Microsoft’s been on a tear recently, offering anyone and everyone 10-year Call of Duty contracts like it’s going out of style. Nintendo and Nvidia have both penned deals with the US tech giant in recent months, ensuring that COD will keep appearing on those companies’ platforms (opens in new tab) for at least a decade to come should Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard go through. Microsoft has also offered the same deal to Sony and Steam in the past, but those two shot it down, the former because it won’t settle for anything less than stopping Microsoft’s acquisition, and the latter because Gabe Newell didn’t really see the point (opens in new tab).
But it turns out that might be enough for the EU. Three sources tell Reuters (opens in new tab) that Microsoft’s deal spree will probably be enough “to address EU antitrust concerns” surrounding the Activision acquisition, clearing the way for European regulators to greenlight the deal at some point in the future. Of course, it’s still likely that Sony will do whatever it can between now and then to change that.
The spate of COD deals have been part of an attempt by Microsoft to convince regulators across the world that it can be trusted to be a responsible steward of Activision’s myriad properties. Many of Sony’s complaints—and regulators’ concerns—about the deal have revolved around the possibility that Microsoft might cut off its competitors’ access to COD, a fear that Microsoft has been keen to assuage. Insofar as the EU is concerned, it seems to have worked.
I have to wonder if Sony might regret making such a fuss about COD in particular, rather than the broader implications of the deal as a whole. It’s not that I don’t believe Sony is worried about COD, but I’ve always figured that it chose to base its campaign around the series because it was immediately recognisable, something that would garner mainstream press coverage and whose possible departure from PlayStation would spook Sony fans. But, if Reuters’ sources are right, it’s presented Microsoft with a pretty easy regulatory problem to fix: All it has to do is commit to contracts like the ones with Sony and Nvidia to stop people worrying.
But the fight’s not over yet, even if the EU is set to wave the acquisition through. Microsoft still has to mollify the US Federal Trade Commission (opens in new tab) and the UK Competition and Markets Authority, the latter of which suggested that Activision be broken up (opens in new tab) before Microsoft would be allowed to acquire it. That wasn’t a final ruling—both regulators could still be persuaded like the EU apparently has been—but Microsoft still has its work cut out to get this over the line.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677829657_Microsofts-charm-offensive-with-COD-deals-has-reportedly-paid-off.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 17:28:462023-03-02 17:28:46Microsoft’s charm offensive with COD deals has reportedly paid off with the EU
When The Witch Queen launched last year, it wasn’t just a great Destiny 2 campaign, but a great FPS campaign full-stop. After years of lightweight expansion campaigns that served as little more than funnels into Destiny 2’s live-service pipeline, The Witch Queen offered a number of lengthy, challenging missions. It was a fantastic release, and it set a high bar for Lightfall—the penultimate expansion in the game’s Light and Darkness saga—to meet.
Unfortunately, based on the campaign at least, Lightfall doesn’t match The Witch Queen’s quality. It doesn’t even come close.
Community reaction has been pretty negative, with much of the surface-level griping being about the campaign’s tone. Where The Witch Queen was dark, brooding and mysterious, Lightfall is more light and campy. Honestly, the tone was the least of my problems. Sure, the Cloudstriders feel like they parachuted in from a different series altogether. Sure, I was not expecting an ’80s action movie pastiche—with a buddy duo of a young hotshot and their too-old-for-this-shit partner and an honest to god training montage—for the penultimate expansion to the dramatic saga of warring metaphysical forces. But, for me, the much bigger problem is that the delivery is inconsistent within the campaign itself.
The opening cutscene is Destiny at its best: grand, dramatic space nonsense. Finally, the Witness is here, moving on the Traveler itself. A ghost and Guardian are literally unmade at the flick of its finger. The Traveler’s terraforming beam blasts the Witness’s ship, presumably setting up the raid that launches next week. Shit is going down.
And yet, before the first mission is even over, we’re getting MCU-level quips as we zoom around a neon city on Neptune, on a knockabout adventure to defend “The Veil”. This is emblematic of the problem with Lightfall. It’s trying to pull on too many threads at once, and doesn’t give any one story beat time to land.
Take the Veil itself: What is it? We don’t know, and, honestly, we don’t find out. This is not the first time Destiny has introduced something only to leave its exact nature a mystery, although it’s always a downer when it’s the centrepiece of the campaign—the big mystery teased before release.
Piercing the Veil
The more interesting issue at play here is something I’ve seen from plenty of people reacting to Lightfall’s story. The assumption, usually, is that the characters we interact with know what the Veil is and, for whatever reason, just never get around to telling us. That’s actually not what’s happening. Like us, they too have no idea what it is. The problem is that, as they are written, the supporting characters are so terminally incurious that the question doesn’t even interest them. It doesn’t occur to ask. They know that it powers the Neptunian city of Neomuna, and they know that it’ll be bad if the Witness gets access to it. That, seemingly, is good enough.
(Image credit: Bungie)
In one mission, we’re sent to destroy the Radial Mast before Calus can attach it to the Veil. What is the Radial Mast? That is not important: It’s bad, because Calus is bad, because the Witness is bad. And that’s all we get, because the story is too busy rushing through its other plot beats to stop and flesh out the one you’re currently playing through.
