Square Enix announces Lara Croft Go for mobile devices at E3 2015
If you’re a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise or the popular mobile puzzler Hitman Go, you’re in for a nice surprise. During E3 2015, popular video game developer Square Enix announced a new game for smartphones and tablets called Lara Croft Go. It’s a puzzle adventure game that takes many visual and gameplay cues from Hitman Go, while also alluding to the calm atmosphere that’s present in ustwo’s Monument Valley.
A stark departure from the other action-packed Tom Raider titles we’re all used to, Lara Croft Go focuses greatly on visual effects and turn-based gameplay. Square Enix’s Hitman Go has proven itself worthy as a puzzler on mobile devices, so it wouldn’t surprise us in the slightest if this new title is a hit among mobile gamers – especially with the brand recognition that Tomb Raider has built up over the last few years.
The company didn’t announce a specific release date for the game (or device compatibility, for that matter), so we’ll have to wait for more details to trickle in throughout the coming weeks.
Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key is coming to mobile (trailer)
Square Enix is having a busy E3 but they did take the time to show off a new trailer for Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key. The game will be coming to mobile and it is part of the Keyblade War story detailed in Kingdom Hearts 3. The game is a port of a browser game that was previously only available in Japan. Today, it was announced that the game is not only coming to mobile, but also getting a Western release.
From the looks of the trailer, Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key will be a mixture between a hack-and-slash action RPG with turn-based battle mechanics. The graphics are 3D but they are a slight step down from the 3D rendered models we’re used to seeing in other recent Kingdom Hearts titles. The game is meant to be a good jumping in point for new players to the Kingdom Hearts series.
As per the norm, you’ll be fighting alongside various Disney characters, including Goofy, Daffy Duck, Aladdin, and more with characters from other Disney movie playing smaller roles. Characters from Square Enix’s famous Final Fantasy titles will also make cameo appearances. The game was directed and composed by Tetsuya Nomura and Yoko Shimomura who have worked on Kingdom Hearts titles before.
For the time being, we know only that Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key is coming. It’s slated for release in Japan in 2015 while the Western release date is still unknown right now. It’s exciting to see Square Enix bringing the Kingdom Hearts franchise to Android and we certainly hope it opens the doors for more. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Now, the Terminator will give you directions on Waze
In a bid to promote the latest Terminator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is lending his voice to traffic and navigation app, Waze, which helps drivers across the world to reach their destination without getting lost.
“From the first time I used Waze, I have wanted to lend my voice to it. The Terminator is the perfect machine to guide Wazers to their destinations. Every single day on social media fans ask me to record my movie lines, so now I get to bring this classic role and my charming Austrian accent into their cars,” said Schwarzenegger.
If you are a Waze user who wants to hear direction commands in the Governator’s voice, simply go to settings and choose Terminator Genisys from the menu.
Not only will the app give directions to user’s destinations and alert them if a T-1000 is spotted ahead, it will also notify them about movie theater locations showing Terminator Genisys on July 1st.
Come comment on this article: Now, the Terminator will give you directions on Waze
FBI investigating St. Louis Cardinals for hacking another team’s files
Sports teams employ questionable methods to gain an advantage over their opponents, but the FBI is looking into whether or not one team took to hacking. The Justice Department is investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for allegedly hacking into the Houston Astros’ network and accessing files containing player information. According to the New York Times, investigators discovered evidence that front-office personnel hacked into the Astros’ databases and looked at scouting reports, stats and info about potential trades. This is the first “known” incident of a pro sports franchise hacking another, as professional hackers, companies and groups operating in foreign countries are typically the culprits.
In a statement, the team says “it has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so. Given that this is an ongoing federal investigation, it is not appropriate for us to comment further.” The Astros have seen a remarkable turnaround after years of disappointing seasons. Before the upswing, a so-called Ground Control program for keeping tabs on players was compromised. During the subsequent investigation, FBI agents found a computer at a home where Cardinals’ officials lived was used to access the Astros’ network.
[Image credit: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet
Source: The New York Times, St. Louis Cardinals
The new ‘Hitman’ will be an ‘ever-expanding world of assassination’
At Square Enix’s E3 press conference today, developer IO Interactive revealed more details about the upcoming Hitman, an assassination-based shooter. But for this new title, due out December 8th on PS4, Xbox One and Steam, the developer’s taking a different tactic that meshes well with the game’s digital release: It’ll constantly evolve. That’s right, IO Interactive will continually release updates that will add new locations, missions and hits. And it’s worth noting that some of these new targets will be a one-time deal (read: permadeath). IO will also take cues from the Hitman community to inform these future updates and also to work together to take out targets. Hitman is available to pre-order today.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
Amazon: Hey public, can you deliver this package for us?
