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Saturday, November 30, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 20, 2019 at 03:00AM - Shenmue 3 review -...
Eurogamer.net: November 20, 2019 at 03:00AM - Shenmue 3 review - a faithful follow-up to an all-time classic | https://buff.ly/37sNi50 | @WitWGARA, #GamersUnite, #gaming, #indiewatch, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #WitWGARA, Eurogamer.net, gaming, nerdy, …
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November 30, 2019 at 06:30PM
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November 30, 2019 at 06:40PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 30, 2019 at 10:20AM - Leaked PlayStation 5 dev kit photo sets tongues wagging
A photograph of the PlayStation 5 development kit has hit the internet.
The image, published to Twitter by user @Alcoholikaust, shows two PS5 dev kits side by side.
The Verge's Tom Warren has commented to verify the photo does indeed shows PS5 dev kits, and their unusual V-shaped design tallies with previous leaked images, Sony's own patented designs, as well as a description from Wired, which saw the dev kits in the flesh while reporting for an article on the PS5.
from Eurogamer.net
The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Foods (Part 1)
Next up, we have a brief message from our sponsor, Blinkist, which gives you the key ideas from more than 3,000 bestselling nonfiction books in just 15 minutes instead of having to listen to the full audiobook or read it all. Try it out for free and help support this show by using the following link: http://blinkist.com/brainfood
Moving on to the next section we look at the origin of pizza and the surprisingly recent time in which it actually became popular with the masses. We center the story of pizza around the well known documented history of the invention of Hawaiian Pizza. Finally, we look at some rather interesting facts about pineapples and how they became popular.
On another note, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!
(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)
Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML
You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show
The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Foods (Part 1) appeared first on Today I Found Out.
from Today I Found Out
by Daven Hiskey - November 30, 2019 at 03:15PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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Eurogamer.net: November 30, 2019 at 08:00AM - Games of the Decade: Fez and the doors of perception
To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. This is the last entry - you can now find all the articles in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about our thinking about it in an editor's blog. Stay tuned for a couple more special articles tomorrow.
Fez is one of those magic-trick games. You could call it a gimmick without being disrespectful - a good gimmick can enliven any game - but I'd define a gimmick as a novel, repeatable concept that gives you a little jolt of satisfaction when you encounter it. What Fez does is different. Its trick is very simple, but has deep implications. It defines everything about the game. It constantly changes the way you think. Playing the game, you perform this trick all the time, and yet every time you do it you still do a little internal gasp as it reorders your perceptions. It's impossible, but it's real. It's magic.
The trick is this: Fez is a two-dimensional platform game set in a world where three dimensions exist, but only two of them can be perceived at once. This fact is so brain-scrambling that the inhabitants of this world have forgotten it, or repressed it. It is revealed to our hero Gomez when he puts a magical red hat on his head. From then on, he - you - can rotate his world through four viewpoints, snapping it back into a flat plane where everything is reordered and much is revealed. The game world's three-dimensionality, its solidity, is real - it looks like pixel art, but is actually built out of cubes - but it can only be seen fleetingly as you flick from one plane to another, the way an illustration in a pop-up book leaps from the page and then collapses back in again. You have to hold it in your head.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 30, 2019 at 06:33AM - Broly (DBS) smashes into Dragon Ball FighterZ next week
Broly (DBS) comes out as a DLC character for Dragon Ball FighterZ on 5th December, Bandai Namco has announced.
Broly (DBS) - aka the Broly seen in the Dragon Ball Super anime - is the sixth and final season two DLC character for Arc System Works' superb fighting game.
The video below shows the powerful saiyan in action.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 30, 2019 - Games of the Decade: The refreshingly unfiltered Witcher 3
I'd forgotten how funny The Witcher 3 is.
I laughed a lot while playing this game. I feel like an idiot telling you what amused me because it makes me look simple - but it's the random things people would say. Things like a boy running past me and declaring, "You're grey like my grandma," or the plague cart guy suddenly realising, "Fucking hell that stinks!" I snorted when the guy I took a dive for, in a boxing match, called me a prick afterwards, and I'm still laughing remembering the person who passed me and farted.
I don't want to paint the game as a crude comedy - it's nothing like that - but what I want to get at is how refreshingly unfiltered it all is. The Witcher 3 isn't the fantasy costume party you've been to so many times before. It's a world, like our own, where hard work makes hard people who ain't got no time for pleasantries, and it feels so real because of it.
from Eurogamer.net
Friday, November 29, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 29, 2019 at 12:03PM - Rayman Legends is currently free on the Epic Store
Ubisoft's sublime platformer Rayman Legends is currently free to download on the Epic Store.
Granted, you might already be up to your nose-pits in free games by this point, slowly sinking beneath the unstoppable deluge in flailing terror, but there's no denying that Rayman Legends is a worthy addition to any collection, even if it did come out 2013.
Unsurprisingly, Rayman Legends has much in common with its delightful predecessor Rayman Origins, dressing up the series' classic 2D platforming with some breathtaking presentational trimmings. Quite aside from its gorgeous facade though, Rayman Legends is a wonderful, ceaselessly inventive thing (this is still one of my favourite bits of video game silliness ever).
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 20, 2019 - Someone should make a game...
Eurogamer.net: November 20, 2019 - Someone should make a game about: Light switches | https://buff.ly/2qyOOSn | @WitWGARA, #GamersUnite, #gaming, #indiewatch, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #WitWGARA, Eurogamer.net, gaming, nerdy, News, OurMischief, Someon…
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November 29, 2019 at 03:00PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 29, 2019 at 07:00AM - Nvidia boosts Quake 2 RTX with brand new ray tracing features
Quake 2 is over two decades old and yet the id Software classic is one of my favourite games of this year, radically re-invented from a visual perspective thanks to the ray traced remastering from Nvidia's Lightspeed Studios (based on original work by Christophe Schied). It's one of the most impressive examples of hardware-accelerated RT and thanks to the new 1.2 patch released a few days ago, a phenomenal game now looks a whole lot better.
One might think that Nvidia would simply move on from the Quake 2 project and concentrate efforts on the ray traced upgrades for other titles that are being worked on behind the scenes, but the improvements to the 1.2 upgrade are quite profound - and the most noticeable change comes from upgraded art assets. While the original Quake 2 RTX launch used physically-based variants of Quake 2 XP textures, not all of them appeared to receive the same level of love and attention. A key focus for the 1.2 upgrade has been to re-assess many material properties and get them looking just right.
