Get your ’80s on with Mixxtape, the portable music player that works like a cassette

Why it matters to you

Mixxtape works like a real cassette tape or a portable music player, adding Bluetooth and digital storage for a modern take on a classic format.

If you want to feel old, consider this: There are currently high schoolers who have likely never heard music being played from a compact disc — let alone a cassette tape. For better or worse (mostly better, though), we’re a generation removed from that unforgettable feeling of frustration when the spools caught an edge and eviscerated your Purple Rain tape.

Even so, many of us still have cassette tape players sitting around and gathering dust, whether in the car or as part of an aging home theater setup. Apart from the sheer nostalgia of the old players, it would be nice to have a use for them, no? Enter Mixxtape — the cassette, reinvented.

A Kickstarter project from Mixxim, this intriguing digital music player blends classic cassette looks with all the functionality you’d expect from a contemporary music device — oh, and it works in your old tape player, too.

At the top of the player (where you’d normally scrawl the name of your mixtape in Sharpie), there’s a little LCD display, with touch controls located to the left. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Micro USB port to allow you to download files from your computer; the player is compatible with both PC and Mac.

The Mixxtape is also equipped with a SD card slot (it comes with an 8GB card, though you can use up to 64GB), and it supports playback for most popular audio codecs, including FLAC, OGG, and AAC files. The battery is claimed to charge fully in under an hour and last for up to 12 hours of playback, depending on use. The kicker: Mixxtape supports Bluetooth 3.0, so it’ll work with newer car stereos or wireless headphones.

Originally conceived as a unique way for artists to present demos to producers, Mixxtape is pretty versatile: Use it as a music player, or upload a playlist of ten grunge songs and go analog, toting a boombox outside your crush’s bedroom window. The only thing we wish it could do is receive a Bluetooth signal from your phone or other device. Then you could finally throwaway that crappy cassette-to-3.5mm adapter posted up in your vintage Volvo.

Still, it looks like the Mixxtape is arriving at just the right time — in the middle of a cassette tape resurgence. The project has exceeded its original goal of $10,000 by around tenfold, with a few days remaining for backers to pledge their support.

Here’s where we’ll dutifully remind you that any crowdfunded project runs the risk of folding before it gets to market. Pledges to Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites require a leap of faith, and should be done with appropriate caution. That said, if you’re looking to get in, a mere $40 (half the projected retail price) will net you a Mixxtape, with rewards ranging up from there depending upon your pledge.

There’s not much time left, so if you’re looking to get your cassette jam on you can make a pledge to Mixxim’s Kickstarter page here.

The U.K. is giving free bionic hands to kids who need them the most

Why it matters to you

Bionic hands can transform lives for amputees. The U.K.’s National Health Service could make them available to those who need them, free of charge.

Bionic hand prostheses have been around for a while, but the U.K.’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) wants to make them more readily available to those who need them the most. With that in mind, it recently started a six-month clinical trial in the city of Bristol to offer prostheses to 10 child amputees, free of charge.

Should all go well, there is a chance that high-end prostheses like this could be available at no cost to the user.

To achieve its goal, it is working with a British prosthetics company called Open Bionics, which uses 3D printing to lower the cost of creating hand prostheses from $65,000-plus to a much more affordable $6,000. Since that is still out of reach for many people, however, the NHS is stepping in to cover the additional costs.

Tilly Lockey, an 11-year-old who lost both her hands following a bout of meningitis as a baby, told the BBC that her new prosthesis looks, “awesome and … makes you feel confident.

“Instead of people thinking they feel sorry for you because you don’t have a hand, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a cool hand!’” she said.

Open Bionics has been working in this area for some time and has racked up numerous awards — including the James Dyson award for innovative engineering in 2015. It has also come to a royalty-free agreement with companies like Disney so that it can base its prosthetics on properties like Marvel Comics, Star Wars, and Frozen. Lockey’s hand is based on the video game Deus Ex.