Compare this to The Witch Queen, where the big mystery—how did Savathun steal the light?—is the central question of the campaign. Every mission worked towards resolving the interesting question that it posed. And then we got an answer. The question then shifted to “Why did the Traveler give one of our greatest enemies the Light”, at which point Ikora counters with “It doesn’t matter”. That’s a dramatic statement—a moment that says, actually, we’ve reckoned with this enough, now we need to act. For Lightfall, “it doesn’t matter” feels like the default state.
For Lightfall, “it doesn’t matter” feels like the default state.
There are frustrating hints at something coherent and purposeful. For instance: Cloudstriders require heavy augmentation to become the defenders of Neomuna, to the point they only get 10 years to live following the procedure. For them, it’s a worthy sacrifice, and one that defines how they think about life and death. It’s a neat enough contrast with the immortal Guardians, and an idea that, I think, is meant to tie into Osiris’s research on how to master Strand—the new subclass introduced in Lightfall that’s said to be tied to the flow of life. All the individual threads are there to connect this into something coherent, but not once does the story pause to show its working. Instead I’m left with the vague feeling that, yeah, that was probably what they were going for.
Characters, too, have subplots that would have been nice to explore in depth. We get a cutscene featuring Calus and the Witness that is dripping with tension, as the former emperor struggles to deal with being subordinate to an impossibly powerful being. But nothing is really done with this; it’s never explored or dealt with. Calus’s arc never reckons with this in depth, despite it being so core to his character throughout our time with him since the launch of Destiny 2.
This is where Lightfall stumbles. There is probably a very compelling story outline at Bungie, laying out all of these beats into something satisfying. But that story doesn’t map well into Destiny 2’s narrative delivery mechanisms. There are eight missions full of NPC chatter, as well as some cutscenes, and some monologues in between. The Witch Queen was able to deliver a satisfying story within that structure. But Lightfall falters, unable to weave its ambitions within the restrictions of the format.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Strand and deliver
It doesn’t help that a decent chunk of the missions are primarily about learning the Strand subclass. I don’t think I appreciated how freeing it was for The Witch Queen to be able to just tell its story without needing to also be an extended tutorial. In Lightfall, though, the entire second act is dedicated to mastering Strand in a way that detracts from everything else the campaign is trying to do.
This has a knock-on effect on how the campaign plays, too. As with The Witch Queen, I played on Legendary difficulty. But where The Witch Queen gave me the space to buildcraft my way through its challenge, Lightfall frequently forces me to use an off-the-shelf, truncated version of the subclass to teach how it works. These would have been better off as sidequests—off the beaten path of the main story, leaving me free to actually tinker and experiment for the harder campaign missions.
Post-campaign, we do finally get some time to reckon with questions mishandled during the missions themselves. But it’s too little too late. Lightfall desperately needed to be more open in its structure, giving us opportunities alongside the core campaign missions to offer sidequests that flesh out the city and give us a reason to care about its survival. Instead, Lightfall’s ambition outreaches its execution. The city, populated by the digital avatars of a population that went into hiding before we arrived, feels cold and empty—barely different to the wartorn, abandoned spaces of previous Destiny campaigns.
Destiny 2 is in something of a unique position: It’s trying to deliver the spectacle of a big budget shooter while also being an ongoing, live service game. If we’ve learned anything about Destiny over the years, it’s that it’s hard to make: Bungie can only deliver so much while also producing the amount of seasonal content the community demands, at the frequency they want it. For The Witch Queen, Bungie delayed the launch by three months to give it the time needed to get it right. And ultimately, that wait proved worth it. Having played Lightfall, I don’t doubt it could have benefitted from the same.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Shape of things to come
So what does this mean for next year’s The Final Shape, the last expansion of the current arc? Are we looking at a Game of Thrones-style disaster? There’s a lot of doom and gloom following Lightfall, but I’m not sure we’re quite there yet. I suspect a lot of the issues are a result of the fact that, originally, Lightfall was supposed to be the end of the saga. When The Final Shape was announced, I assumed the story would be split down the middle—that Lightfall would be the Infinity War to The Final Shape’s End Game. Playing Lightfall, though, it feels more like, er, Ant-Man? The bulk of it—the Cloudstriders, Neomuna, the Veil—come across like a tangential sidestory inserted to give The Final Shape more time to cook. Maybe that explains why the opening and closing cutscenes feel like they’re part of a different expansion entirely. Maybe it’s why Zavala doesn’t even reference Neptune in his dialogue.
🚨 Massive spoiler warning for the ending of Lightfall’s campaign 🚨
In the final cutscene, after the Veil is activated, The Witness cuts a portal into the Traveler and steps through, taking the Pyramid Ships along too. After it’s finished, players are sent to speak to Zavala. His first words: “The Traveler… Gone.”
Mate, what? It’s still there.
“Should I feel… humbled by this sacrifice?”