Metal and how it interacts with lighting has changed immensely. The original release had metalwork that appeared to lack much in the way of specular properties, so even with the hyper-realistic path traced lighting, the material looked more like stone than metal. It's all change in 1.2, with art changes that dramatically change and improve many scenes. There are micro-level improvements too. For example, the original remaster's shotgun shells in ammo boxes use matte materials that show little differentiation between the box material and the shells themselves. Version 1.2 now sees individual cartridges exhibit metallic sheen and emphasise the coloured metals on the jacket.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 29, 2019 at 06:25AM - Of course the Cybertruck's been modded into GTA 5
I suppose it's only a few polygons, but still, modders have acted with remarkable speed to put Elon Musk's latest meme vehicle in almost every conceivable game. While many of these Cybertruck mods are not yet publicly downloadable, several YouTube videos have appeared displaying demo models and early attempts - some of which, er, look better than others.
One of the more basic models for GTA 5 has been demoed by YouTube channel Elite Rejects, with neither of the video's hosts feeling particularly impressed by the truck. It really does look like a texture pop-in problem - but then, so does the real life Cybertruck.
The best one I've seen for GTA so far is by YouTube channel Fred Walkthrough, which already has working lights and genuinely looks like something straight out of Cyberpunk 2077. It's still a work in progress, and the creator says they're not yet ready to publicly release the build, but it's already looking nearly complete - it even has a cupholder with coffee.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 29, 2019 at 03:19AM - £520 off an XPS 15 OLED laptop is an insane Black Friday deal
There's an excellent Dell XPS 15 mega deal on right now, discounting the highest-spec model by £520, bringing the total to just under two thousand British pounds. That princely sum gets you a bleeding-edge specification: a 9th-gen Core i9 9980HK octa-core processor and GTX 1650 4GB discrete graphics card, backed with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD.
The screen is impressive too. It's a 15-inch 4K OLED model, a rarity on a laptop of any price and something of a wonder to behold. The resolution and colour reproduction of the screen make this XPS 15 laptop perfect for content creation tasks like image or video editing, helped by the powerful processor and heaps of RAM under the hood.
Several Digital Founder (and indeed, Gamer Network) staffers rely on XPS laptops as their daily drivers. Those we spoke to loved the excellent screens, big touchpads and the large number of ports available. The only weak point of the design is the keyboard, which isn't bad but lacks the tactility of options from the likes of Asus or Lenovo. Still, the laptop is a clever design, especially with the improved placement of the front-facing camera above the screen (rather than below it) in recent models.
from Eurogamer.net
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 18, 2019 at 04:34AM - These early Black...
Eurogamer.net: November 18, 2019 at 04:34AM - These early Black Friday SSD deals start at under £90 | https://buff.ly/2rYNzMN | @WitWGARA, #GamersUnite, #gaming, #indiewatch, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #WitWGARA, Eurogamer.net, gaming, nerdy, News, Our…
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November 28, 2019 at 07:30PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 01:31PM - Valve calls time on its divisive Steam Controller
Valve's divisive Steam Controller is officially no more. Not only has the company confirmed it's no longer manufacturing the device, all remaining units are rapidly being snapped up following heavy discounts during the current Steam Autumn Sale.
The Steam Controller initially launched back in 2015 (after much revision), as part of Valve's rather half-hearted Steam Machine initiative. Branded Steam PCs have long been a thing of the past following its unceremonious demise, and now its weird - but, as far as I'm concerned, genuinely wonderful - input device is defunct too. Valve has confirmed to The Verge that the current lot of Steam Controllers will be the last ever batch to be produced.
It's true that the Steam Controller got several things wrong; it felt cheap and flimsy compared to its established console counterparts, and it was never really all that good for playing games designed with two analog stick in mind - ie. the huge number of console ports now on PC. That's because Valve, in an ambitious bid to controller-fy the PC's mouse-and-keyboard interface, ditched one stick in favour of two trackpads.
from Eurogamer.net
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 09:15AM - After 1672 hours, Destiny 2 player unlocks all player titles
Unlocking a player title in Destiny 2 is meant to feel like an accomplishment. You unlock a special gold seal for your book of in-game Triumphs. You get a cool tag next to your name so you stand out from the crowd. You rank among the very best at a particular part of the game - collecting guns, beating raid bosses, fighting in Gambit or Strikes or the Crucible.
You're not really supposed to unlock them all.
But after 1672 hours, someone has. They don't think they're the first. But in a thread sat at the top of Reddit's Destiny board today, Dawncraftian is being celebrated for their enormous achievement.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 08:55AM - Google, I'm not sure that's how Stadia is supposed to work
One of the big selling points of Stadia, Google's new video game streaming technology, is it eradicates lengthy downloads and updates - the scourge of current console gaming. But for one Stadia game, that's not exactly how it's working.
Redditor 121910 took to the Stadia subreddit to post screenshots of NBA 2K20 downloading a game update on Stadia, which came as something of a surprise given Stadia games shouldn't be capable of downloading updates at all when they're being played by customers.
I had a brief chat with 121910 about what happened. They told me they saw the downloading update screen when they started the game. It only took one or two minutes to update, they said, and it was the first time it happened since purchasing the game.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 08:49AM - Best Black Friday graphics card deals from Digital Foundry 2019
Here are the best Black Friday deals we've found on a range of popular graphics cards, from budget options ideal for 1080p gaming all the way up to expensive cards designed for high refresh rate monitors, 4K resolutions or both. This is actually a great time to upgrade your PC or build a new one, as we're seeing best-ever prices on a number of popular options like the RX 580, GTX 1660 Super and RTX 2070 Super.
Update (Wednesday, 5PM GMT): We've added the best graphics card deals for the US, from 1080p to 4K recommendations, plus updates to our selection of UK cards.
Note that for each card, we've listed its approximate performance at 1440p compared to the best consumer graphics card on the market, the RTX 2080 Ti, in terms of a percentage. For example, the GTX 1050 Ti, the cheapest card we've featured today, gets frame-rates that are only 22 per cent of those than a RTX 2080 Ti, while the Radeon RX 5700 XT manages frame-rates that are 71 per cent of a RTX 2080 Ti, so we list them as [22%] and [71%], respectively.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 08:46AM - Red Dead Redemption 2 finally arrives on Steam next week
Steam users, your wait is almost over. Rockstar has announced Red Dead Redemption 2 will finally come the platform next week on Thursday 5th December.
RDR2 has been out on PC for just under a month now, and so far has been available on the Rockstar Launcher itself, as well as Epic and sites like Humble.
It's worth noting that despite the game being available on Steam, when you open it from your library it'll likely start Rockstar's launcher anyway, which is how Grand Theft Auto 5 launches from Steam.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 08:00AM - Games of the Decade: Destiny was at its best when we cheesed it
To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.