Its 3D-printed prostheses consist of four separately printed pieces and are customized for each user based on 3D body scans. They boast smart sensors which can detect the user’s muscle movement to work out when to open and close the fingers.

There is no word on when a decision will be made about moving the NHS study forward.

You can get a free Roku from AT&T if you prepay for DirecTV Now

Why it matters to you

This offer will save you $80 on a new Roku Premiere device.

If you are in the market for a Roku Premiere set-top box, you may want to give AT&T a call. The carrier is offering a free Roku Premiere to any new customer that prepays two months of their DirecTV Now subscription.

It is a limited time offer and only new customers signing up for DirecTV Now are eligible to get a free Roku Premiere. Do not expect to stockpile on Roku devices since AT&T is limiting each customer to two Roku boxes. You can redeem your offer online now on DirecTV Now’s website. You will be able to get your Roku from an AT&T store starting June 23.

AT&T is giving you a free way to watch DirecTV Now, but the company is also offering a new cost-effective bundle. Earlier this month, those with an AT&T Unlimited Choice mobile subscription could get unlimited data and access to DirecTV Now’s 60-plus channel Live A Little package for $70 per month. Unlimited Choice plans start at $60 per month, Live A Little starts at $35 per month, so that offer could save you $25 every month.

DirecTV Now has been struggling to get new subscribers recently. In its first month, DirecTV Now amassed more than 200,000 subscribers. In May, DirecTV Now reportedly lost 3,000 subscribers in February and remained flat in March for a total subscriber base hovering around 325,000 as of late May. Its over-the-top competitor — Dish’s Sling TV — has been the leader in the skinny bundle race with 1.3 million subscribers at the end of March.

Offering free goodies to entice new customers has been in AT&T’s promotional strategy since DirecTV Now launched in November. For the first six weeks of DirecTV Now’s existence, AT&T offered 100 channels for $35 a month. That is nearly 50 percent off the price of its 100 channel Go Big package which is $60 per month. That promotional period coincided with DirecTV Now’s best month in terms of subscriber growth.

Mophie Charge Force review: A better, smarter Galaxy S8 charging case

With Charge Force, Mophie builds a charging platform that takes advantage of the Galaxy S8’s built-in wireless charging. And it’s pretty damn good.

Battery cases are kind of a bummer. They promise the world, but in the end you get a fatter phone and an extra couple pieces of plastic you have to carry around with you when the battery dies. And despite the success of Mophie’s own Juice Pack line of cases, the company thinks it has something better: Charge Force.

It’s a line of cases that, starting with the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 7, offer an approximation of modularity — high-quality, leather phone covers that add (in the case of the iPhone) or reinforce (with the Galaxy S8) wireless charging, along with highly precise magnets that help align the pièce de resistance of the whole thing: a portable wireless battery pack.

The idea is simple yet compelling, especially with the Galaxy S8, for which the leather case acts only as protector and magnetic conduit — the iPhone 7 version, not having wireless charging built in, is much bulkier, and occupies the Lightning port — since the battery pack sticks to the case magnetically, charging wirelessly as the phone lies in a pocket or on a desk.

The case itself

The Charge Force case is surprisingly good. In fact, it’s quickly become my favorite mid-level protection case in my repertoire. Made from strong, curved plastic — think a slightly less bulky version of the Otterbox Symmetry series — with a real leather overlay, it is comfortable to hold and extremely solid, holding the Galaxy S8 firmly in place.

This is a really good case. And it better be for $50.

Like all other Galaxy S8 cases, it makes finding and using the fingerprint sensor much easier, since there’s a clear delineation between phone and perimeter. And, like any good case, it reinforces and improves the feeling of the buttons, which on the Galaxy S8 is an essential part of the experience.

The Powerstation mini

The Powerstation mini is the main event, since the Galaxy S8 already has wireless charging and doesn’t need any help from the case. Instead, the case helps align the Powerstation, a 3,300mAh wirelessly charging battery, using magnets.

The battery pack gets in the way of the Galaxy S8’s fingerprint sensor while it’s charging your phone.

