessons" from the Swift debacle. Three senators shoehorned in Taylor Swift quotes into their statements and questions – which I loved.
Berchtold called for Congress to expand the BOTS Act to "increase enforcement." Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal reminded Berchtold there are already legal options for going after scalpers using bots to procure tickets. "You have unlimited power to go to court," Blumenthal said. "Your approach seems to be that everyone else is responsible here."
– Mat Smith
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NASA and DARPA will test nuclear engines for crewed missions to Mars
The agencies hope to demonstrate the tech as soon as 2027.
NASA
NASA is teaming up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, to use the technology for crewed missions to the red planet. The agencies hope to "demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. "With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars." There are, of course, risks involved with NTP engines, such as the possible dispersal of radioactive material in the environment should a failure occur in the atmosphere or orbit. Nevertheless, NASA says the faster transit times NTP engines can enable could lower the risk to astronauts – they could reduce travel times to Mars by up to a quarter. Nuclear thermal rockets could be at least three times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion methods.
Amazon's RxPass offers Prime members generic medications for $5 a month
It has medications for 80 common health conditions.
Amazon has launched a new subscription service for customers in the US to get as many eligible medications as they need for $5 a month. The new service, called RxPass, is part of the e-commerce giant's Pharmacy business, which launched in 2020 as a two-day prescription drug delivery for Prime users. That makes RxPass a $5 add-on for Prime, which sets users back $139 a year or $15 a month in the US. Customers will need to pay $5 out of pocket, since the service does not take insurance, like Amazon Pharmacy does, for purchases outside of the program. People enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and any other government healthcare program will not be able to sign up for RxPass, either.
‘Forspoken’ review: A magical world with several cracks
Fluid battles, uneven plot.
Square Enix
In Forspoken, you control the agile, angry Frey, slinging elemental attacks (and f-bombs) at multiple monsters before leaping off a cliff face and swinging from a molten outcrop. You keep moving, through the lands of Athia, through the adventure, because it's enjoyable and satisfying, but also because when you slow down, you start to see the cracks. Delayed twice, while the fighting system is generally solid, Forspoken has a lot of sub-quest padding, and most of it's pretty dull.
WhatsApp's native Mac app beta is now available to all
It's optimized to run fast and efficiently on Mac hardware.
Mac users now have a native version of WhatsApp. The new app is optimized for Mac hardware and built with Mac Catalyst, so it should be faster and more efficient than the current web-wrapped Electron version. You also get a new interface with three panels to easily flip between chats, calls, archived and starred messages, while seeing contacts and interactions at a glance.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Forspoken review: A magical world with several cracks
In Forspoken, you control the agile, angry Frey (voiced by Ella Balinska), slinging elemental attacks (and f-bombs) at multiple monsters before leaping off a cliff face and swinging from a molten outcrop. You keep moving, through the lands of Athia, through the adventure, because it’s really fun and satisfying, but also because when you slow down, you start to see the cracks.
Running on Square Enix’s in-house Luminous Engine (the team that made the game is a newly-formed group called Luminous Productions), Forspoken gives some beautiful moments of magical pyrotechnics, but it’s not quite up to the consistent environmental beauty (and attention to detail) of games like Horizon Forbidden West or Returnal. Still, most of the elemental effects, Frey’s movements and a lot of the world of Athia is beautifully realized.
The matriarchs that control the world, the Tantas, are fearsome, with a fascinating array of spells, lots of intrigue and a great wardrobe. Fighting, talking to and learning about the four leaders and their fall from grace are some of the highlights of Forspoken. Luminous Productions even said that the Tantas were a “labor of love” for the team, and that’s apparent.
Take Tanta Prav, the water-wielding Tanta of judgment (they all have a handy job title to explain how they’ll probably rough you up): She is delightfully unhinged and argues with herself. Surrounded by her own watery creations, she’s judge, jury and executioner – except there’s no one left to judge. Until Frey kills one of her fellow Tantas.
Square Enix
Pretty soon after, she’s raving in Frey’s face and you immediately understand that you will have to stop her. The broader story has peaks and troughs, but most of the great moments and set-pieces across the middle-end of the game involve the Tantas’ machinations. Try sneaking (or just rushing) into the castle of the Tanta of Strength, with ballistas firing gobs of fire at you and minions surrounding you even as you dodge the hellfire. Later on, another Tanta pulls you ‘back’ into New York, and the environment playfully teases that all is not what it seems.