When I think back to my time playing Destiny, I remember the ways I exploited it, cheesed it, or sometimes even broke it before I remember the times I played it as Bungie intended. I remember the loot cave, a simple hole in a rock that spat out endless waves of Hive - and, as a result, endless waves of shiny engrams - before I remember one of the Strikes. I remember turning off the internet to try to get big bad Dark Below boss Crota stuck in the kneeling position so someone could slice up the sitting duck with a sword before I recall one of the public events. And I remember spending hours and hours and even more hours running into a boss room, blasting the boss to bits with a rocket launcher, nabbing the exotic engram he dropped, then blasting myself to death in order to reset the encounter, before I remember what I had to do to hit the light level cap. The cheeses were many, the rewards delicious, the memories eternal. Were we cowards? Or just bad at the game? A bit of both. And we didn't care.
Playing Destiny in the two years after it came out back in September 2014 was a punishing experience, but it was always a memorable one. And Destiny was at its most memorable when people came together to play in unintended ways. Things like the loot cave told the story Destiny so sorely missed. Bungie's plot was torn to shreds in the run up to the Destiny's release, but memes meant we cared about the empty vase characters like Commander "the Fallen are crafty" Zavala. The Mysterious Stranger had no time to explain why she didn't have time to explain, so players explained how to cheese Destiny in her place, posting guides on YouTube and on reddit for the entire community to gobble up with a ferocious hunger I hadn't seen since the early days of World of Warcraft. Destiny ended up being the water-cooler video game Bungie and then-publisher Activision so sorely craved, but we weren't talking about the Traveller's fate or the Speaker's motivation. We were talking about Dinklebot telling us that wizard came from the moon, and excitedly recounting how we were up all night cheesing the Summoning Pits from the safety of the room outside of the boss room, using the Ice Breaker sniper rifle and its self-replenishing ammo to slowly but surely wear that big ugly ogre down.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 06:21AM - Titanfall 2 headlines PlayStation Plus' December free games
December's games for PlayStation Plus subscribers include Monster Energy Supercross - The Video Game and... oh, some shooter or other.
Only joking! The other game is the excellent Titanfall 2. If you have not played this yet for some reason then you really, really should.
Sony is yet to officially announce the pair for next month, but they're visible now on the official Polish PlayStation website - which looks to have gone live with their announcement a little early (thanks, Nibel).
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 15, 2019 at 07:22AM - Here’s the...
Eurogamer.net: November 15, 2019 at 07:22AM - Here’s the brilliant new Microsoft Flight Simulator trailer | https://buff.ly/33TG2N1 | @WitWGARA, #GamersUnite, #gaming, #indiewatch, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #WitWGARA, Eurogamer.net, gaming, Here’s the…
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November 27, 2019 at 03:30PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 04:00AM - Games of the Decade: Bastion is a labour of love
To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.
Sometimes you make a connection with a game that's very enduring. I was introduced to Bastion by my then-flatmate, the same person who introduced me to this very website, while I was thoroughly disenchanted with video games as a whole. It made me want to look deeper into what games could be, what they could become if a team focused on its unique talent and the things that were important to them. A little less than a decade later I'm here doing just that, so it's safe to say that Bastion is my most personal game of the decade.
Initially I was confused and slightly annoyed by what I now feel is Supergiant's biggest asset - the narration. It seemed a little creepy to have an omniscient voice follow you around while your own character stayed silent, but I changed my mind as soon as I realised how ingenious it really is. Bastion could have been a simple action game with a silent protagonist, but instead it's a perfect example of how story matters. With nothing more than a few sentences here and there Supergiant breathed life into its world and told a story of conflict, community and tolerance. It whispered enough of that story to feel real but deliberately left gaps that kindled my imagination. Its refusal to tell you everything felt as unique as the mode by which Bastion told its story, and more importantly, it opened up a world beyond known tropes - no cops and robbers, no cowboys, no knights. Just a boy and his hammer.
from Eurogamer.net
Review: Gummi Factory Original Gummi Fün Mix Gummi Party
With all of the kinds of gummies now available, makes for some tough choices when I'm in the snack aisle, so I appreciated the idea behind these — throw all manner of flavors and shapes into one bag, and get all the selection without having to buy a dozen bags. ...
from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by November 27, 2019 at 10:13AM
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 03:15AM - Stardew Valley's latest update has arrived on PC
UPDATE 27/11/19: ConcernedApe has now released the full changelog detailing all the new content to hit Stardew Valley this week.
On top of all the changes mentioned in the article below, there are interesting new additions like new events, clothes tailoring and dyeing, hundreds of new items, and some all new areas to explore.
There's a new mineshaft dungeon right next to the quarry with new Haunted Skull and Sludge monsters, and if you reach the end of this dungeon you're rewarded with the new Golden Scythe. I accidentally found this dungeon playing last night and discovered these new enemies are pretty tough, though I also learned (from them killing me) there's a quality of life change when you "die" in Stardew, where it will show you a list of the items you've lost.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 at 02:44AM - Some great (and not so great) Sonic games now in Humble Bundle
Fresh from his movie trailer glow-up, Sonic the Hedgehog has dashed over to Humble Bundle. There, a range of adventures are now available for the store's usual low price of your choosing.
Pay just 78p ($1) and you'll get Sonic Adventure 2 and its Battle DLC, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD and Sonic Adventure DX. This is a very good deal.
Pay more than the average (at the time of writing, £4.58) and you'll get Sonic Generations and its Casino Night DLC, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. All great games. You also get Sonic Lost World, which is rubbish.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 27, 2019 - Games of the Decade: GTA Online is multiplayer like nothing else
To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.
Whilst now it feels like a foregone conclusion, back in 2013, GTA Online was an exciting gambit for Rockstar. The team had to design a world that players would want to leave the comforts of their legendary single-player narratives for. GTA 4's online mode was a success, but it still amounted to a lonely city with an airport warzone and some rudimentary deathmatches.
At first, GTA Online seemed too ambitious. Wouldn't too many RPG-wielding pre-teens spoil the proverbial pot? At launch, the sceptics were vindicated. In the game's first few weeks, the experience was a disaster. I remember the vapid missions, rampant griefing and random loss of character data that kicked off Rockstar's GTA Online reparations program, where players are still being gifted lump sums of apology money in exchange for putting up with bugs.
from Eurogamer.net
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 26, 2019 at 08:35AM - Here's a look at some of the best Black Friday broadband deals
Long gone are the days of excitedly rushing home with a new game in hand and sitting down to play right away. Installs and updates await now, further drawing out the time between actually being able to play the game you just bought. And while going digital helps avoid some of this, you still need a beefy internet connection to download games at any reasonable rate. That's where our look at some of the best Black Friday broadband deals steps in!