What are you talking about? What sacrifice? Is that what was happening in the cutscene, because, if so, that was not at all clear. Is the Traveler dead now? You need to tell us what happened before you launch into a monologue reacting to it.
Zavala’s speech is so baffling that I assumed I’d missed a second cutscene. But no: this is just how it plays out.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Ikora opens with a similar statement about the Traveler being “gone”. She at least goes on to explain that, “Despite your triumphs against the former emperor, the Witness has transformed the Traveler, and gone somewhere we cannot follow.”
The text summary following her monologue finally gives us some hint at the state of things heading into the year ahead: “There is much we don’t understand still—what the Witness has done to the Traveler, or where the Witness has gone. The Ghosts have been clear: they no longer feel the Traveler’s presence as they once did, though the Light still remains in them.”
It would have been useful to know that before I embarked on these whiplash conversations. But too often in Destiny, I have to figure out the story based on how characters react after the fact. Whether that’s small character moments, or huge moves in the paracausal chess game being played between Destiny’s deities, I’m left piecing together a narrative out of the disparate fragments I’m told I experienced.
End of spoilers
On Steam, Lightfall currently has a mostly negative rating. The subreddit is in full meltdown mode, jumping on every pain point—big or small—with the kind of manic glee that often overcomes the site when it spots a dead horse to be beaten.
Really, though, there’s nuance here. Lightfall is a badly told story, but Destiny as a series is no stranger to those. It survived Shadowkeep, which was a bad story told across a scant handful of incredibly basic missions. Lightfall, at least, is bigger, and still offers a number of fun, interesting encounters around the stuff that falls flat. The broad concept of having a more fleshed out campaign is something I want to see continue—even if it doesn’t come together well here.
It’s also Destiny, which means the campaign is, really, only part of the conversation—the thing that the core playerbase will spend the least amount of time actually playing. Based on what I’ve played of Season of Defiance, its story already feels stronger and more assertive, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that progresses.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Destiny-2-Lightfalls-campaign-is-a-big-disappointment-after-The.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 17:22:092023-03-02 17:22:09Destiny 2: Lightfall’s campaign is a big disappointment after The Witch Queen
My 4X obsession has left me a little burned out when it comes to the genre’s four big pillars, but I keep coming back for more to feed a single, specific fantasy: crafting a society, and then nurturing it and watching it grow. Concerns about conquest and expansion have become secondary to experimenting with empires and enjoying the stories that spawn from my sometimes questionable decisions. So far, Age of Wonders 4 is doing a great job of feeding this hunger.
Triumph Studio’s fantasy 4X has a little bit of Stellaris in it, which is to be expected given how much cross-pollination we see among publisher Paradox Interactive’s grandiose strategy epics. The shared DNA is seen most clearly at the start, when you fashion your baby empire. Like Age of Wonders 3, you’ll create a heroic or villainous avatar to lead your forces, selecting their race, fiddling with aesthetics and picking their starting loadout, but you’ll also build the society they rule.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
First off is their physical form, ranging from orcs and elves to rats and moles. This gives you some starting traits, but these can be swapped for others so that you can pick your species’ aesthetic without being locked into traits you don’t fancy. Then you choose their culture. Are they feudal? Industrious? Barbarians? A bunch of spooky weirdos who hate weakness and love forbidden magic? Finally you pick a pair of society traits from a substantial list, perhaps making them devotees of good or gifted casters.
Together, all of these choices stack up to create a large number of effects, defining how your empire functions, as well as determining its alignment—good, evil or neutral—and affinity, both of which will dictate how other empires and free cities react to you. It’s a lot of big choices before you’ve even started spreading across the map—both the surface and underground—but through AoW4’s myriad progression systems, from magical tomes to the empire development tree, there are plenty of ways to shore up any weaknesses you might discover.
For my first game, I put down roots in a small, arboreal and pastoral world ripe for conquest. Several official maps are available to choose from with different vibes and challenge levels, which you can then customise; alternatively it’s possible to just create your own realm, or pick one from a list of community creations. But I wanted a green and pleasant land to completely ruin with my horrible horde.
Infestation
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
My empire was a devouring swarm of cannibal rats who liked to munch on corpses to heal themselves in battle. They were ruled over by an evil, froggy wizard king with a tall hat and a penchant for frying enemies with lightning. Driven by their ruler’s thirst for knowledge, one of the themes I went with was dark magic, selecting the Dark tome for my first book of magic. That allowed me to curse my foes, while augmenting my own warriors with the ability to do more damage to enemies with negative status effects.
AoW4’s spells are wide-ranging things, capable of not just turning the tide of the turn-based battles, but also improving cities and provinces, as well as enchanting units. Enchantments are AoW4’s take on upgrades, giving your armies permanent bonuses and often changing their appearance. So your armies might eventually charge into battle with giant frost spikes sticking out of their backs, or maybe you’ll turn your whole empire into a bunch of undead monstrosities.