Amazon may be considering yet another way to get packages from its distribution centers to your front door. No, it doesn’t involve more drones or warehouse bots. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon wants to hire members of the general public to act as impromptu delivery drivers — kind of like what Sidecar does — rather than paying UPS to deliver the goods. The service, which could be called “On My Way”, would store packages at local brick-and-mortar retailers in urban areas where the company’s new couriers could grab them.
This idea comes after Amazon saw its shipping costs jumped a whopping 31 percent last year. The company, much like Google and eBay have, is looking to save money on that last and most expensive leg of the deliver: getting it to your door. But given that UPS charges just $8 a pop for the 3.5 million parcels Amazon sends out every day, Amazon will need to hire a lot of drivers if it wants to see any sort of significant cost savings. There’s also the issue of who’d be responsible for lost or damaged packages. As such, Amazon has no timeline for moving forward or any guarantees that it won’t scrap the idea entirely.
[Image Credit: shutterstock]
Filed under: Internet, Google, Amazon
Source: Walls Street Journal
Square Enix made a new game studio for a new console RPG
After news on familiar game series like Hitman, Just Cause and Final Fantasy — Square Enix threw in one more thing into its E3 show: a new console RPG. Currently code-named “Project Setsuna,” the company has set up a new games studio, Tokyo RPG Factory, to guide the new game into existence. The artwork teases a gentle, soft world setting — and it’s a gorgeous one. Expect to hear more later this year, before the game launches in 2016.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
Filed under: Gaming
Twitter automatically plays videos on iOS and the web
Facebook isn’t the only big social network automatically playing most videos these days — Twitter is hopping on that bandwagon, too. Visit your feed on iOS or the web and any GIFs, Vines and native Twitter video will start playing as soon as you look at them. On iOS, clips will go full-screen if you switch to landscape mode. The move is meant to both save you a clip and, of course, keep you using Twitter’s services as much as possible.
Before you ask: yes, Twitter is well aware that automatic video playback could murder your capped mobile data plan. You can turn off the feature when you’re away from WiFi (or altogether, if you prefer), and it won’t kick in if you either have a slow connection or live in an area with especially high bandwidth costs. That’s still going to be annoying if you didn’t want autoplay in the first place, but at least you won’t have to wake up to a gigantic phone bill because of your friend’s concert footage.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Twitter Blog
‘Just Cause 3’ trusted me to create my own ballet of destruction
“We’re not really into subtlety,” says Roland Lesterlin, the director of Just Cause 3, as he and another developer from Avalanche Studios blow up an offshore oil rig in the game. He’s really describing the whole Just Cause series. Avalanche’s adventures tend to marry the openness and freedom of Grand Theft Auto with a litany of explosions. Even with that history, though, it’s hard to do justice to the destruction set off by Rico Rodriguez, Just Cause 3‘s hero, within just seconds of this stage demo at a pre-E3 event. Lesterlin says his team wants players to “always be laughing” while playing Just Cause 3. Indeed, my time with the demo certainly had me chuckling at the game’s seemingly boundless capacity for chaos.
Medici is so lush you just want to blow up everything on it.
Riding around the fictional island of Medici using Rico’s grappling hook, parachute and infinite supply of C4 explosives, Just Cause 3 comes off like a Michael Bay-directed music video for a party remix of the “1812 Overture.” As Rico, I zip up a guard tower, plant a bomb, parachute away and plant more bombs on trucks going over a bridge. Then I light the whole thing up like a cosmic catastrophe. The guard tower crumbles realistically as the trucks ruin the bridge’s structural integrity, making the whole thing tumble to the island floor blow. After the impressively thick dust and debris settle, what’s remarkable to me isn’t the scale of destruction or the creative freedom to pursue it. What’s amazing is how, even in this early unpolished version of the game, it’s all so easy to pull off.
Just Cause 3 comes off like a Michael Bay-directed music video for a party remix of the “1812 Overture.”
Avalanche Studios has been evolving the Just Cause series for years, with each installment offering bigger opportunities for destruction than the last. Just Cause 2 introduced a massive tropical world back in 2010. Just Cause 3‘s most welcome improvement is how smoothly it lets you pull off the same sort of pyrotechnics highlighted in its debut trailer. Picking up an Xbox One controller — the build was actually running on a PC — I acclimate quickly to using Rico’s various tools. All it takes is getting a feel for the physics-be-damned momentum of using his grappling hook and parachute, each deployed with just a tap of a button, and Just Cause 3 takes on a smoothness absent from its predecessors.
