Remember Nintendo TVii, Nintendo's weird television hub for the Wii U? Don't worry, most people don't -- and in a few weeks you'll never have to think about it again. Nintendo just announced that the service is shutting down on August 11th.
Remember Nintendo TVii, Nintendo's weird television hub for the Wii U? Don't worry, most people don't -- and in a few weeks you'll never have to think about it again. Nintendo just announced that the service is shutting down on August 11th.
You know how everyone completely loses it every time Facebook pushes a redesign live? It's happening again -- except this time it's happening on Miiverse, Nintendo's quirky social network. On July 29th Miiverse will be given its first major overhaul: a total redesign that adds new features, changes how game-specific communities work and, weirdly, imposes a daily post limit on all users. Why all the changes? According to Nintendo, the community has been using Miiverse, well, wrong.
Fallout Shelter is a nifty little mobile game that puts you in charge of your very own post-apocalyptic Vault in the Fallout universe. It's your job to make sure the Vault Dwellers are as happy, healthy and protected as possible -- which is sometimes trickier than it sounds. Fallout Shelter launched for iOS on June 14th directly after Bethesda's E3 2015 conference, and now we know when it's coming to Android devices: August 13th.
Adult Swim has added one more weird experience to its warehouse of silly yet generally entertaining video games based on its television shows: Rick and Morty Rickstaverse, a hidden-object game that takes place entirely on Instagram. This is a true point-and-click game -- In Ricktaverse, players click on photos of the literal Rick and Morty universe (the starting point is in space with a naked Santa) and tap the tags that pop up on each photo to be transported to a new area. There are secrets, collectibles and mini-games to find, each played out by tapping photos on Instagram. Find and follow the accounts of five Garblovian Bootleggers, for example, and they may post exclusive Rick and Morty clips in the future. Welcome to the golden age of user-driven advertising.
When the first trailer for Pixels hit I was worried that the movie was going to be a "steaming pile of cinematic garbage." Now that I've actually seen the Adam Sandler and Kevin James vehicle, I can say that was still far too generous a prediction; it's actually much, much worse. Pixels' real villains aren't the admittedly gorgeous renderings of giant-sized Pac-Man and Donkey Kong hell-bent on destroying Earth -- they're the toxic tropes that Hollywood keeps perpetuating.
We were getting a little tired of playing Doom on every household appliance known to man, office printers and even inside the game itself. That's why it's a nice change to see that it's now possible to play Half-Life on your Android smartwatch, thanks to software modder extraordinaire Dave Bennett. He's been able to squeeze SDLash3D, an open-source emulator for some of Valve's early titles, onto the LG's first generation G Watch. Unfortunately, playing the title from your wrist is problematic, since the frame rate can dip down pretty low and the small screen doesn't leave you a lot of room to use the soft controls. Still, anything's better than having to bum around Knee-Deep in the Dead for the millionth time when we're bored on a bus.
by
Timothy J. Seppala
@timseppala
July 23rd 2015 at 10:53pm
It's time to put that Doom alpha code from your PlayStation 4, Xbox One or PC copy of Wolfenstein: The New Order to use if you already haven't redeemed it. Publisher Bethesda's announced that access to the Hell-bound shooter's first multiplayer test will open up "in the coming months." The post on Bethblog says that if you bought the game digitally there's no need to hassle with redeeming keys as you're automagically entered into the selection pool, too. Let's say you didn't buy the latest Wolfenstein though and only pre-ordered Doom after witnessing its big reveal at E3 last month. Well, in that case you have to wait for Doom's beta and that won't happen until next year ahead of the game's scheduled when it's done spring release window. Folks attending id's Quakecon in Texas this weekend, however, get a leg up on everyone else and have access to a pre-alpha build of the multiplayer mode.
by
Timothy J. Seppala
@timseppala
July 23rd 2015 at 6:00pm
Even if your only exposure to the Batman mythos is through the excellent Arkham series of games by developer Rocksteady, (especially the latest, Arkham Knight) you're pretty familiar with Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Barbara. She's one of the constant voices in The Dark Knight's ear, and with the recent release of Knight's first downloadable episode we finally get to step into her shoes as Batgirl as she goes up against The Joker. How's it all play out? Your guess is as good as mine because I'm going in totally blind on PlayStation 4 starting at 6 pm Eastern / 3 pm Pacific.
by
Sean Buckley
@seaniccus
July 23rd 2015 at 4:57pm
Wish the original NVIDIA Shield Portable had Android 5.1 and Google Cast support? Now it does, but it comes at a price. A new, optional update for the Shield bestows the handheld with latest version of Lollipop, the ability to be a Chromecast / Google Cast source device and fixes a glitch that made Google Play Books unusable -- but in trade, it takes away Miracast support and permanently removes a handful of apps. Specifically, the update uninstalls Sonic 4: Episode II, Expendable: Rearmed and the original Android browser for compatibility reasons. Bummer.
The update is optional -- but if you want the latest Android features on the aging device, you don't really have a choice. Check out the official update at the source link below.
by
Billy Steele
@wmsteele
July 23rd 2015 at 4:09pm
If you're a big fan of Bethesda's Fallout franchise, or you just like collecting things, you'll soon be able to nab a nuke. Not a real one, of course, but a miniature bomb case (complete with sound!) that houses all of the Fallout titles for PC that have been released to date. This means that you'll get Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. You may have noticed that the upcoming Fallout 4 isn't on that list, which you'll have to purchase separately when it arrives in November. The Fallout Anthology collection actually arrives before the new title -- September 29th in North American and October 2nd in Europe. There's an empty slot for the new game to join the rest, though, and the set offers a refresher before Fallout 4 is released with a few extras of its own. Bethesda didn't mention a price in its blog post, but Best Buy has a pre-order page up with the set listed for $50.
by
Jessica Conditt
@JessConditt
July 23rd 2015 at 1:13pm
When Square Enix announced Rise of the Tomb Raider at Gamescom last year, it dropped a bomb: The game would be exclusive to Xbox platforms, meaning PlayStation 4 and PC players wouldn't get to touch it. At least, not for a certain amount of time. Square Enix today confirmed that Rise of the Tomb Raider will indeed hit PC and PS4 after a period of Xbox exclusivity: It will launch on Windows 10 and Steam in early 2016, and PS4 in late 2016. Rise of the Tomb Raider is slated to hit Xbox One and Xbox 360 this year on November 10th.
by
Jessica Conditt
@JessConditt
July 23rd 2015 at 12:51pm
Life is Strange is about to get dark. Well, darker than all of the surreal time travel, stormy nightmares, missing-person mysteries and straight-up death contained in the first three episodes. Episode four, Dark Room, hits Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Steam next Tuesday, July 28th. Life is Strange is partly a cinematic coming-of-age tale featuring Max -- a young girl who returns to her hometown to find her best friend vastly changed -- and partly a sci-fi mystery as Max realizes she can control time. She uses her power to get out of increasingly dangerous jams and in the search for a missing girl, Rachel Amber. According to the trailer for Dark Room, this one is going to be tense (spoiler warning for all three previous episodes).