Pretty quickly I found myself in possession of a second tome, diversifying the trio of spell options I could pick from on the magic research screen. There are obvious synergies, and tomes that will feel more thematically appropriate for your empire—but I always follow the rule of cool. I wanted my magic to be badass. Fertility rituals were out, capturing the souls of my enemies was in.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
The choices you make are constantly being reinforced visually and mechanically, whether it’s the ability to travel across the ocean or the appearance of your cities. Even when they’re seemingly minor, they represent explicit decisions—nothing happens by accident. There’s a wealth of feedback, most of it considerably more interesting than just seeing numbers going up.
The choices you make are constantly being reinforced visually and mechanically.
While other empires are trying to conquer the world or becoming masters of magic alongside you, they are only one small part of the lively maps you’ll explore. Punctuating these kaleidoscopic lands are resource nodes that can be exploited by your settlements—often representing a tricky choice as you annex a new province and decide what resource you want to take advantage of—and hostile, unaffiliated armies.
These armies are usually occupying a node, so you’ll want to wipe them out to take full advantage of it—but these encounters don’t always end in combat. Instead, you’ll sometimes find yourself dealing with an event with a variety of outcomes, some of them ending in battle anyway, while others might end with you actually recruiting your former foes. When a band of frost giants realised that my beefy, high-tier army was bound to crush them, they pleaded for their lives, and instead I gave them a job in my capital city, where they gave me a bonus to production at the cost of stability—tiny ratfolk do not, it turns out, want to live next door to massive monsters. They might also join your army, giving you access to units you otherwise wouldn’t be able to field.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
AoW4 is always spitting out events, but it happens even more frequently once you start encountering free cities. These are independent settlements which aren’t playing to win, but are otherwise created from the same ingredient list that you and your opponents are formed from. And they’re a chatty bunch. In one instance, I was invited to participate in a grand hunt, where I had to track down some wild hogs and butcher them, netting me a choice of several rewards, including the head of a piglet which I could display to show off my empire’s supremacy. That was tempting, but instead I asked for one of the free city’s elite units to bolster my army.
When you bump into a free city that isn’t hostile, you can gift them with a Whispering Stone. From there, you can start seducing it into your empire, but the Whispering Stone can also serve as a spy or even syphon off tribute from another empire’s vassal—as long as you’ve unlocked the prerequisite skill. As long as negative modifiers aren’t dragging your relationship down, you’ll befriend them over time. When I started befriending some death-obsessed tigrans, I was initially content to let our relationship develop naturally, but then another empire, a bunch of grim orcs who had been enthralled by a human enchantress, started muscling in. The race for the tigrans’ allegiance was on.
Luckily, said enchantress, Karissa the Red, was a little preoccupied. She was at war with another empire, and I’d saved up a lot of Imperium, which can be spent on several things including encouraging a free city’s allegiance. Before long our relationship had risen through the ranks, turning them into my first vassal, for which I received a nice chunk of income and access to the city’s troops.
Fighting fantasy
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
Making friends is nice and all, but what I really wanted to do was become powerful enough to tackle an Ancient Wonder. These points of interest are occupied by extremely tough armies, and even though—if you’ve fulfilled the prerequisites—the challenge can be lessened somewhat, they still represent some of the game’s trickiest battles. While I was sailing through most of the turn-based brawls, these ones reliably kicked the shit out of me. The attempt is always worth it, though, because of the gold and magical artefacts you’ll net from victory, and they can also be annexed for some beefy bonuses.
Ancient Wonders only let you select one army to fight with, but regular fights let you bring in multiple forces, making the scraps potentially huge, bloody affairs. The battle maps themselves range wildly, from big open fields to elaborate, menacing ruins. You’ll need to take into account choke points, cover and environmental hazards, as well as the many abilities of your opponents. In low tier fights there’s still plenty to consider, but things really start picking up once you start fielding troops with more unusual abilities, like massive bone golems who deposit skeleton warriors upon death. Your ruler and hero units are, obviously, the MVPs, since you can select new abilities for them every time they level up, on top of the equipment you can deck them out with.
The Cryptblade proved to be one of my favourite weapons. While I usually kept my froggy wizard away from the throng of bodies so he could spit out ranged spells, whenever I spotted a foe close to death I’d make a beeline for them, stab them with the dagger, and clap with glee as I watched them rise up again as a zombie under my thrall.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
Sieges are a more involved type of scuffle, and my first one came about thanks to my tigran vassal. The tigran leader had a pair of daughters—one he was proud of, and another he was just weirded out by. I decided to help my buddy out and take the weirdo off his hands, making her a hero in my army. She proved to be an excellent addition, and after many turns of murdering monsters in my name, she came to me with a proposition: to help her hunt down a weapon known as Excessive Force. It was the main reason she had dreamed of a life of adventure, and she’d finally discovered its current location. Unfortunately it was locked up in the vault in a free city. This free city was a rat-infested place, but these rats were not, sadly, my pals. War it was, then.
We crushed them, naturally, and then threw their dead leader into the crypts before raising him as an undead minion to serve me for all time.