This month's megasales period is a great time to switch providers, as many are now promoting their Black Friday prices. Take this opportunity to get yourself a faster connection so you won't have to spend hours twiddling your thumbs waiting for the latest patch to finish downloading. Of course, it's important to remember that your speeds may vary with these depending on your location. Thank you, shoddy UK broadband infrastructure.
Nevertheless, the best value package available is through PlusNet, who are offering unlimited fibre broadband with an average speed of 36Mb for £22.99 per month on an 18-month contract. As part of the Black Friday deal, they're also waiving the activation fee and giving you £75 cashback - or to look at it another way, that's three months free!
from Eurogamer.net
Bacon Popping Candy
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
from Candy Gurus
by Matty November 26, 2019 at 08:24AM
Eurogamer.net: November 26, 2019 at 06:00AM - Games of the Decade: Outer Wilds is the future
If the past decade in big budget game design has been marked by anything, it is surely the calcifying of "progression" as a concept. The noughties saw the unholy conjoining of the action game and RPG levelling structures in games like Bioshock. Coupled with the triple-A publisher cabal's redefining of games as content delivery systems, this has given rise to a whole raft of experiences in which players toil endlessly towards moving goal posts. Finales be damned: there must always be something else to unlock.
What a powerful relief it is, then, to play Mobius Digital's Outer Wilds, and realise you have everything you need to complete it from the word go. An unwieldy spaceship lashed together from planks and portholes, closer to Red Dwarf's Starbug than the Apollo lander. A patchy spacesuit, perilously easy to forget. A handheld probe launcher, used for remote snapshots or to test a planet's gravity by firing a probe over the horizon. A shotgun mic for tracking down signals, and a pocket translator with which to unwind the spiral script of a long-dead race of alien explorers. There is nothing to earn, nothing to unlock or stockpile, no "progression" at all. All you have to do is work out what is happening, and where and when you need to be in order to stop it.
Knowledge is the only thing in Outer Wilds that endures. The premise is that you are caught in a 20 minute timeloop, always ending with the destruction of the sun. Prior to that cataclysmic finale, each of the game's planets undergoes colossal changes according to a tight script. Ice thaws, topsoil is peeled away, continental plates implode, asteroids flatten hillsides, islands are ejected into orbit by cyclones. The game's worlds are toy-like, each a mere kilometre or two across, but their sheer instability and the limited time you have to explore them gives them magnitude.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 26, 2019 at 05:44AM - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare spawns are raining men
Black Friday's coming up, and my news feed is already filling up with sales ads - but it seems Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is also getting in on the action, as it's introduced Price drops all of its own.
A few days ago, one Reddit user McNugg2710 shared something rather unusual on the Call of Duty subreddit. Rather than dropping bombs, the game had started dropping... players. The offending bug spawns players in mid-air, with pretty disastrous consequences.
It seems like this wasn't an isolated incident, as other users have since shared similar footage of the spawn bug. Like this one, showing a number of players leaping to their deaths like lemmings.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 26, 2019 at 04:00AM - Games of the Decade: Splatoon kickstarted Nintendo's revival
It's tempting to see Nintendo's past decade in two parts, split by the release of the Switch. It's not quite as simple as that, though - the Wii U, for all its failings, was a chance for Nintendo to take stock, reassess and shift course. It offered a chance to experiment, and a chance to usher in a new generation of talent. I don't think the Switch would have been half as successful if it wasn't for the work laid down during one of Nintendo's greyest periods.
All of which made Splatoon such a welcome shock of colour. A new IP from Nintendo when such things were a rarity - we'd had Tomodachi Life and Rhythm Paradise, but really you have to look all the way back to Pikmin for one of this magnitude - and a multiplayer shooter was something that seemed well out of the company's comfort zone. But, of course, Nintendo's approach to the online fragfest was perfectly Nintendo, and in Splatoon it's not so much about headshots as it is covering the map in gallons of gloopy ink.
Is it an inversion of your typical online shooter? Not really, as it's all about owning and shutting down space - instead Splatoon's an interrogation of the form and a rebuilding of it in Nintendo's own image, where systems splash playfully into one another in a game that arrived pretty much perfectly formed. So much so that there wasn't too much for its Switch sequel to improve upon (though Splatoon 2's inclusion of a fully fleshed-out single player mode with the Octo Expansion brought it even closer to perfection).
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 26, 2019 at 03:18AM - Pokémon launches legal battle against Sword and Shield leakers
The internet was rife with Pokémon Sword and Shield leaks in the days before their release - and now The Pokémon Company wants to track down those responsible.
An initial investigation has uncovered several Discord usernames and 4chan posts of interest, Forbes reported. Now, it is seeking legal help to uncover their real-world identities.
The leaks in question stem from an official tips book - Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Official Galar Region Strategy Guide, to be precise - which The Pokémon Company insists was (or should have been) kept on lockdown. But once pictures were snapped of the guide books pages and posted online, they went viral.
from Eurogamer.net
Monday, November 25, 2019
Eurogamer.net: November 13, 2019 at 08:35AM - Prey dev Human...
Eurogamer.net: November 13, 2019 at 08:35AM - Prey dev Human Head Studios shut due to “economic realities” | https://buff.ly/2O8JPzA | @WitWGARA, #GamersUnite, #gaming, #indiewatch, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #WitWGARA, Eurogamer.net, gaming, nerdy, Ne…
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November 25, 2019 at 03:00PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 11:47AM - Rebellion acquires The Bitmap Brothers' classic games portfolio
Rebellion, the studio behind the likes of Sniper Elite and Strange Brigade, has acquired the portfolio of renowned British developer The Bitmap Brothers, with an eye to bringing its library of old-school hits to modern platforms.
Readers of a certain age will no doubt fondly recall The Bitmap Brothers as one of the leading lights in the early days of the Amiga and Atari ST, although their much-loved games - including Xenon, Speedball, Z, and The Chaos Engine - spread their wings across myriad platforms throughout the late 80s and 90s.
According to Rebellion, the acquisition will see The Bitmap Brothers' classic library make the jump to modern platforms (several games, including The Chaos Engine, are already available on PC and iOS), and plans are also afoot to create new games based on the developer's titles.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 10:11AM - Gorgeous melancholy platformer Gris coming to PS4 tomorrow
Developer Nomada Studio's sumptuous platform adventure Gris is, after a rather lengthy wait, finally making its way to PlayStation 4 tomorrow, 26th November.
