Finally, the two newest consoles are hitting their exclusive-game groove. Microsoft finally has its Halo, and while Forbidden West is available on PlayStation 4, it was made to sing on the more powerful PS5. Senior Editor Jessica Conditt has spent some time with the game, ahead of its launch later this week — read her full review right here — and, well, she likes it. (What’s not to like about an underwater Vegas?)
It’s going to be a busy few weeks for gamers. Destiny 2’s latest expansion, the Witch Queen, lands, alongside the hugely anticipated Elden Ring, which is coming to both Xbox and PlayStation. Meanwhile, I’m going low-fi and playing through Earthbound — a game from 1994 — on my Switch.
— Mat Smith
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Watch the first trailer for 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power'
The 60-second teaser dropped at Super Bowl LVI.
Amazon’s epic is almost here. The series is set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. It will be drawing material from J.R.R.Tolkien's The Silmarillion, which details key events like Sauron's story and the forging of the rings of power. To whet your appetite, check out the minute-long teaser from this weekend’s Super Bowl.
VR-related insurance claims increased by 31 percent in 2021 in the UK
Insurance companies are seeing a lot of claims for cracked TVs.
UK insurer Aviva said last year it saw a 31 percent increase in home contents claims involving VR headsets and a 68 percent overall increase since 2016. In 2021, the average claim for VR-related accidental damages was about £650 or $880, and most incidents involved cracked TVs screens. It’s reflecting a boom in VR: On Christmas Day 2021, the Oculus app hit the top of Apple’s App Store charts for the first time. Please remember where you are, folks.
Facebook removed anti-vaccine trucker protest groups run by foreign actors
Many of the pages were scams from Vietnam and Romania.
Facebook has recently removed several “trucker convoy” groups and pages run by scammers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and other countries. The company said many of those groups had recently changed their names to adopt ones that use terms like “trucker,” “freedom” and “convoy” in hopes of taking advantage of the sudden interest in the rallies occurring in Canada. Many of those same pages included links to websites that sold pro-Trump and anti-vaccine merchandise. At the same time, most of the accounts that took part in those groups were tied to real people.
Lamborghini wants to continue manufacturing gas-powered cars into the 2030s
Of course it does.
Lamborghini hopes to continue producing cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) into the next decade, CEO Stephan Winkelmann told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag this week. “After hybridization, we will wait to see whether it will be possible to offer vehicles with an internal combustion engine beyond 2030,” he said in the interview. Even if Lamborghini continues producing ICE cars into the 2030s, it may not be able to sell those vehicles in many places. In the US and other parts of the world, governments have moved to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by mid-decade.