I descended upon the city with my three strongest armies, after sailing across the ocean. You can’t just walk into a city and start a fight, though, so first I had to spend several turns chipping away at its fortifications. During this time you can also commission a siege project, if you’ve unlocked the ability, to undermine the enemy and make the upcoming battle a bit easier. I opted to mess up their defensive towers so they couldn’t use them in the turn-based scrap. And after four turns of waiting, we got into some rat-on-rat action beneath the city’s imposing walls. We crushed them, naturally, and then threw their dead leader into the crypts before raising him as an undead minion to serve me for all time.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
Victories like that feel even more meaningful than the climactic ones, where you win the game either through conquest, magic, expansion or points. Every time I saw my hero crushing a monster with Excessive Force, I was reminded of that great battle against the rats, our long journey across the ocean, and how it all began because she had a kinda shitty dad.
Ultimately, though, every victory is just a small part of a tapestry that records all of your deeds, and then rewards you for them. This is represented by the Pantheon system, where points earned in your campaigns can be spent on new gear, cosmetics and whole new realms. It serves to give you a little nudge and ask “Wouldn’t you like to conquer the world one more time?”
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677778189_Age-of-Wonders-4-let-me-put-an-evil-frog.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 17:00:202023-03-02 20:49:21Age of Wonders 4 let me put an evil frog in charge of some cannibal rats and I’m now living my best life
The Future Games Show Spring Showcase (opens in new tab) returns this March with a game-stuffed lineup of some of year’s most exciting titles, including Sega’s upcoming Hyenas and The Expanse: A Telltale series. The show, which is being put together by our sister site GamesRadar+, will be broadcast on Thursday, March 23 at 3PM PDT / 6PM EDT / 10PM GMT, and hosted by… Cloud and Aerith?
Well kinda. Actors Briana White and Cody Christian played Aerith and Cloud respectively in the Final Fantasy VII Remake and will co-host the show, which features a mix of world premieres, developer interviews and exclusive content coming to consoles, PC, and VR. All told there will be over 50 games featured, as well as the debut of an all-new virtual set powered by Unreal Engine.
“We can’t wait to share our first broadcast of 2023 which combines a carefully curated mix of the most exciting and innovative upcoming multiplatform games,” said Daniel Dawkins, content director of games at Future. “We’re making some small tweaks to our show format, with a new Ones to Play section focused on games with playable demos, and another new spotlight slot that we’ll be talking about in the coming weeks.”
(Image credit: Future)
“I’m super excited to be hosting the Future Games Show Spring Showcase with Cody,” said Briana White. “We can’t wait to show you some awesome trailers and share news on the best upcoming games this year. Be sure to join us because it’s going to be so much fun!”
The show will be broadcast on Thursday, March 23 starting at 3pm PDT/6pm EDT/10pm GMT on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, GamesRadar and for the first time, TikTok.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/The-Future-Games-Show-returns-March-23-featuring-over-50.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 16:41:582023-03-02 16:41:58The Future Games Show returns March 23, featuring over 50 games
Tech armor offers extra protection against the hungry residents of the island, and every little bit helps when it comes to trying to survive in Sons of the Forest. Sure, you can build a sturdy base with defensive walls (opens in new tab) to help protect yourself, but you’ll need to venture into the wilderness for supplies, once in a while, and any armor you can find can mean the difference between life and death.
As luck would have it, tech armor is very good; you’ll just need to craft ten pieces to cover your entire body. The materials you need aren’t intuitive either, and one requires the use of a 3D printer, so it’s not something you’ll stumble upon accidentally. If you’re ready to learn more, here’s how to make tech armor in Sons of the Forest.
How to craft tech armor in Sons of the Forest
There are several items you’ll need to craft tech armor, and while most of them can be found at camps or inside caves, there’s one item that you won’t find lying around.
Here’s what you need to make tech armor:
Batteries
Wire
Duct tape
Circuit board
Tech mesh
(Image credit: Endnight Games)
Once you have all of the resources need to make the tech armor, open your inventory and choose to combine the items by right-clicking them. Once all the items are placed, click the cog to craft the tech armor. Now you just need to do that nine more times.
Where to find tech mesh
In order to get Tech mesh, you’ll need to make it with a 3D printer. You can find these in secret rooms underground; a green dot on your GPS will usually pinpoint their locations. The easiest 3D printer to access without unlocking other tools first is inside the same cave where you’ll eventually find one of the Sons of the Forest keycards (opens in new tab)—the guest keycard, which is the green GPS mark closest to the rope gun (opens in new tab) cave.
Once you’ve found a printer, you’ll need resin for it to work. They usually contain a certain amount already, and you can often find extra on nearby shelves or inside boxes. You’ll need 250 resin to make one Tech Mesh, so you’ll need to find 2500 resin total to make a full set of armor.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677932189_How-to-make-tech-armor-in-Sons-of-the-Forest.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 16:26:172023-03-02 16:26:17How to make tech armor in Sons of the Forest
Yuji Naka had his first day in court today, but he might not need many more. The Sonic and Balan Wonderworld creator appears to have admitted guilt in the insider trading case brought against him (opens in new tab) last year, concerning ownership of shares worth $1 million and $20,000, respectively, in ATeam and Aiming Inc. The two companies are mobile developers that collaborated with Square Enix on the development of iOS and Android games based on the company’s properties: ATeam worked on Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier and Aiming worked on Dragon Quest Tact.