Gris, which charts the tale of a nameless young woman, journeying across a strange, ethereal world of her own creation, made its critically acclaimed debut on Switch and PC last December.
It's a never less than beautiful experience, but while its immediately arresting art style and emotive musical score (by Spanish band Berlinist) undoubtedly do a lot of the heavy lifting, it's no slouch in the gameplay department either.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 09:49AM - Red Dead Redemption 2 mods let you view vanishing ghost up close
Every Halloween at university, my friends and I would make it our mission to find GTA 5's ghost. It was an Easter egg hidden on Mount Gordo which could be viewed from a distance with a sniper scope or phone - and much like any ghost story, we were fascinated (and thoroughly spooked) by the sad backstory of Jolene Cranley-Evans.
As in GTA, Red Dead Redemption 2 also has a resident ghost: but rather than using a 2D image, the cowboy sim uses an actual character model to create a roaming NPC. And, thanks to recent modding efforts on PC, it's now possible to get a proper look at the ghost of Agnes Dowd.
In Red Dead Redemption 2 lore, Agnes was a 19-year old woman who died in 1883, 16 years before the game's events take place. Her tombstone behind Shady Belle says she "tragically took her own life and others" - a story which is partly explained through her lines of dialogue, which are slowly revealed to the player through several ghostly encounters in Bluewater Marsh. According to the wiki, Agnes fell in love with a man of whom her parents did not approve, and who had previously been involved with another woman. While Agnes was successful in persuading the suitor to abandon the other woman, she did not sway her parents, and her father drew a weapon on her lover. Exactly what happened in this confrontation is never detailed - but you can work out the ending from the tombstone description.
from Eurogamer.net
Do Kids Really Learn Languages Faster Than Adults?
So how did the idea that kids learn languages faster become so pervasive and how do we know it’s not true?
First, let’s clarify a bit. When discussing whether kids learn a first language faster than adults, studies to date do strongly support this idea. For example, as we covered in our article How Deaf People Think, deaf children who are not given a complex structured language of some sort to learn at a young age (and note here, a sign language works just as well as verbal) exhibit a number of intellectual issues later in life, such as poor memory, deficient abilities at abstract thought, etc. And, most pertinent to the topic at hand, if attempts are then made in adulthood to teach such an individual a first language, they typically go extremely poorly. Similar examples can be seen in various cases of feral children. Thus, with first languages at least, kids win handily as “some number of years” to master a language is most decidedly fewer than “never”.
Of course, when people talk about kids being able to learn languages faster than adults, nobody is discussing first languages- they are lamenting how difficult it is to learn a second language.
However, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of being around a child, basically ever, you may or may not have noticed that certainly while their comprehension leads their speaking a bit at first, it takes a whopping year or so, give or take, for them to learn their first few words, and then a few more before they start articulating well, speaking in relatively complex sentences, and featuring a reasonably robust vocabulary. And even then, they are still extremely deficient in a lot of ways when it comes to their first language. And we are talking many years here!
The same holds true of children learning more than one language at a time. It still takes them many years of practice to become fluent in this second language at anywhere close to an adult-like level. As linguist Dr. Karen Lichtman sums up, “People think that children are fast at learning language. They’re not fast; they’re slow.”
Illustrating this point, consider a study conducted by linguists Sara Ferman and Avi Karni of the University of Haifa in Israel, No Childhood Advantage in the Acquisition of Skill in Using an Artificial Language Rule. Whil it has been well established that adults learn additional languages much better than children when learning explicitly, the researchers here were curious how adults would fare compared to their younger counterparts at implicit learning of language in a controlled environment.
Thus, in the study they made up a rule where verbs in a sentence would be pronounced differently depending on whether the object the verb was referring to was inanimate or animate. At no point was this rule explained, and the participants simply listened to language spoken with this rule used and then were later asked to speak the correct verb given some noun. The study used groups of 8 and 12 year olds, as well as adults of varying ages.
The results? As you might have guessed from the title of the paper, the adults wiped the floor with the littles. To wit, as noted in the study, “adults were superior to children of both age groups and the 8-year-olds were the poorest learners in all task parameters including in those that were clearly implicit… Altogether, the maturational effects in the acquisition of an implicit AMR do not support a simple notion of a language skill learning advantage in children.”
Two months later when tested again to see who remembered the rule the best, the adults once again were champions and once again the 12 year olds came in second and the 8 year olds last.
In yet another study, Age and Learning Environment: Are Children Implicit Second Language Learners? conducted by the aforementioned Dr. Karen Lichtman, the researchers made up a language called Sillyspeak and then taught it to groups of children and adults of various ages. Noteworthy here is that they taught it to some groups implicitly and others explicitly. The results? Regardless of whether the instruction was implicit or explicit, Dr. Lichtman sums up, “The adults were more accurate than the kids. The adults were faster than the kids.”
Another interesting thing to note with this one with regards to the merits of implicit vs explicit language learning was that, “both children and adults in the explicit training condition developed greater awareness of the mini-language’s structures – and greater awareness was associated with better performance for both age groups…”
Next up we have the Barcelona Age Factor Project which has been running since the late 1990s and still going today. This project is studying kids learning English as a second language in Spain. The part of this research that is most pertinent to the current discussion is they have been examining if younger children actually learn second languages faster than their older compatriots given the same instruction and language exposure and practice.
While the common notion is, even today, that starting kids as young as possible on a second language is the fastest and easiest way for them to learn a second language, once again the results of this decades long research project show in almost every single test the students were subjected to, students who start learning English as a second language later in life score markedly better than their younger brethren.
We could go on and on here. But the bottom line is that there are numerous studies attempting to compare the rate of second language acquisition in kids vs those of the older persuasion which consistently show that in controlled conditions, the more seasoned among us usually pick up languages faster.
Now, at this point you might be thinking, “Well, ya, but adults have an astounding number of advantages compared to kids when learning language, like in the study with the animate or inanimate objects. Kids might not even grasp that concept implicitly at first, let alone then connect it to a verb change. So it’s not really a fair comparison.” And, well, you’re right- that is exactly why adults are better at learning languages than kids, even if kids may be more naturally inclined to pick up a new language and have some other advantages we’ll get to shortly.
Adults simply come at the problem already having some level of mastery of an existing language, including in depth understanding of language structure, grammatical concepts, potentially already familiar with a given alphabet, possessing a broad knowledge of worldly concepts, ability to grasp certain nuances, abstractions, slang, jokes, etc. Adults also come with better study habits, or even just study habits at all.