Square Enix
While most of the elemental effects, Frey’s movements and a lot of the desolate world of Athia is beautifully realized, other parts aren’t. The only populated region of the game, Cipal, is so underwhelming, relative to the antagonists and their fortresses. Take Auden, Frey’s first friend in Cipal, a city that’s the final bastion of humanity in Athia. She often interacts with Frey in the first and final few chapters of Forspoken – arguably she has more screen time than all but one of the Tantas. She’s also one of the main sources of information about Athia, why the Tantas are now unhinged despots and well, just how bleak everything is. End of the world aside, why does she look such a mess? Similarly, Tanta Cinta, who’s pivotal to the plot, seemed to be modeled by whoever did the dirty to poor Auden.
This isn’t just a graphical problem either. It’s obvious where less effort’s been made. Open-world games with low-quality side quests (or game filler) are a regular occurrence – I’ve given up in the middle of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla – but the majority of tasks in Forspoken are just too dull and unrewarding. I’m still chipping away at the game so if there are some pleasant surprises I will update this. But so far, it’s not looking good.
Following the primary story beats, while the magical parkour skills make dashing across land an effortless, speedy affair – and definitely faster than horses – there’s not a lot of impetus to explore too much. One of the major landmarks are giant bird cages indicating locked labyrinths. But so far as I’ve explored, they are simplistic junctions of monsters and corridors, with a sub-boss beastie at the end. Other sidequests – lots of them – are just like the fetch quests of Assassin’s Creed, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man and well, so many open-world games of the last 10 years.
Do you enjoy chasing things for collectibles? Welcome to the cat-chasing sidequests. How about doing it without your speedy magical parkour skills? Because that’s the reality– even when Frey is eventually accepted into the city, you’ll never get to dash across the city of Cipal, and leap up its walls. That means after you’ve traded with collectors, you will have to sprint like a normal human to the tavern. (Weirdly, the sprint button and the magical parkour button are not the same buttons, either.) The good thing is there’s not much to keep you in this town. Even if it’s the only populated area in the game, it’s the least interesting. Take the tavern: During celebrations, you will get to experience the most inconsequential, pointless, real-time event dance-off. The button presses and timings have little or nothing to do with the jigs and the moves. Thankfully, it seemed to be a one-off.
Forspoken may offer an open world, but you won’t be able to confront the Tantas outside of the order the plot demands. Don’t worry, the sassy bangle Cuff is around to offer a bit of banter between story beats. It’s a weird relationship between Cuff and Frey: They both seem to dislike each other, but not in an endearing way. Frey may be able to traverse, well, pretty much everything with amazing ease, but despite Square Enix pulling in TV writing talent for Forspoken, there isn’t much depth or even much of a character arc to enjoy. Many major plot points are shoehorned in the final third of the game, and Frey’s sudden mood shifts never seem all that believable.
Outside of the main campaign, Forspoken offers plenty of opportunities for exploration, but the rewards don’t feel worth the time. When I unlocked a new cloak or accessory, they’d typically be specced way below my current equipment. I’d have to go for another magical 5K run to collect herbs and other materials to upgrade things to a decent level.
The sheer breadth of magical attacks meant I eventually fell into a pattern of using my favorites – until I picked up yet another tree of spells from another fallen Tanta. (It’s a shame you don’t get access to the final set of spells until just before the closing chapters of the game.)
The battles, when the skills come together and the camera and lock-on mechanism is consistent, are a delight. You shift between support spells, summoning two lava soldiers while raining down water attacks, throwing a reality-shifting charm over a few other enemies so they start tearing each other apart. You line up multiple enemies and cast your super-spell, sending a carpet of poisoned earth spikes across the battlefield.
Coming across a particularly difficult foe, usually glowing enemies classified as mutants, often meant waiting to unlock a family of elemental attacks that were more effective. Or, simply, a matter of mopping them up on your way back from another part of the map once stronger. The rewards for beating these often never seemed worth the effort of a challenging battle (or remembering to circle back to that location).
At other times, an invisible enemy would slam into me from behind the camera. The worst fight was during one of the later boss battles with an electric bird beast. It will circle above a city, seemingly forever. Steering Frey, I struggled to land even the most straightforward long-distance attacks. I even made myself dizzy. As the camera continued to swing around and around and around. What should have been a slick showcase for Frey’s agility and parkour talents turned into a war of attrition with bonus motion sickness.
My quests and exploration would regularly be interrupted by breakstorms. These usually random blue-hued storms send a barrage of monsters at you – monsters that wouldn’t drop loot, sadly. At other times, breakstorms end if you killed the monsters in specific areas – or if you bested the super bosses that breakstorms would often spawn. Still working on that challenge, myself.
A lot of the lore and worldbuilding is rooted in text snippets you’ll pick up in dungeons or rest spots – I wish more was communicated through the characters. Without spoiling things, there are other ‘twists’ that come across as cheap shortcuts, escaping the need for another lavish boss battle.
The core story will take between 30 and 40 hours, with some diversions. You can explore a handful of new areas post-game, but nothing so far is particularly captivating. I’m avoiding spoilers again, but a wrinkle at the very end of the post-game leads to a very lazy solution for the conclusions of the story, to ensure Frey can still live her best magical life after the credits roll.