Naka is accused of using his knowledge as a Square Enix insider to manoeuvre himself into a highly lucrative position: Purchasing shares before the partnerships were public knowledge in order to take advantage of an inevitable increase in value when there were finally announced, allegedly netting himself a profit of around $146,000. Textbook insider trading, essentially, and it seems he has no intention of denying it.
As reported by NHK (opens in new tab) (via TimeExtension (opens in new tab)), Naka told the court that “There is no doubt that I knew the facts about the game before it was made public and bought the stock,” which is about as straightforward an admission of guilt as it’s possible to get. Given that Japan maintains a 99.9% conviction rate (opens in new tab) in all cases brought before its criminal courts, it’s likely that playing ball is Naka’s best bet here, and he’s probably hoping to earn himself more lenient treatment by cooperating.
It’s not been a great few years for Naka. Not only was he arrested twice last year—once for the shares in Aiming Inc. and once for the ones in ATeam—but there’s been no end of drama surrounding Balan Wonderworld: The whimsical 3D platformer on which he served as project director before Square Enix removed him (and which got a negative reception (opens in new tab) when it released).
Naka’s been picking no end of fights over the game, accusing Square Enix of being a “no good (opens in new tab)” company that doesn’t “[care] about games and game fans (opens in new tab),” and editing out his former partner on Sonic, Naoto Ohshima, from publicly-shared photos in a move that was as petty as it was bizarre. All told, Naka seems like he could be a difficult person to work with indeed.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677774432_There-is-no-doubt-that-I-knew-the-facts—Sonic-creator.jpeg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 15:46:012023-03-02 20:49:24‘There is no doubt that I knew the facts’—Sonic creator admits insider trading guilt on first day of trial
As budget microphones go, we’ve seen a lot of the “less is more” design approach. Companies are stripping out features and making design compromises so their mics can still sound good and sell cheap. Audio-Technica, who is no slouch in the microphone department, is bucking the trend by making a quality mic under $100 without completely stripping it of features you might need.
The Audio-Technica AT2020USB+ replaces the now discontinued AT2020USB and retails for under $70, putting it on the higher end of the budget microphone price range. It’s a cardioid microphone ideal for streaming, podcasting, and day-to-day use at work or ata play in Discord.
It can be confusing because AT has a couple of microphones with the AT2020 designation, such as the AT2020 USB X, the $150 premium USB, and the XLR version of the AT2020 for $100.
Compared to the budget USB microphone, its metal body is designed to take a beating. If you travel a lot, you don’t have to worry about the AT2020+. It does come with a handy travel pouch which is a nice touch and gives it a premium feel whenever you pull it out.
Audio-Technica AT2020USB+ specs
(Image credit: Future – Jorge Jimenez)
Condensers: 1 Directional Patterns: Cardioid Polar Pattern Frequency range: 20 – 20000 Hz Recording Sample Rate: 16 bit Controls: Volume and Mix controls Price:$68 (opens in new tab) | £117 (opens in new tab)
The mic itself is easy to use. It’s plug-and-play; there’s no software to install, so you can get to recording fairly quickly. There’s even a headphone volume and mix control, a feature you won’t find on many sub-$100 offerings. For example, my favorite budget mic, the Razer Seiren Mini, has no extra features. Monitoring and adjusting your mic levels is always really clutch during a live stream without needing to tweak using third-party software. However, I wonder why Audio-Technica went with those controls instead of a mute button or gain controls.
These extra features are great, but the most important question for any microphone you’re potentially buying will always be, “So, how’s it sound?” And the AT2020USB+ might be one of the best-sounding mics under $100 I’ve used in a really long time.
As you can hear from the sample, my voice is sharp and crisp. It also adds a nice warmth to the vocals, and if you make a lot of content featuring your voice, like podcasting or voiceovers. You’re getting a lot for just $70, making it a really good mic if you start with content creation.
(Image credit: Future – Jorge Jimenez)
I recommend getting a pop filter since my plosives were noticeable in the test recording every time I said something with the letter p in it.
It being a single condenser microphone makes it less versatile than some of the mics, closer to the $100 price point. If your content involves just and nothing overly complicated logistics-wise, this is still an excellent option for beginners.
As much as I like the AT2020, its flimsy tripod leaves much to be desired. It never quite sits on the desk and often feels like it’s going to tip over with the slightest bump desk bump. Bad mounts are common with microphones at this price range, but considering this isn’t Audio-Technica’s first USB microphone, it could be a lot better, given its pedigree.
I also found it strange that it uses USB Type A, which is objectively better and more secure than micro-USB, though I’d rather it USB Type-C since those are a lot more common these days. In a pinch, I bet trying to track down an extra USB Type-A cable will be a lot harder than a USB Type-C any day of the week.
The Audio Technica AT2020USB+ is proof that you can make a quality microphone for less than $100 and find a way to keep it under $100 without stripping features. Despite a really poor tripod stand, this is still one of the best microphones you can buy now.