In contrast, try to teach even a basic grammatical concept explicitly to a 4 year old and they’ll be reaching for their tablet to watch My Little Pony faster than you can say “verb”. Further, many kids are still learning to master their native tongue even well into their teens. Some might even argue that when extending to written language particularly, many of these teens who become adults never truly master even one language.
So given all this, and the literally millions of examples of adults becoming fluent in another language sometimes even in under a year, while kids often take years to reach the same level, where did the idea that kids learn languages faster come from and why is it so firmly ingrained, even still to this day found in many a psychology and linguistic textbook the world over?
As for the once scientifically accepted notion, this primarily stems from a concept called the “Critical Period hypothesis” proposed by neurologist Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts in their book Speech and Brain Mechanisms, published in 1959. This was later popularized by Eric Lenneberg’s 1967 Biological Foundation of Language. With regards to language, in a nutshell this is simply an idea that there is a critical period in which the human brain is particularly inclined to learn languages and that after this period, a person is unlikely to be able to (or some even go so far as say cannot) ever learn a new language to the level of a native speaker of that language. The brain simply can’t do it anymore.
As previously alluded to, there is a fair amount of data supporting this idea with regards to first language, at least on some level, though there doesn’t appear to be any marked time when the ability suddenly drops off; it’s more of a gradual decline over the years.
The problem is that this idea was then popularly extended to ability to learn additional languages beyond the first. But as studies since have shown, while it is true that children’s brains form new neural connections at truly astounding rates and are more “plastic”, or flexible with regards to adaptation than an adult’s brain, and it is generally accepted that this does indeed help them pick up things like languages faster and in some sense more “naturally” than adults, the combined aforementioned advantages adults have with language seem to outweigh this benefit kids are thought to have.
Focus, study habits, and better aptitude for advanced explicit learning simply trumps implicit learning not just in language learning, but with acquiring most skills. On top of that, it turns out adult brains are far more plastic than was the opinions of scientists decades ago when this idea was being solidified. In the general case, there is no point you can’t teach an old dog new tricks in reality, with an awful lot of studies looking at our brains learning new skills at all ages firmly backing this up.
Even with all this data, you still might be thinking, “But wait a minute. How come immigrant kids seem to pick up languages of their new nations so quickly, including often perfecting the accent, while their parents sometimes never do and often Arnold Schwarzenegger it up for the rest of their lives on their accent even if they do become fully fluent?”
With regards to the accent, it turns out there is compelling data that kids can learn accents faster and more easily than adults, though even this is not without controversy as there are a number of studies showing with concerted effort, adults are perfectly capable of perfecting accents to a native speaker’s level. For example, in a survey paper Age and Ultimate Attainment in the Pronunciation of a Foreign Language, published in 1997, looking at whether Dutch learners of English were ever able to achieve a level of fluency to be indistinguishable from native English speakers, they note,
The ratings obtained by some learners were within the range of the ratings assigned to the native speaker controls. Such results suggest that it is not impossible to achieve an authentic, nativelike pronunciation of a second language after a specified biological period of time. Examination of the learning histories of the highly successful learners lead the authors to argue that certain learner characteristics and learning contexts may work together to override the disadvantages of a late start.
Once again indicating that while kids may well be more inclined to learn something, in this case accents, adults have a number of tricks up their sleeves to bridge the gap if they so choose.
That said, on this one it really does seem as if kids have a very marked advantage, and the younger the better. For example, brain scans of babies show they are able to distinguish all 800 or so phonemes that make up all the world’s verbal languages. However, as they become more attuned to a given language or multiple languages, their brains zero in on those sounds, starting around 6 months. Once adulthood is reached, people even sometimes struggle to perceive certain phonemes at all anymore. As you can imagine, this would make it really difficult to then reproduce said sound accurately when learning a second language or a new accent.
As an example, Japanese infants are perfectly capable of distinguishing between the /l/ and /r/ sounds of English to the same level as future native English speaking infants. In contrast, the brains of many adult native Japanese speakers show they often can’t consciously register the difference.
Of course, as noted, studies, and the extreme prevalence of anecdotal instances of adults learning a new language and perfecting their speech to the level where a native speaker would not be able to tell they weren’t, clearly show that some people are still able to do this into adulthood, thus once again seeming to be able to overcome the problem with explicit practice.
As to who is faster on this one, we couldn’t find any definitive data on this point, though lacking such studies, the consensus among linguists seems to be that kids would win simply because the adults would need practice just to be able to register the difference in certain phonemes in the first place, let alone then mimic them.
Whatever the case, you don’t need to get an accent down perfectly to be fluent in a language. Nobody is going to say, for example, and American from Texas isn’t fluent in English because he doesn’t speak like a Brit with an RP accent.
This all brings us back to those immigrant kids and their parents who struggle to pick up the language of their new home.
It turns out that studies conclusively show that this is a real phenomenon, and not just a perception or stereotype. For example, in perhaps the largest sample sized study on this idea, A Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition, they managed to recruit a whopping 669,498 participants of all ages and from all over the world to take an English grammar quiz. In this case, the researchers were particularly interested in test taker’s ages, when they started learning English, as well as various other pertinent information about their linguistic background, such as whether they primarily learned English in a classroom setting or via immigrating to an English speaking country and learning implicitly.
The results showed that people up to about 17 or 18 years old seemed great at picking up English as a second language and becoming fully fluent. But then after that, people’s abilities to reach a level of mastery similar to a native speaker dropped markedly, seeming to strongly support the idea that there really is a Critical Period of learning of language and that it does apply to second languages. As noted by Associate Professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkley, Mahesh Srinivasan, “…this study provides the most compelling evidence to date that there is a specific time in life after which the ability to learn the grammar of a new language declines…This is a major step forward for the field. The study also opens surprising, new questions, because it suggests that the critical period closes much later than previously thought.”
So what gives? We’ve spent this who article talking about all these studies that show that there is no Critical Period for second language aquisition. But if adults are so awesome at learning languages, why in the real world do we all seem to suck at actually becoming fluent in a new language and kids seem so awesome at it?
I suspect most of you already are thinking the answer. But let’s throw some expert opinion on the matter, shall we? We’ll start by quoting Dr. Josh Tenenbaum of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT who was one of the researchers involved in the study. He states, “It’s possible that there’s a biological change. It’s also possible that it’s something social or cultural… There’s roughly a period of being a minor that goes up to about age 17 or 18 in many societies. After that, you leave your home, maybe you work full time, or you become a specialized university student. All of those might impact your learning rate for any language.”