Forspoken, running on a PS5, is smooth enough, but it will still buckle under a wave of enemies and enough magical pyrotechnics. Cranking up the graphical fidelity with either ray tracing or 4K makes for a very choppy kind of a game, especially during frenetic battles.
Like me before the final chapter, Forspoken doesn’t feel quite ready. Originally meant to launch in May 2022, this game’s already been pushed back a good nine months. Could it have done with a little longer? The main story is intriguing but too short, and the open-world distractions aren’t distracting enough. At one point, opening a pretty simplistic puzzle treasure chest – there are lots of them – Frey exclaims “Boring!”. Same, Frey, same.
Fortunately, the battle system is solid and fun, offering enough for gamers looking for an adventure, and hard mode is suitably hard enough to stretch anyone looking for a proper challenge. Frey references Alice in Wonderland several times, but after 30 hours the wonder had unfortunately dried up. If you enjoy the combat, however, and there’s a demo to try out, you might forgive the dullness, and be willing to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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Everything Everywhere Got (Nearly) Every Oscar Nomination
The 95th Academy Award nominations are here, and while there aren’t any big surprises, Michelle Yeoh and Everything Everywhere All at Once continued to receive their justly deserved due.
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Microsoft Cuts VR Staff and Leaves Questions About Its Metaverse Ambitions
After the dust cleared from Microsoft making moves to lay off over 10,000 employees—5% of its global workforce—it’s become apparent Microsoft isn’t merely taking a different tact on its virtual reality and mixed reality designs, it’s curtailing several of the major teams supposed to plant their virtual flag in the…
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Watch Live: NASA and DARPA Discuss New Advanced Propulsion Tech
Two of the most forward-thinking agencies in the United States are joining forces to foster the development of advanced space propulsion. A fireside chat on the new collaboration is scheduled for Tuesday morning, and you can watch it live right here.
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WhatsApp's native Mac app beta is now available to all
Mac users who have been waiting for a native version of WhatsApp can now download it without restrictions, WaBetaInfo has reported. The new app is optimized for Mac hardware and built with Mac Catalyst, so it should be faster and more efficient than the current web-wrapped Electron version. You also get a new interface with three panels to easily flip between chats, calls, archived and starred messages, while seeing contacts and interactions at a glance.
Apple's Catalyst was designed to allow developers to port iOS apps over to macOS or create just one version that can run on either platform. Since the Mac was developed on Catalyst, that lends some hope that a long-awaited version may also come to iOS. In 2021, Meta said that it was expanding multi-device support for WhatsApp, leading to speculation that an iPad app was forthcoming.
Last year, WhatsApp released a native version for Windows 10 that works without the need for a smartphone. It looks much the same as the Mac app and also offers increased reliability and speed.
The native macOS app has been around for several months on TestFlight, but that only offers limited slots for testers. Now that it's in a full beta, though, you can download it directly from WhatsApp's website.
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Everything We Know About OpenAI's ChatGPT
Amazon's RxPass offers Prime members generic medications for $5 a month
Amazon has launched a new subscription service that will let customers in the US get as many eligible medications as they need for $5 a month. The new service called RxPass is part of the e-commerce giant's Pharmacy business that originally launched in 2020 as a two-day prescription drug delivery offering for Prime users. That makes RxPass a $5 add-on for Prime, which sets users back $139 a year or $15 a month in the US.
While it doesn't look quite as affordable bundled with Prime pricing, the RxPass program does offer medications for 80 common health conditions, including high blood pressure, acid reflux, anemia and even depression, diabetes, breast cancer and dementia. At the moment, it has 60 generic medications in its list — all of which require a valid prescription — and subscribers can choose to have them delivered for free either on a monthly or a quarterly basis.
Take note that customers will need to pay $5 out of pocket, since the service does not take insurance like Amazon Pharmacy does for purchases outside of the program. People who are enrolled to Medicare, Medicaid and any other government healthcare program will not be able to sign up for RxPass, as well, though they can still use their government insurance when purchasing medicine from Pharmacy.
For people with multiple conditions paying a lot more than $5 a month for their medications out of pocket, RxPass could be worth trying out, especially if they already have Prime. Those interested may want to take a look at the service's full medication list first to see if it does offer what they need before heading to the Pharmacy website or the Amazon app to sign up.
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Monday, January 23, 2023
Microsoft to stop selling Windows 10 downloads as part of planned 2025 shutdown
As part of an effort to wind down support of Windows 10 Home and Pro, Microsoft is stopping sales of downloads on January 31st, according to a product page spotted by The Verge. That date "will be the last day this Windows 10 download [and all-important license keys] are offered for sale," according to Microsoft. However, it will continue to support Windows 10 with security updates until it's discontinued for good in October 2025.