The NDP200 is an ultralow power chip that was not designed for your gaming rig. This thing is designed to essentially monitor video via neural networks while using barely any power and, when it spots something of interest like a person walking past, wake up beefier systems to do the ‘real’ monitoring. AI boffins being AI boffins, of course, they decided to show off its capabilities by teaching it to play Doom.
During the 2023 IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco last week Syntiant (opens in new tab), the chipmaker behind the NDP200, showed how it had been trained to play VizDoom (thanks, IEEESpectrum (opens in new tab)). The latter is a stripped-back and lightweight version of Doom that’s often used in AI research and reinforcement learning.
The level shown has the straightforward title Defend the Circle and features a round room that constantly spawns enemies which, when killed, are immediately de-spawned (so no death animations). The NDP200 was trained on a neural network consisting of several layers in order that the chip’s 640 kilobytes of onboard memory could identify the demons of hell, aim at them, and fire.
IEEE fellow and Syntiant’s recently departed chief architect David Garrett says the whole reason for training a chip like this to play Doom is to show “you can do meaningful detection and actions at this scale.” The NDP200 also had to learn over time that spamming fire is not a good idea. “After its first kill, it unloads the clip, but then it figures out that’s not a good strategy,” said Garrett.
I don’t think I can quite wrap my head around 1 milliwatt of power being used in this fashion, but assume this was a conference highlight. Training an ultralow power chip to play Doom is a new one anyway, even in a world where getting Doom to run on anything that even vaguely has a pulse is almost a religion. You can run it on your motherboard’s BIOS (opens in new tab), a pile of potatoes (opens in new tab), a tractor, a Lego brick (opens in new tab), a home pregnancy test (opens in new tab), hell you can play Doom in Doom (opens in new tab). My favourite of recent times, though, is the genius who trained rats named Carmack and Romero to play Doom (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677939504_Engineers-teach-their-1-milliwatt-neural-chip-to-play-Doom-say.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 15:00:162023-03-02 15:00:16Engineers teach their 1-milliwatt neural chip to play Doom, say this is serious work yo, everyone nods
The thing about escape rooms is that, when you’re in one, you suddenly realise how undemanding most videogame puzzles are – and who among your friend group has more smarts than expected. The unique nature of collaborative puzzling has seen escape rooms become something of a phenomenon over the last decade, and Escape First Alchemist (opens in new tab) is the latest and greatest translation of the experience from genre specialists OnSkull Games.
You and your buddies play as the apprentices of the ingenious sorcerer-alchemist Trismegistus, who’s clearly not all that brainy because he’s managed to trap himself, and you, in a puzzling prison of his own making. The game riffs on the ancient art of alchemy, with a setting inspired by real-world alchemical workshops, asking players to discover ingredients and come up with new potion recipes that will give you an edge over Trismegistus’ trappings.
The puzzles here range from the more casual and observational to brainbox-only logic twisters, but what they all share is a collaborative aspect. You’ll find Escape First Alchemist a most rewarding time with friends to work-through the clues and help you discover artifacts, clues, and put up with Trismegistus – who may be trapped, but will constantly offer his opinions on how you’re doing (whether you welcome it or not).
Up to four players can take part in an online session on Escape First Alchemist, and once you’ve got the basics down you can even choose to compete rather than collaborate. Working out riddles as a team is all well and good, but where’s the bragging rights there?
Whether you’re a mastermind or a puzzling neophyte Escape First Alchemist has a difficulty curve that you’ll find a place on, and much of the joy here is in teaming up to solve challenges that may at first seem inscrutable.
(Image credit: OnSkull Games)
And who doesn’t want to be an alchemist for a while, brewing up potions from gorgeously realised recipes and finding new secrets tucked-away in every nook-and-cranny of the lab. Indeed many of the arcane formulae and weird objects you’ll find give a unique insight into the mind of the one who’s got you into this fine mess, but there’s that thrill of searching for the most elusive secret of all and finding out who has that alchemical instinct: who knows if you’re going to get gold until the ingredients are mixed together.
Merge your minds into a whole greater than the sum of its parts, split up to tackle tasks separately, or focus your attention on the one key puzzle that might unlock everything else. And once you’re used to the white-hot heat of the alchemical lab, race your friends to finish rooms and find out who is the greatest alchemical apprentice.
The prologue of Escape First Alchemist is available on Steam now (opens in new tab), and gives a taster of the trials that await in the full version, released on March 2. Things remain bubbling over nicely at OnSkull and, if you want to keep up with all the things happening with Escape First Alchemist, join their communities on Facebook (opens in new tab), Twitter (opens in new tab), Instagram (opens in new tab), or Discord (opens in new tab).
The thing about escape rooms is that, when you’re in one, you suddenly realise how undemanding most videogame puzzles are – and who among your friend group has more smarts than expected. The unique nature of collaborative puzzling has seen escape rooms become something of a phenomenon over the last decade, and Escape First Alchemist (opens in new tab) is the latest and greatest translation of the experience from genre specialists OnSkull Games.