When you’re running low on power, you bring the back of the Powerstation close to that of the Galaxy S8 and — wham! — they stick together in the perfect position every time. Hold down the unit’s power button for a few moments and you’ll soon hear an accompanying haptic vibration on the Galaxy S8 to indicate it is charging wirelessly.

Of course, charging sans wires means that it’s going to do so a little more slowly than plugging into a battery pack, but this keeps the phone’s bottom clear (and in turn doesn’t add height to the phone, which all other battery cases do) and thanks to the magnets, it’s fairly easy to use the Galaxy S8 while the Powerstation is connected.

There is only one problem with this whole thing: while the Powerstation is slowly juicing your phone, it’s nearly impossible to hit the fingerprint sensor, since the, well, protrusion gets in the way. This is less Mophie’s fault than Samsung’s (though if the fingerprint sensor was positioned where it is on the Pixel or LG G6 it would be impossible to activate) but it’s still a bit annoying.

The Powerstation charges using Micro-USB, which is unfortunate, but it’s so portable and convenient in other ways I’m wont to forgive that small oversight. Doubly so because, given that Mophie is attempting to make an ecosystem out of Charge Force, all Powerstations are cross device-compatible, which means that the same wireless battery pack will work on an iPhone 7 as well as future cases.

There are also other, larger-capacity batteries in the Powerstation family, including a $100, 10,000mAh pack that offers an additional USB port for charging another device.

Should you buy it?

Honestly, if the case wasn’t any good I’d say skip it, but the Charge Force is so well made that it’s quickly been elevated to my favorite Galaxy S8 cover. That it facilitates a magnetic connection to a portable wireless charger seems silly at first, but there were so many instances in the week or so I relied on the system to keep my phone topped up that I came to appreciate it.

Yes, it’s no different to carrying around a lone battery pack — indeed, this is one with only wireless charging — except for the odd time I needed to use my phone while it charged. Then I liked, and appreciated, the integrated nature of Charge Force.

See at Mophie

Twitter’s new look includes a redesign for its Android app

The social network has undergone some major remodeling, including a tweak of its iconography.

After a vigorous beta testing phase and numerous feedback from fervent tweeters, Twitter has finally rolled out a new look and a bevy of new features. If you’re on the social network, you’ll see these changes reflected in Twitter for Android, TweetDeck, Twitter Lite, and on twitter.com.

The full rundown of features has been elaborated on in an official blog post. The new additions are as follows:

• Profile, additional accounts, settings, and privacy – all in one place! A new side navigation menu and fewer tabs at the bottom of our app = less clutter and easier browsing. You told us you loved this change on Android last year and we’re excited to now bring it to iOS.
• Links to articles and websites now open in Safari’s viewer in the Twitter app so you can easily access accounts on websites you’re already signed into. [iOS only]
• We’ve refined our typography to make it more consistent, and added bolder headlines to make it easier to focus on what’s happening. Also, rounded profile photos make it clearer to see what’s being said and who’s saying it.
• More intuitive icons make it easier to engage with Tweets – especially if you’re coming to Twitter for the first time. For example, people thought the reply icon, an arrow, meant delete or go back to a previous page. We switched to a speech bubble, a symbol most know and love. We also made the icons lighter for more seamless interaction.
• Tweets now update instantly with reply, Retweet, and like counts so you can see conversations as they’re happening – live.

If you’ve logged in to Twitter today through the web, you’ve likely already seen these changes. The icons are lighter, rounder, and decidedly more millennial-esque in their aesthetic. What’s particularly interesting to note is that the icons were remade to be “more intuitive” due to the fact that “people thought the reply icon, an arrow, meant delete or go back to a previous page.” You’ll see a speech bubble where the arrows were instead.

The new layout isn’t out on Android yet, though beta users have already had some time with it. There’s no mention of an update in the Google Play Store either, but Twitter has noted that it’s in the process of rolling out.