Or as language instructor Kieran Ball sums up, “From what I’ve found, children do not learn languages more easily than adults. The only reason it seems like they do is because they have a lot more free time. Adults tend to have jobs, responsibilities, busy lives and a lot of things on their mind. This means they can’t spend as much time as children do on learning. Children spend six or seven hours every day in school, where their only responsibility is to fill their head with knowledge.”
On that note, kids are often forced into an environment in which they MUST learn the language to do what they need to do, all the while getting both implicit exposure and explicit instruction. In contrast, many adults are able to filter their environment to avoid such a necessity and avoid a lot of implicit learning. Further, they often forgo regular, structured explicit instruction as well.
On top of that, even in their day to day lives where they might have received valuable explicit instruction from their peers, they often won’t. As linguist Dr. Sara Ferman observes, “If adults make a mistake, we don’t correct them because we don’t want to insult them.” (Of course, we might argue that a caveat to that is that “If adults make a mistake in person, we don’t correct them…” Try making a mistake online, even if just perceived and not an actual mistake, and see what happens…)
In any event, kids also potentially have the advantage here of not being expected to form as complex of sentences and the like compared to adults; thus making the gap between their fluency and their peers’ smaller even when just starting out. Those around them also are often more comfortable with speaking slowly to the kids to help them understand, whereas doing the same to an adult can seem insulting, so people don’t typically.
Also for an adult, it can be embarrassing to speak in ultra simple sentences and on top of that, slowly, all the while knowing you’re making a lot of mistakes. People feel stupid and thus in many cases these adults may be much less likely to use that second language when out and about among their peers, instead, whenever possible, reverting back to their native tongue.
This all adds up to not just the perception, but the reality, that adults who attempt to learn new languages often fail, while their kids succeed, despite studies showing conclusively that adults are actually better at learning new languages when they actually put in the effort.
Thus, for you adults out there wanting to learn a new language, you may have gleaned from all of this that the best way to do so is generally recommended to be via a combination of explicit learning, and in so doing leveraging your vast existing knowledge and study skills in the process, while also on the side reinforcing this with as much immersion as possible. And, critically on this latter part, throwing away your inhibitions concerning getting words and grammar incorrect when practicing. Embrace your inner toddler and resist switching back to your native tongue. Even if that might just mean pointing at an object and saying in your new language, “That” when you want something. If you’re with particularly helpful people, they’ll hopefully then tell you, slowly, what “that” is called” and teach you explicitly and quickly how to add “I want” to it, and the like.
Do this all regularly, and you will crush the ankle biters and their inferior little “plastic” brains, which are only more plastic because they don’t know anything.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:
- How Far Back in Time Could a Modern English Speaker Go and Still Communicate Effectively?
- Do Words Get Removed from a Dictionary When People Stop Using Them?
- Has a Major English Dictionary Ever Spelled An Entry Name Incorrectly?
- Did People in the Middle Ages Really Throw Fecal Matter Out of Their Windows?
- Did English Speakers Really Not Use Contractions in the 19th Century as Depicted in True Grit?
Expand for References
- Age Effects in L2 Grammar Processing as Revealed by ERPs and How (Not) to Study Them
- A Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 Million English Speakers
- Do Children Learn Languages Faster Than Adults?
- Do Children Really Learn Languages Faster Than Adults?
- Language Learning and the Developing Brain
- The Brains Of Hyperpolyglots
- Cognitive Boosts from Learning a Second Language
- How Learning Another Language Keeps You Sharp
- Growth of language-related brain areas after foreign language learning
- Electrophysiological Approaches to Understanding Second Language Acquisition: A Field Reaching its Potential
- The Development of Language: A Critical Period in Humans
- Baby Talk Patterns Give Clues to Early Language Acquisition
- Lexical leverage: category knowledge boosts real‐time novel word recognition in 2‐year‐olds
- Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language.
- Children Learn Languages Faster
- Language Learning Myths
- The Science of Early Childhood Development
- Learning Language
- Adult Kids Learn Language
- Why Do People Have Accents?
- Researchers Map Brain Growth
- Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language
- Scientists Pinpoint Best Age to Learn a Second Language
- Cognitive scientists define critical period for learning language
- Do Kids Really Learn Piano Faster?
- Are children really so much better at learning a second language?
- You Don’t Learn Languages Like a Child
- Do Children Soak Up Languages Like Sponges?
- Age and learning environment: Are children implicit second language learners?*
- Does It Get Harder to Learn a Language as You Get Older?
- Why Adults are Better Language Learners Than Children
- Adults and Language Learning
- AGE AND ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
- Experience-dependent plasticity of white-matter microstructure extends into old age
- The Baby Brain Can Learn Two Languages at the Same Time
- Do Children Learn Languages Easier Than Adults?
- Who Learns Languages Faster, Kids or Adults?
- Critical Period Hypothesis
- Genie- Feral Child
- Is It Easier to Learn a Language as a Child?
- The Do Children Learn Languages Faster Debate Continues
- Adults vs. Kids Language Learning
- Do Children Learn Languages Faster Than Adults?
- Do Children Learn Languages Faster Than Adults?
- Language Aquisition
- The Best Age to Learn a Foreign Language
The post Do Kids Really Learn Languages Faster Than Adults? appeared first on Today I Found Out.
from Today I Found Out
by Daven Hiskey - November 25, 2019 at 09:11AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 07:39AM - Final Fantasy 7 Remake will have new bosses
Square Enix has detailed more of its changes coming to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake - including the addition of new characters and boss battles.
And, somewhat unsurprisingly, the developer has confirmed work is already underway on the Remake's next chapter. (This first one is expected to focus primarily on Midgar.)
"With regard to new characters," director Tetsuya Nomura said in a new blog post, "of whom I said during past interviews that there would be 'none' - though they aren't main characters, their numbers ended up growing considerably in the process of creating a rich depiction of Midgar.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 06:00AM - Games of the Decade: Clash Royale - less a game, more of a place
I love Brighton, where I live, with a passion. Which is to say that I'm always falling in and out of love with it. Sometimes it is too much. Sometimes it is just right. Sometimes I cannot face it in the morning. Sometimes I think I never want to leave.
This is where Clash Royale lives, I think. It is one of those games that is less an activity and more simply the place where I find myself. Clash Royale is the place where I live. I play it on buses, in cabs, on the sofa, in the queue at Tesco's. I play it at my desk and I play it sometimes in meetings. And always that shuffling in and out of affections with it: I love it. It's too much. It's just right. I cannot face it.
I always wanted a game like this - something where I could spend a long time learning and getting better at. Yet it seems so simple! Clash Royale is a multiplayer game in which two players - or four - meet on a board with a set of towers at each end. I try to take down your towers. You try to take down mine. At the end of three minutes, who is the winner?