You and your buddies play as the apprentices of the ingenious sorcerer-alchemist Trismegistus, who’s clearly not all that brainy because he’s managed to trap himself, and you, in a puzzling prison of his own making. The game riffs on the ancient art of alchemy, with a setting inspired by real-world alchemical workshops, asking players to discover ingredients and come up with new potion recipes that will give you an edge over Trismegistus’ trappings.
The puzzles here range from the more casual and observational to brainbox-only logic twisters, but what they all share is a collaborative aspect. You’ll find Escape First Alchemist a most rewarding time with friends to work-through the clues and help you discover artifacts, clues, and put up with Trismegistus – who may be trapped, but will constantly offer his opinions on how you’re doing (whether you welcome it or not).
Up to four players can take part in an online session on Escape First Alchemist, and once you’ve got the basics down you can even choose to compete rather than collaborate. Working out riddles as a team is all well and good, but where’s the bragging rights there?
Whether you’re a mastermind or a puzzling neophyte Escape First Alchemist has a difficulty curve that you’ll find a place on, and much of the joy here is in teaming up to solve challenges that may at first seem inscrutable.
(Image credit: OnSkull Games)
And who doesn’t want to be an alchemist for a while, brewing up potions from gorgeously realised recipes and finding new secrets tucked-away in every nook-and-cranny of the lab. Indeed many of the arcane formulae and weird objects you’ll find give a unique insight into the mind of the one who’s got you into this fine mess, but there’s that thrill of searching for the most elusive secret of all and finding out who has that alchemical instinct: who knows if you’re going to get gold until the ingredients are mixed together.
Merge your minds into a whole greater than the sum of its parts, split up to tackle tasks separately, or focus your attention on the one key puzzle that might unlock everything else. And once you’re used to the white-hot heat of the alchemical lab, race your friends to finish rooms and find out who is the greatest alchemical apprentice.
The prologue of Escape First Alchemist is available on Steam now (opens in new tab), and gives a taster of the trials that await in the full version, released on March 2. Things remain bubbling over nicely at OnSkull and, if you want to keep up with all the things happening with Escape First Alchemist, join their communities on Facebook (opens in new tab), Twitter (opens in new tab), Instagram (opens in new tab), or Discord (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677767035_The-alchemical-escape-room-you-can-play-remotely-with-friends.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 14:00:082023-03-02 20:49:31The alchemical escape room you can play remotely with friends and family
In news that possibly everyone saw coming, The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed beyond this year. In a post to Twitter yesterday evening, the newly-revived (minus most of its original staff (opens in new tab)) Telltale Games announced that it had “made the difficult decision to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 out of 2023”. But given that it’s been nearly a decade since the last episode of the first series released, I can probably stand to wait a little longer.
We’ve made the difficult decision to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 #TWAU2.To give more context, we spoke with IGN: https://t.co/afoCUHZwIy pic.twitter.com/KhrAfIrwYBMarch 1, 2023
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Telltale says the delay is about “protecting the health of [its] team,” and in a chat with IGN (opens in new tab), studio boss Jamie Ottilie said it was about avoiding crunch. “Burning people out or grinding them down is the wrong thing to do long-term,” said Ottilie, “As an industry, if we’re going to continue to grow, we have to stop it. We just have to stop doing it and make better choices”. The only alternative to either delaying the game or crunching would have been shipping an unfinished game, which the studio apparently refuses to do. “If we put this game out and it’s not ready, we’re going to get torn to shreds,” said Ottilie.
The Wolf Among Us 2 was announced early in its development cycle in 2019, while Telltale was still staffing up for full production, and it’s been hindered by all the stuff you’d expect: Covid-19 and the tight labour market that followed it, but it’s also been impacted by a decision to switch the game from Unreal Engine 4 to 5. Ottilie says the change has been worth it, but it’s meant redoing work that was already done for the UE4 version of the game.
It’s not surprising that this new Telltale would be sensitive to crunch. The original studio was notorious for it, with staff working 80-hour weeks that the company’s co-founder defended (opens in new tab) as a necessary practice. “We tried to create an environment where you really had to [crunch] to survive at Telltale,” Kevin Bruner, the original Telltale’s co-founder, said in 2019. Given that this was almost certainly a terrible experience for its staff and the company eventually folded anyway (opens in new tab), it’s hardly a surprise that nu-Telltale is trying to adopt a more measured pace.
There’s no word on when The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed to, unfortunately, but I hold out hope it’s only been postponed to early(ish) next year. The original Wolf Among Us series was, alongside The Walking Dead, one of original Telltale’s more notable successes, and PCG’s Tyler Wilde praised it for its “ethical challenges, and the quality of the characters and writing” in his The Wolf Among Us review (opens in new tab) back in 2014. Until we get more news, I guess I’ll just keep rewatching that Wolf Among Us 2 trailer (opens in new tab) we got last year. It might have to tide us over for some time to come.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1677943133_Telltale-delays-the-Wolf-Among-Us-2-till-at-least.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-03-02 13:31:082023-03-02 13:31:08Telltale delays the Wolf Among Us 2 till at least next year, because if it’s half-baked ‘we’re going to get torn to shreds’
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