Monthly Archives: May 2015

App Store Update: May 20

Every day hundreds of new apps make their debut on the App Store, and hundreds more are updated or reduced in price. We have sifted through the noise and highlighted those select few that might be worth your attention.

Note: The prices and deals compiled below are accurate at the time we published this story, but all are subject to change.

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Alto's Adventure – ($0.99, Down from $1.99)

The endless snowboarding odyssey of Alto's Adventure is available today for just 99 cents – its cheapest price ever.

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Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden Character Roster Revealed

The full roster of playable characters for the upcoming Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden for 3DS has been revealed in V-Jump magazine.

The list, showing the characters, descriptions, and strengths, was translated by Shonen Gamez and shows 24 characters in all. The scan also reveals that, for Japan at least, downloading the demo for the game and transferring save data to the full version unlocks Super Saiyan God SS Goku, which hardly seems fair to the other characters.

Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden's Japanese demo includes Goku, Vegeta, Teen Gohan, and Buu. The final version of the game is slated for a June 11 release in Japan, but no official release date has yet been set for other regions.

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Apply to Be in Rock Band 4’s Live-Action Trailer

Rock Band 4 developer Harmonix will be shooting a live-action trailer for its upcoming music rhythm game very soon and it's looking for interested gamers to be a part of the production.

In a post on its blog, the studio provides all the details on how to sign up. Filming will take place in Seattle, WA from May 21-23, and those involved will be compensated for their participation.

You'll need to be 21 or older to apply, and a photo of yourself must be provided in order to be eligible for the shoot. While the trailer will feature plenty of crowd shots, Harmonix may need a few lucky folks for additional scenes.

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Want to See Cap and Crossbones Fighting?

Captain America: Civil War is currently filming action scenes out on the streets of Atlanta, which has led to many folks taking to social media to post what they've witnessed being filmed.

The Instagram user posted two videos below showing the filming of a fight scene between Cap (Chris Evans) and his nemesis Crossbones (Winter Soldier's Frank Grillo). Like Ewoks, they're short but sweet (the videos not the actors!):

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New LEGO Dimensions Fun Packs Revealed

Christopher Lloyd reprised his role as Back to the Future's Doc Brown to promote the new Team Packs and Fun Packs headed to LEGO Dimensions.

Besides the Doc Brown minifigure included in the Back to the Future Fun Pack, LEGO Dimensions is also getting the following:

  • DC Comics Team Pack (Joker and Harley Quinn minifigures)
  • Three DC Comics Fun Packs (Superman, Aquaman, and Bane minifigures)
  • Two Ninjago Fun Packs (Lloyd and Sensei Wu minifigures)

These newly announced packs come with characters, abilities, vehicles, and more. Up to seven characters can be used at once.

Last month, we broke down how much LEGO Dimensions' packs will cost altogether. The answer is a lot.

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KFC Tray Liner Is a Bluetooth Keyboard

Greasy fingers and your cell phone -- not a good match, right? Which might be the reasoning behind a German KFC promotion, the "Tray Typer."

The bluetooth enabled placemat is designed to replace the paper you usually find lining your tray. The ultra thin, cutting edge tech has a built-in keyboard which you can use to answer all those important emails and texts while downing Original Recipe, or Extra Crispy if that's your thing.

Endgadget reports the Tray Typers were so popular that every single one was taken home by the KFC customers, which wasn't supposed to happen. They were built with the idea to be wiped down and used again by the next customer.

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Life is Strange, Episode Three Review

With Chaos Theory, its most recent episode, Life is Strange is beginning to straddle the line between the predictable and the unexpected. I felt like I knew what was going on, but after two hours of sifting through puzzles and dialogues, after I was so sure about what was coming next, Life is Strange flipped everything it has established on its head, making me think the next episode will introduce a radically different game.

It's hard to critique what happens in Chaos Theory without spoiling some significant plot points, for both this episode and the previous one, Out of Time. How others interact with protagonist Max Caulfield and what she sees as she wanders Blackwell campus will differ drastically depending on the ending you achieved in Episode Two. The tone is either heartbreakingly somber or surreally uplifting as Max is treated like the town hero. There's a moment where she's allowed to reflect on all that, free from the squiggly hand-written arrows indicating environment objects to interact with, that becomes one of the episode's more poignant moments depending on how patient you are. She either feels lost or invisible, and the intensity of her feelings--the intensity of this moment--brings to light how meaningful the choices you've been making really are.

Thick as thieves.

Until now, you've been guiding Max, with her unexplainable time-rewinding powers, on a quest to find missing girl Rachel Amber and expose the weird conspiracy surrounding Arcadia Bay. At the same time, you're helping her navigate her relationship with Chloe, her troubled childhood best friend. Episode Three makes you question, for the first time in Life is Strange, just how much good Max is actually doing by screwing with time. If you thought Episode Two's ending was harrowing, the latter third of Episode Three is even more devastating. It's a negative emotional payoff, but a strong one worth chasing nonetheless.

Chaos Theory is also where Life is Strange begins to show its Twin Peaks DNA; you can even find the words "fire walk with me" scratched on a mirror in the diner's bathroom. If the Pacific Northwest setting and mystery surrounding a girl and her secrets a la Laura Palmer weren't a tip-off, Max's journey begins to resemble that of Agent Dale Cooper as she struggles to connect the dots between what people are and are not saying. Things are getting weirder and you spend most of the episode talking, rewinding time, and talking again, plumbing cops and fellow students for information on Rachel's disappearance and the town's not-so-secret drug ring.