So, how do people feel about the new Twitter changes? Naturally, they took to Twitter:

Feelings about the Twitter redesign. pic.twitter.com/q9jLREY7gs

— Norm Kelly (@norm) June 15, 2017

How are you feeling about the Twitter changes? Do you think they were really necessary considering Twitter’s host of other problems? And do you think the redesign makes the Android app look like more like iOS?

Forget Amazon Go cashier-less stores, Moby Mart is already here

Imagine an Amazon Go – but on wheels.

Swedish startup Wheelys has come up with a cashier-less, driver-less store called Moby Mart. But unlike Amazon Go, which is stationary and based in Seattle, Moby Mart is now cruising down the streets of Shanghai. It’s a completely autonomous store that you can locate via an app and access 24 hours a day. It’s stocked with basic foods, including snacks, as well as over-the-counter medicine and magazines.

Moby Mart, which is about the size of a small bus, is a prototype for now that’s controlled by humans, but ultimately, it hopes to one day use a combination of artificial intelligence and computer vision to navigate. There are no lines, no cashiers, and no cash. You simply locate and enter the vehicle, then scan the items you want, and the Moby Mart app will check you out. It can even re-stock on its own.

Wheelys

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Moby Mart is solar-powered and can communicate with other Moby Mart vehicles. It can also notify a warehouse when it’s running low on goods and then drives itself over to fill back up. But that’s not all: there are drones atop Moby Mart that can deliver products within a three-mile radius. We got the impression that customers can not only locate Moby Mart via the app, but also summon the mobile stores.

Wheelys partnered with a Chinese university on the prototype and has been testing it in Shanghai for the past two months. It’s now just gone live, and amazingly, there are plans to produce more of them in 2018. According to Forbes, Wheelys said they’re available for as little as $4,000. It’s already sold roughly 850 units in 70 countries.

Ladies and gents, the future is now.

Best games of E3 2017: Xbox One, PS4 and Switch games that stole the show

Giant videogames show E3 2017 is well underway and we’ve already got our hands on several amazing titles coming up later this year or beyond.

As well as a brand new console, the Xbox One X, the show has potentially yielded the best Call of Duty game in many years, an amazing new outing for Spider-Man and, of course, Super Mario Odyssey – playable for the first time.

So here’s our round-up of the best games we’ve played or seen at the show so far. We’ll also be updating this list as we get time with additional blockbusters.

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Call of Duty: WWII

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: 3 November 2017

Activision

The latest Call of Duty (affectionately known as COD: WW2) returns to its second World War roots to great effect.

Gone is the madcap, sci-fi action of the last few games in the franchise and in comes a more tangible, gritty tale of brotherhood on the battlefields.

We got to play a couple of multiplayer modes at the show, with team deathmatch and the all-new War Mode on offer. The latter was especially interesting because it had different objectives to meet in an elongated round, with two teams of five taking turns to play as the axis and allies.

There are multiple fighter classes to choose from and each was great for a particular strategy.

The game looks stunning, so we have great hopes that series is to return to its very best.

Strange Brigade

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: “Coming soon”
• Strange Brigade gameplay preview: Undead onslaught is oodles of fun

Rebellion

Sniper Elite developer and publisher Rebellion had many a tongue wagging during the show thanks to its oh-so British co-op action game Strange Brigade.

It draws on the derring do tales of matinee programmes of the 40s and 50s, with mummies and the undead facing a bunch of odd, powerful adventures and the end result is something new and refreshing.

The game is more action-based and faster paced than the Sniper Elite series, but is still played in third-person. Hordes of enemies stream towards the players, whether there be two to three of them. It can also be played solo and is subsequently tweaked to provide a challenge but still beatable.

We particularly like the stiff upper-lipped narrator who, we were told, might even give you some wrong directions and information at times.

Far Cry 5

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: 27 February 2018
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Ubisoft

The new Far Cry outing has the potential of being teh most brutal yet. It also touches on a sensitive and current subject matter, with the villain this time around being a cult and militia leader in the north west of America.

He has enslaved many of the populace of Hope County and it is your job as a local deputy sheriff to bring him and his family to justice and restore the local towns to their former safe havens.

