Monthly Archives: February 2015
Adventure Time Dr. Martens Are Coming
Adventure Time is getting limited edition boots -- for both kids and adults -- courtesy of Dr. Martens.
The hit Cartoon Network series will get Dr. Martens boots in three styles, featuring Finn the human, Jake the shape shifting dog and both characters together on one ultimate set of boots.
Report: The Division To Get Public Alpha
It appears that Ubisoft's upcoming multiplayer shooter, The Division, is prepping for a public alpha.
A few data-digging fans on Reddit turned up some details on the game's website that suggest the publisher is readying a public alpha test for its latest Tom Clancy title. Announced at this year's E3, The Division is an online shooter featuring heavy RPG elements that Ubisoft says it hopes to support for ten years to come.
Burried within the website's HTML files is a link to an Alpha section that's not yet visible without some real digging. It has, however, been preserved in a screenshot that makes it look pretty convincing that the link will go to a alpha test page.
James Gunn Addresses Awards Shows’ Disses
While Marvel may have won an Oscar last night for the animated film Big Hero 6, superhero movies were still on the receiving end of some high-profile disses this awards weekend. But don't worry, because Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has stepped up to defend our heroes.
It all started at the Independent Spirit Awards when Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy praised the independent film scene for being able to survive "against a tsunami of superhero movies."
Then, last night in the Oscars' opening musical number, Jack Black sang, "Opening with lots of zeroes, all we get are superheroes: Superman, Spider-man, Batman, Jediman, Sequelman, Prequelman -- formulaic scripts!"
Why Hank Pym isn’t in Age of Ultron
"Of all the heat I’ve ever taken, not having Hank Pym was one of the bigger things" said director Joss Whedon, regarding the fan furor over the absence of Pym in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Why the unrest? Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man) creates Ultron in the comic books, yet in the second Avengers it will be Tony Stark who unleashes the super-villain, angering fans who believe Whedon is messing with the lore. But the inclusion of Pym just wasn't possible, Whedon explains, considering what former Ant-Man director Edgar Wright was doing with the character.
"The fact of the matter was, Edgar had him first and by virtue of what Edgar was doing, there was no way for me to use him in this," said Whedon in an interview with Empire.
Aaru’s Awakening Review
Some say that there is no such thing as love at first sight--that initial attraction and infatuation appeal only to our aesthetic pleasures, and that true love only rises when passion no longer clouds our judgment. Romantics and idealists may dismiss the notion, but the deep-rooted frustrations of Aaru's Awakening may drive them to reconsider their sentiment. This unusual game craves your affection, each of its radiant hand-drawn environments singing love songs until you're entranced. You may initially fall for this superficial beauty, but the game soon reveals its true form as a vindictive suitor, grossly untrustworthy in its controls and devoid of the fundamental assets of any good platformer. I am sorry, Aaru's Awakening, but I must cut this relationship short, and I am afraid it's not me: it's you.
I offer no insight into Aaru Awakening's actual development process, but it's easy to assume that visuals were prized over all other elements. Even the hub from which you access the game's levels is ravishing. It exquisitely represents the passage of time from dawn to night, each quadrant of a central orb depicting an abstract landscape that looks drawn by colored pencil. Within the side-scrolling stages, cross-hatching and asymmetrical markings provide texture and depth, while moving elements like lava floes and falling rocks are drawn frame by frame. It is through these techniques that Aaru's world comes to life underneath its unnatural magenta skies.
The playable hero is Dawn's champion Aaru, a bearlike creature with a mane that stretches from head to tail, and he, too, moves with a charming hand-drawn inelegance that befits his illustrated world. Alas, the gracelessness of movement that makes Aaru initially joyous to watch in action becomes the game's most prominent failing. When a platformer requires finesse and quick response, as Aaru's Awakening frequently does, fluid animations and controls are vital. Aaru is anything but fluid, however, changing positions mid-air with all the precision of a sloth that has been dropped from a fourth-floor window. Aaru would be a delightful hero in a meandering adventure, but Super Meat Boy he is most certainly not.
As if to make up for his lack of leaping prowess, Aaru can rush ahead in a single whoosh, and can also propel an orb from his body that he can teleport to--and it is around these two mechanics that most of Aaru's Awakening's maddening puzzles are formulated. Navigating the game's spaces is a trial in and of itself, due to a wholesale absence of genre basics--the kind of basics we take for granted in the best platformers because of their ubiquity and necessity. We expect to be able to quickly identify what objects are collidable and which are background art, for instance, particularly when we need to make snap mid-air decisions. Here, the foreground and background blend with the gameplay layer. Is that branch sticking outwards a platform, or just a visual detail? Will I pass in front of that barrier, or will I collide? That Aaru's Awakening requires you to even ask such a question rather than for you to immediately know is a colossal problem.