That it’s so easy to control makes it much easier to enjoy and discover new options for annihilation. Medici is vast and beautiful, a Mediterranean island chain nation whose three central landmasses are teeming with stucco-walled buildings in quiet villas, fields of sunflowers and facilities full of armed soldiers. Justifying Rico’s reign of fire is a story about Di Ravello, a mad Gaddafian dictator (big hat, aviators, robust propaganda machine, et cetera), controlling the country. This being Rico’s homeland, he’s trying to take Di Ravello down one town at a time, sowing discord by blowing up statues of the ruler as well as his propaganda.
Rico’s gleeful exploitation of the laws of gravity is one of Just Cause 3’s great pleasures.
The story feels almost like a moot point considering how unreal the game is. Fixtures like the statues and the radio towers spewing pro-Di Ravello diatribes can be destroyed when liberating a town. They won’t reappear after they’re taken down. Meanwhile other buildings and structures you destroy will pop back up between play sessions. Any kind of drama that might build out of you nearly ruining your hometown in the process of saving it is washed away by the game’s fussy sense of permanence. If some stuff comes back, but other structures don’t, why would I emotionally invest in all the explosions I’m setting up? Just the pretense of a serious story in Just Cause 3 feels out of place. After I attach a military jeep to a helicopter using the grappling hook and destroy both by flying them into a sailboat, everything pops back up a bit later after I die and restart. Medici is a place that’s impossible to take seriously.
This lays bare how hollow Just Cause 3 will feel to anyone looking for a traditional structure for in-game activities. The build I’m playing, restricted to the first island, is largely devoid of the specific missions typical in open-world games like this, Grand Theft Auto or the popular Batman games. I get a chance to rescue some civilians from Di Ravello’s thugs and even stumble on races that had me steering cars and airplanes through brightly marked checkpoints, but all these goals felt weirdly simplistic compared to the bizarre stuff I could do just toying around with Rico’s arsenal.
This lays bare how hollow Just Cause 3 will feel to anyone looking for a traditional structure for in-game activities.
How I accessed that arsenal might be impossible in the final version of the game. During Lesterlin’s stage demo, he has Rico access a menu to call for supplies that are then delivered by rebels fighting against Di Ravello’s forces. In the demo I’m playing, though, I can access a cheat sheet that automatically plops any weapon or vehicle I want right into the game. Summoning up a fighter jet is as simple as snapping my fingers. It’s not clear if I have to build up to that sort of access with the rebels.
Using a gun is never the most interesting option in Just Cause 3.
Some limitations might be a good thing for someone who’s just picking up Just Cause 3. Causing chaos with more limited means certainly sparks my creativity. It forces me to learn how best to use Rico as a force, a hurricane tearing through the island.
Whether or not it gives everyone access to the full toy box when it comes out this fall, Just Cause 3‘s pleasures are entirely dependent on the player’s disposition. If you need structure and goals to get the most out of a game, then look elsewhere. If you cackle like a madman after finally figuring out to chain together seven speedboats so they all blow up at the same time and land on a tractor you drove into a harbor, then Avalanche has built your ideal playpen.
[Images credit: Square-Enix]
Filed under: Gaming
Belgium hauls Facebook into court over excessive tracking
Belgium’s privacy watchdog has sued Facebook for supposedly “trampling” privacy laws, making good on a threat it made last month. It claimed at the time that the social network “tramples on European and Belgian privacy laws,” and demanded that it make changes to avoid legal action. Its main concern was not the tracking of logged-in Facebook users, but the privacy invasion of non-users on unrelated sites with Facebook “cookies” and other trackers. “These recommendations are chiefly aimed at protecting internet users who are not Facebook members,” said the commission’s president.
For its part, Facebook called the lawsuit “theatrical,” because it was already planning to meet the commission this Friday to discuss its recommendations. It did strike a conciliatory tone, however, saying that while “we are confident that there is no merit to the case,we remain happy to work with them in an effort to resolve their concerns.” The commission has asked the judge to order Facebook to stop tracking non-users via cookies and other means, despite the fact that there are questions over jurisdiction and other issues. It’s worth noting that the EU and member countries have often prevailed when it comes to privacy, however.
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Via: BBC
Source: De Morgen
AIVAnet 