Lost or invincible?

These intricacies of conversation are interesting, and when you aren't talking, you're exploring. I'm genuinely surprised by the amount of smaller side-actions you can choose to complete in Chaos Theory. As you search for items needed to advance the story, you can stop to look at photos, snoop through laptops, and examine objects, and in some of these cases you can actually alter these objects. For example, you can alter the guest list for an exclusive party or retrieve Chloe's gun. The environment is populated with small pieces of character development, post-it notes and photos that show whom Arcadia Bay's residents really are, and you can spend a sizable chunk of time getting lost examining them all. One fetch quest in Episode Three revolves around David, Chloe's "step-douche," and the mementos of his life Max finds both humanize him and make him frightening in ways previous episode have not.

Life is Strange's strengths lie in littering your path with beautiful scraps of people's lives, but its weaknesses lie in the aforementioned fetch quests. Episode Three uses the same kind of retrieval puzzles that dragged down the momentum of Episode Two: stopping the story to grope in the dark for bomb ingredients or scouring a house top to bottom for eggs can be tedious and breaks the heightened tension of a very well-constructed episode. The solutions to these puzzles may be a little on the obtuse side; in the search for eggs I mentioned above, you find them in a place that is not logical and that doesn't make sense in the context of the scene. These sections still feel out of place and too "gamey" for what developer Dontnod is trying to accomplish emotionally throughout the rest of the episode.

Fetch quests aside, the environmental puzzles in Episode Three make more frequent use of Max's powers. You rewind time to sneak away from teachers and security guards, bypass locked doors, and turn the tables by bullying one of the characters threatening the girls. The time-rewinding mechanic is given a brilliant chance to shine; rather than stuff it into situations so Max can show off or amuse Chloe, it is implemented in smart ways that make it feel like a natural fit. After two episodes of wiring players to think about time travel as an extra tool in their pocket, Chaos Theory is finally using it in both big and small meaningful ways.

You don't want to mess with this pup.

As Max gets braver and more confrontational, her relationship with Chloe begins to strengthen. Chaos Theory shows two young women in a radically different relationship than in the first episode. Their reminiscing on the past becomes fonder, their interactions warmer. Life is Strange consistently nails the odd, unexplainable way young women become best friends and how they treat each other; even Chloe's occasional roughness as she attempts to guilt Max for leaving her shows the sincerity of her affection for her old friend. Max is also comfortable calling Chloe out on her more aggressive, rude behavior, but now Chloe is willing to own up to it. These two have grown into their own, and watching them race through a quad holding hands reminded me of those weird, wonderful teenage years with my own best friend. Their relationship is finally blooming, and Dontnod supports this growth with heartfelt dialogue and a handful of very touching scenes between the two.

It's such a shame, then, that Dontnod ruins this tenderness by shoving in a ham-fisted moment suggesting Max and Chloe may be, or become, more than just friends. The moment is fleeting, awkward, jarring, and is only brought up once more in the episode by Max, with no response from Chloe. There is no lead up to this, no fade in or fade out of the moment; it happens, and then goes away.

Partners in crime.

In some scenes, characters stare at each other with lifeless eyes. There's a scene between Chloe and Max in which the script drops its silly teenager speak and becomes an emotional high point in the pair's relationship arc. It's sweet, and the two say a lot by saying very little. However, while they are talking, they are staring past each other with vacant zombie eyes. This has been present in previous episodes, with some scenes featuring characters that look dead-eyed, but it's in Episode Three that it becomes a real moment-killer.

Beyond the mood-breaking fetch quests and blank stares, however, Life is Strange has finally come into its own in Episode Three, shedding some dialogue and pacing problems from previous episodes. Max takes several big gambles and is now paying her dues, the full potential of her power realized in one terrifying day. Despite her growing bravery, she is becoming exhausted, and Dontnod is doing an excellent job of conveying to you, the player, just how much things are grinding on her. You feel the story's turning point like a knife to the ribs as Chaos Theory comes to a close, and the slow reveal of the potential of Max's powers is surprising and devastating. Max's goals, balancing a personal life and solving a mystery, have finally funneled into the same path, and with the entire story left turned on its head, there's no way to tell where things are going.

7 Things Marvel Can’t Do in Captain America: Civil War

Warning: Beware of spoilers for Marvel’s Civil War comic and all Marvel Studios movies!

While it’s certainly exciting that one of Marvel's most popular and polarizing comics will be adapted for the big screen in next year's Captain America: Civil War, we are a bit perplexed as to how Marvel Studios will go about adapting the story. Civil War's entire foundation utilizes many elements that currently do not exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so the filmmakers certainly have their work cut out for them. We've compiled a list of the core elements that they won't be able to feature.

Before we start listing them off, it’s worth noting that Marvel can certainly make use of these elements if they find a creative way to make them work. There's still one more Marvel movie to come out before Civil War -- July's Ant-Man -- so there’s a lot that could change between now and then. Therefore, this list is only based off of the Civil War comic and the MCU as it exists right now.

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What’s New for DC in August?

DC released their full solicitations for August 2015 this week. Don't expect many new series to debut that month, as the focus remains on the company's post-Convergence relaunch and the epic Darkseid War storyline. However, as we reported last week, the popular DC Comics Bombshells statues will be in the spotlight with a new wave of variant covers and an ongoing series of their own.

New Series:

  • Batman: Arkham Knight - Genesis #1 (resolicit)
  • DC Comics Bombshells #1
  • Harley Quinn: Road Trip Special #1
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