Without the fundamentals in place, any cleverness apparent in Aaru's Awakening's platforming challenges dissipate. What the challenges may even be is often a secret until you are dropping from a great height when the platform beneath you crumbles, or when a ramp has propelled you forward. You may not be able to tell whether you will fall to safety, or impale yourself on a bed of spiked rocks, until gravity makes the decision for you and the spikes rise into view, too late for you to do anything but succumb to death. Now you know for the next time--but when you bear the burden of this game's inconsistent movement and clumsy animations, it's difficult to build enthusiasm for a next time. And that's an issue: Aaru's Awakening is, by design, a trial-and-error platformer in which you shave off as many seconds from your completion time as possible. Your reward for success is the chance to show off your skill on the game's online leaderboards. I might have enjoyed chasing the competition had the challenge been to overcome tricky puzzles and perform perilous leaps, rather than to wrestle with my controller.
Putting down the controller is an option, though it's natural to reach for a gamepad when playing a platformer. Aaru's Awakening's controller support is not ideal, however, assigning the default jump move to an analog stick rather than a button. You must also activate the controller in the menus before you can use it, and should you unplug it during play, the game may stop responding to any input, even if you plug the controller back in. Regardless of your control method, the maddening levels may drive you to smash your hardware. The Dusk boss fight, for instance, requires that you rush across a series of platforms, some of which crumble, and some of which drop and then rise towards the spiked ceiling. You must teleport into the globes that float in this stage as well as avoid the poisonous river that waits for you at the bottom of the screen. Aaru's awkwardness turns what might have been an exciting sequence into a mess, during which you must perfectly execute your dashes and perfectly aim your teleport orbs at the proper angle within unimaginably narrow time gaps. There's no fun in the trying, and thus no fun in the succeeding.
Yet Aaru's Awakening hints at fun. You fire your teleport orb past a beam of scorching light, teleport again by angling your orb into a thin, winding passage, and an arcing ramp flings you into the sky. What a rush this moment is--a rush then halted when you land in the pool of lava that didn't appear until you were six inches above it. You destroy a hideous colossal housefly by teleporting inside of it--what a fantastic idea!--only to drown moments later because you must blindly teleport, not knowing what you might find until you've closed the deal. Aaru's Awakening is a dreamy display of artistic imagination that yanks you back to waking life with every awkward leap and every ill-conceived level.
Aaru’s Awakening Review
Some say that there is no such thing as love at first sight--that initial attraction and infatuation appeal only to our aesthetic pleasures, and that true love only rises when passion no longer clouds our judgment. Romantics and idealists may dismiss the notion, but the deep-rooted frustrations of Aaru's Awakening may drive them to reconsider their sentiment. This unusual game craves your affection, each of its radiant hand-drawn environments singing love songs until you're entranced. You may initially fall for this superficial beauty, but the game soon reveals its true form as a vindictive suitor, grossly untrustworthy in its controls and devoid of the fundamental assets of any good platformer. I am sorry, Aaru's Awakening, but I must cut this relationship short, and I am afraid it's not me: it's you.
I offer no insight into Aaru Awakening's actual development process, but it's easy to assume that visuals were prized over all other elements. Even the hub from which you access the game's levels is ravishing. It exquisitely represents the passage of time from dawn to night, each quadrant of a central orb depicting an abstract landscape that looks drawn by colored pencil. Within the side-scrolling stages, cross-hatching and asymmetrical markings provide texture and depth, while moving elements like lava floes and falling rocks are drawn frame by frame. It is through these techniques that Aaru's world comes to life underneath its unnatural magenta skies.
The playable hero is Dawn's champion Aaru, a bearlike creature with a mane that stretches from head to tail, and he, too, moves with a charming hand-drawn inelegance that befits his illustrated world. Alas, the gracelessness of movement that makes Aaru initially joyous to watch in action becomes the game's most prominent failing. When a platformer requires finesse and quick response, as Aaru's Awakening frequently does, fluid animations and controls are vital. Aaru is anything but fluid, however, changing positions mid-air with all the precision of a sloth that has been dropped from a fourth-floor window. Aaru would be a delightful hero in a meandering adventure, but Super Meat Boy he is most certainly not.