"Customers have until January 31, 2023 to purchase Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro from this site," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge, while advising customers to purchase Windows 11 instead. However, Windows 10 may still be offered elsewhere from other retailers and OEMs, until Microsoft confirms otherwise.
Windows 10 was first launched in 2015, and so will be discontinued exactly 10 years later. The company announced the end date in June of 2021 as part of its "modern lifecycle policy," just prior to the launch of Windows 11. The OS received generally good reviews and met with success when it arrived — in part because it replaced Windows 8, which wasn't, er, as warmly received.
Meanwhile, Windows 11 launched to decent acclaim, with applause for the polish and boos for the weird upgrade restrictions. The minimum system requirements were relaxed soon after launch, but migration from Windows 10 has still been slow, according to recent reports.
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Did Anyone Call for a Web Slinger or Egg Dropper in This Week's Toy News?
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular roundup of all the coolest nerdy toy news—now on Mondays! This week, we’re taking a look at Michelle Yeoh’s plastic Transformers debut. Also, the perfect collector action figure comes with a Toy Story twist, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’s coolest rides get very tiny.
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Sunday, January 22, 2023
SNL's M3GAN Sequel Aims the Killer Doll Directly at the Gays
The success of Universal and Blumhouse’s M3GAN during the month can be attributed to a few factors, but it definitely resonated with queer audiences. Maybe it was because of her hair, the way she always looks like she’s throwing shade, or maybe just that she’s doing murders: call it what you want, she found that niche.
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Zero-emission vehicles made up nearly 19 percent of car sales in California last year
Electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell vehicles accounted for 18.8 percent of all new car sales in California this past year, according to data shared on Friday by the state’s Energy Commission (CEC). In 2022, California residents bought 345,818 zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), a 38 percent increase from a year ago and a 138 percent jump compared to 2020. In what should come as no surprise, Tesla vehicles made up most of the ZEVs people in California bought last year. About two-thirds of the 345,000 ZEVs sold in the state in 2022 were made by the automaker, per France’s AFP News Agency.
With EVs and other zero-emission vehicles making up nearly one-fifth of new car sales in California, the state still has some work to do on the adoption front. In Norway, for instance, electric vehicles made up 65 percent of new car sales in 2021 and 79.3 percent in 2022. That said, the country’s largest car market did some heavy lifting relative to the rest of the US. The CEC says 40 percent of all ZEVs sold in the US were sold in California. It’s also worth taking a moment to point to the scale of the California car market. When EVs made up 65 percent of new car sales in Norway, the country’s dealerships sold 113,715 EVs. That’s about a third of the number of zero-emission vehicles sold in California last year.
In any case, EV adoption in California is likely to increase significantly over the next few years. Ahead of the state’s 2035 ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered cars, the CEC announced last month it would spend about $2.6 billion to build 90,000 new chargers across the state. The California Air Resources Board set aside another $2.6 billion to incentivize consumers and companies to switch to electric vehicles.
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Nier Automata's Anime Adaptation Put On Ice Due to Covid
At the start of the month, A-1 Pictures premiered Nier Automata Version 1.1a, an animated adaptation of the popular action-RPG. Only a handful of episodes have come out, and now that’ll be all viewers have for the foreseeable future, as the series is taking a little hiatus.
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Riot Games may delay ‘League of Legends’ patch following cybersecurity breach
Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends and Valorant, says a recent security breach may affect its short-term content release schedule. In a tweet spotted by BleepingComputer, Riot disclosed on Friday its development systems were compromised in a social engineering attack that occured earlier in the week.
“We don’t have all the answers right now, but we wanted to communicate early and let you know there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained,” Riot said. “Unfortunately, this has temporarily affected our ability to release content. While our teams are working hard on a fix, we expect this to impact our upcoming patch cadence across multiple games.”
Heads up, players. This may impact our delivery date for Patch 13.2. The League team is working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still. https://t.co/DJ8qAKSdQi
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) January 20, 2023
The studio promised to share more information as it becomes available. On Friday, the League of Legends development team said the incident could affect its ability to release the MOBA's upcoming version 13.2 update. Before this week, Riot had planned to release the patch on January 25th. Now, some aspects of the release, including a long-awaited art and sustainability update for Ahri, one of the game’s more popular champions, could be delayed until the arrival of patch 13.3 in February. “The League team is working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still,” the official LoL Twitter account said.
“Nothing that would have been in 13.2 will be cancelled, we might just have to move things that can't be hotfixed (e.g. art changes) to a later date instead,” Andrei van Roon, the head of Riot’s League Studio, added. Riot did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for more information on the incident. We'll update this article when we hear back from the studio.
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