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 04:00AM - Games of the Decade: Stardew Valley is a fantastic achievement
Developed solely by Eric Barone, known as ConcernedApe, Stardew Valley is an embodiment of what one game developer can achieve through hard work, dedication and a lot of determination. For four years Barone didn't just program the game, but also created every sound effect, music track and piece of art. Inspired by the Harvest Moon series, now known as Story of Seasons, Barone wanted to create a game that not only paid homage to the series, but fix several problems he had with the series.
At times Stardew Valley can feel like a nostalgic trip, taking you back to the days of classic Harvest Moon games, like Back to Nature and A Wonderful Life, but Barone's desire to innovate always shines through. The multiplayer mode works fantastically well, allowing you to create a thriving farm, or simply chaos, with your friends. You can marry partners of the same sex, which, as a lesbian, I personally love - playing as a male character purely to romance the ladies gets boring after a while. Stardew Valley even manages to avoid becoming a repetitive slog, where you follow the same self-made routine day in, season out.
There is a large amount of freedom to how you create and manage your farm in Stardew Valley. You can spend your time carefully constructing a highly profitable farm, finding the perfect mixture of livestock and crops, or you can use it as a side business to support your adventures in the monster infested mines. The multiple farm maps allow you to add an extra layer of complexity to the game; encouraging you to adapt to new space confines and experiment with different business models. The Wilderness Farm, my favourite map, even allows monsters to roam your farm at night.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 03:44AM - There's going to be an official Destiny cookbook
Fried chicken dominates the front cover of Destiny: The Official Cookbook, a genuine recipe book on the slate for release in August 2020.
Written from the perspective of Destiny's ol' Eva Levante, this culinary companion claims it will "inspire fans to go on their own culinary adventure through the solar system".
The front cover appears to suggest this means fried chicken, sausage rolls and coleslaw.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 25, 2019 at 03:12AM - Get a Nintendo Switch with a free Labo kit this Black Friday
Now that we've entered the week of big sales itself, the Nintendo Switch Black Friday deals are starting to pour out. And to kick things off, you can now get a Nintendo Switch with a free Labo kit of your choice for £279.
This seems to be a universal Black Friday offer as many UK retailers are running it from today. As many others are bundling games in but at a much higher cost, it's up there with one of the best Nintendo Switch Black Friday deals thus far.
If you do decide to pick one of these bundles up for Christmas, make sure you don't lose any important parts amidst all the wrapping paper!
from Eurogamer.net
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Review: Want Want Chocolate Bears
This box had a convenient peel-open top, much easier than your conventional cardboard snack box, and opening it revealed a foil bag with the Want-Want kid logo repeated (but hard to notice because of the yellow ink used). ...
from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by November 24, 2019 at 10:53AM
Eurogamer.net: November 24, 2019 at 08:59AM - Extra storage space now available in Pokémon Go
Niantic, the team behind augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go, has revealed its upped the game's storage limits.
In a tweet on the official Twitter account, it was confirmed Pokémon Go has expanded the capacity limits so the game now offers Pokémon storage and item storage limits of 3,000 and 2,500 respectively.
"Attention, Trainers!" the tweet exclaims. "The limit on Pokémon storage has now been expanded to 3000. Need more room? Item capacity upgrades now allow you to store up to 2,500 items!"
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 24, 2019 at 08:52AM - Nintendo Switch Lite gets price cut in Black Friday sales
With Black Friday right around the corner, you're probably scouring the internet for half price goods, but don't turn your nose up at this deal: the Nintendo Switch Lite is available on Amazon for £189.99.
The handheld launched back in September to much applause, with Digital Foundry calling the Switch Lite “an absolute triumph”, and many others claiming similar. Before this week most retailers were flogging the smaller Switch for around £200, so if you were thinking about taking the plunge, now might be the time to do it. You'll pay a little extra if you want the Pokémon version, so we recommend spending your cash on a discounted grey, turquoise or yellow model.
Now, if you're in the market for a bundle, you should consider the Switch Lite and Pokémon bundle. For £219, you can nab a Switch Lite in the colour of your choosing, as well as a copy of either Pokémon Sword or Shield.
from Eurogamer.net
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Review: Konos Con sabor a Queso y Bacon |...
Review: Konos Con sabor a Queso y Bacon | https://buff.ly/2XdF63Q | @WitWGARA, #nerdy, #News, #OurMischief, #snack, #WitWGARA, OurMischief, Taquitos.net Snack Reviews, WitWGARA | ⠀
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These snacks followed the model of Bugles, though most of the pieces were…
https://ift.tt/2XIj2hV
November 23, 2019 at 06:30PM
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Eurogamer.net: November 23, 2019 at 03:37AM - Hunting for story clues in Netflix's The Witcher episode titles
Netflix has revealed the episode titles for The Witcher, among other teases.
The Henry Cavill-starring show is set to launch its first season on Netflix, and ahead of time, Netflix took to Twitter to reveal the titles of the first eight episodes.
Alongside each title is a brief description and a gif of its logo, and it's the descriptions that give us an idea of the events and themes the show will touch on.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 23, 2019 at 02:34AM - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is having a tough week
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has had a tough week.
Expectations from those within the Call of Duty community were high for this week's patch, but it disappointed many, and even included a line, seemingly left in by mistake, that preempted the backlash.
But that's not all. A series of leaks from dataminers and other sources have given us a look at potential new maps and even a first glance at the upcoming battle pass - and Activision has issued copyright notices in a thankless bid to have them scrubbed from the internet.
from Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer.net: November 23, 2019 - How developers left violent combat behind to create kinder games
Combat in all of its different forms is the pillar of most games, one that we've come to take for granted. But with the years, whether that's due to hyper-realistic styles making the violence in games seem more gruesome than ever, or simply out of a need for more gentleness in an increasingly relentless world, the number of games that re-think combat or forego it altogether has risen. I've been speaking to the developers of several upcoming games to ask them why they've started to look for alternatives.
"Over the course of your life you just start to think about what you want to put out into the world," Greg Lobanov, developer of Wandersong and the upcoming Chicory, tells me. "On some level, I feel a responsibility to make games about those things. If I'm going to put so much time and work and care into something, I want it to be something that spreads positive ideas."
In Wandersong, weapons combat is replaced with singing - you take control of a little bard who uses his voice in song battles and to shape the world around him. Fresh off a successful Kickstarter, Chicory looks a bit like Zelda: you make your way through a forest and overcome obstacles with the help of a magical paintbrush. Lobanov sees his design choices not as replacements for combat, but as the idea an entire game is based around. He makes games about drawing or about singing, instead.
from Eurogamer.net
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