As if to make up for his lack of leaping prowess, Aaru can rush ahead in a single whoosh, and can also propel an orb from his body that he can teleport to--and it is around these two mechanics that most of Aaru's Awakening's maddening puzzles are formulated. Navigating the game's spaces is a trial in and of itself, due to a wholesale absence of genre basics--the kind of basics we take for granted in the best platformers because of their ubiquity and necessity. We expect to be able to quickly identify what objects are collidable and which are background art, for instance, particularly when we need to make snap mid-air decisions. Here, the foreground and background blend with the gameplay layer. Is that branch sticking outwards a platform, or just a visual detail? Will I pass in front of that barrier, or will I collide? That Aaru's Awakening requires you to even ask such a question rather than for you to immediately know is a colossal problem.
Without the fundamentals in place, any cleverness apparent in Aaru's Awakening's platforming challenges dissipate. What the challenges may even be is often a secret until you are dropping from a great height when the platform beneath you crumbles, or when a ramp has propelled you forward. You may not be able to tell whether you will fall to safety, or impale yourself on a bed of spiked rocks, until gravity makes the decision for you and the spikes rise into view, too late for you to do anything but succumb to death. Now you know for the next time--but when you bear the burden of this game's inconsistent movement and clumsy animations, it's difficult to build enthusiasm for a next time. And that's an issue: Aaru's Awakening is, by design, a trial-and-error platformer in which you shave off as many seconds from your completion time as possible. Your reward for success is the chance to show off your skill on the game's online leaderboards. I might have enjoyed chasing the competition had the challenge been to overcome tricky puzzles and perform perilous leaps, rather than to wrestle with my controller.
Putting down the controller is an option, though it's natural to reach for a gamepad when playing a platformer. Aaru's Awakening's controller support is not ideal, however, assigning the default jump move to an analog stick rather than a button. You must also activate the controller in the menus before you can use it, and should you unplug it during play, the game may stop responding to any input, even if you plug the controller back in. Regardless of your control method, the maddening levels may drive you to smash your hardware. The Dusk boss fight, for instance, requires that you rush across a series of platforms, some of which crumble, and some of which drop and then rise towards the spiked ceiling. You must teleport into the globes that float in this stage as well as avoid the poisonous river that waits for you at the bottom of the screen. Aaru's awkwardness turns what might have been an exciting sequence into a mess, during which you must perfectly execute your dashes and perfectly aim your teleport orbs at the proper angle within unimaginably narrow time gaps. There's no fun in the trying, and thus no fun in the succeeding.
Yet Aaru's Awakening hints at fun. You fire your teleport orb past a beam of scorching light, teleport again by angling your orb into a thin, winding passage, and an arcing ramp flings you into the sky. What a rush this moment is--a rush then halted when you land in the pool of lava that didn't appear until you were six inches above it. You destroy a hideous colossal housefly by teleporting inside of it--what a fantastic idea!--only to drown moments later because you must blindly teleport, not knowing what you might find until you've closed the deal. Aaru's Awakening is a dreamy display of artistic imagination that yanks you back to waking life with every awkward leap and every ill-conceived level.
Twelve More Apps Use Spyware-Linked Library
The same library that powered spyware found on some Lenovo computers, making it possible for hackers to impersonate a site's SSL certificate, is being used by over a dozen different apps.
Word that the Superfish shopping software shipped on certain Lenovo laptops contained a security vulnerability broke last week, and now Facebook Security Team researcher Matt Richard says that over a dozen different apps use the same Komodia library that provided the suspect code. In addition, Richard says the Komodia library is being used for much more aggressive malware like the Trojan.nurjax virus.
Birthright Shows What Happens After the Epic Hero’s Journey
Joshua Williamson talked to us about his fantasy comic called Birthright, which has wrapped up its first five-issue story arc.
What's it about? That's the first thing we asked Williamson in our interview. We also asked him about fitting Birthright into a genre, how to write a good comic book "pilot," his favorite video game, and what to expect from the next Birthright arc. Hear what he had to say, then let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Destiny Will Be Offline For 2 Hours Tomorrow
Bungie has revealed that the Destiny servers will go down for two hours Tuesday for maintenance.
The downtime will begin at 10 am Pacific on February 24 (6 PM GMT, 5 AM January 25 AST) and will apply to both Destiny and Bungie.net. Bungie says gameplay will be unaffected once service resumes.
This should help get the servers in order before the launch of Destiny's 1.1.1 update later this week, which will bring some major changes including mandatory matchmaking for the Weekly Heroic Strike.
Agent Carter: What to Expect in the Finale
Marvel’s Agents Carter’s eight-episode season comes to a close Tuesday night, and I spoke to executive producers/showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas about what to expect. The duo discussed the big character death in the penultimate episode, Leviathan’s master plan and the role Howard Stark still has to play.
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in the Agent Carter: Season 1 finale.
IGN: We left off with Dooley’s death. Peggy only just got on the same page with the other guys, but does this, in a way, really help bring them together?