We played a great level, even fished and flew an aircraft in the game. A much wider variety of vehicles are drivable this time around and the Guns for Hire feature, where you can employ the services of another character, even a dog named Boomer, to help you get through missions.

Spider-Man

• Format(s): PS4
• Release date: 2018

Sony

The game given the biggest fanfare at Sony’s E3 2017 press conference wasn’t The Last of Us 2 but Spider-Man.

Insomniac’s new open world superhero adventure certainly looks the part, having been shown in 4K and with HDR.

However, it should be its gameplay that impresses most. It very much seems to be a Batman Arkham game in brighter coloured tights, and there’s no harm in that.

Spidey can swing through a Manhatten four or five times the size of Sunset City – as in Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac’s last open world title. He can also use different gadgets throughout the game to take down bad guys in ever more spectacular ways.

FIFA 18

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: 29 September 2017
• FIFA 18: Release date, what’s new and everything you need to know

EA

We actually spent several hours with an early build of FIFA 18 prior to E3, but the game had improved a bit more in time for the show.

It is excellent this year, with astonishing graphical fidelity and the attention to detail to get players and stadiums right is great. They really do look almost photo realistic this time around.

The animation engine has also been dramatically improved, which doesn’t just make the game look better, but play better too. Animations are now rendered on a frame by frame basis, so the response time between you moving the thumbstick and the player reacting is significantly enhanced.

Oh, and there are wondergoals. We’ve already scored (and have been victims of) some proper crackers.

Destiny 2

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: 6 September 2017 (PS4 and Xbox One), PC version to follow
• Destiny 2 preview: Hands-on with PS4 and PC campaign, strike and PVP modes
• Destiny 2: Release date, screens, formats and everything you need to know

Activision

As with FIFA, we played Destiny 2 extensively ahead of the show, but just seeing the buzz it generated amongst the public on the show floor was incredible.

The four versus four PVP mode Countdown was available to play and its every bit as good as we’d remembered.

In Countdown your team alternates between defending or attacking two specific points on the map. During the defence round, you have to prevent your rivals from successfully placing charges on the points, defusing them if necessary. And then it’s vice versa.

It quick-paced and dropping the action to four players on each side makes it easier for newcomers and mid-level players to get to grips with it quickly.

Super Mario Odyssey

• Format(s): Switch
• Release date: 27 October 2017
• Super Mario Odyssey gameplay preview: Aces and oddities

Nintendo

Possibly the game we were most itching to see at this year’s E3, Super Mario Odyssey was playable on the Nintendo stand – something apparent by the enormous queue that snaked around it.

Fun and funky in equal measure, the game had several worlds you could visit in the demo. It was also playable using motion controls, with each Joy-Con of the Nintendo Switch performing different actions depending on how you swung them.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but no more so than Super Mario Galaxy did on the Wii. You can also play the game with a conventional Pro Controller or using the Joy-Cons in their grip.

As for the gameplay, it’s great, bonkers and everything we could have hoped for in a Mario game for a new platform.

Skull & Bones

• Format(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Release date: “Fall” 2018

Ubisoft

It’s early days for Skull & Bones as it’s not expected until next autumn, but we had a couple of frenzied five-versus-five PVP battles on a pre-alpha build and it has a lot of promise.

The competitive online game was certainly easy to pick up for us, being big fans of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. The ship sailing and combat mechanics are identical to the seabound sections of that game.

We, and four other players on our team, had to destroy merchant ships, pick up their loot and then escape the hunter ships and choppy waters. The other team had to do the same and the end result is some excellent, frenzied firefights.

You could choose one of three different classes of ship, which complement each other when you get a good balance amongst the team. We chose the Enforcer, which has the best firepower but is by far the slowest to turn and manoeuvre.

We’re really looking forward to playing more of this one next year. 

Life Is Strange 2 Before The Storm preview: No rewind mechanic, it’s all about the angst

Life Is Strange. It really is. And the game of the same name explored that concept in a fascinating life-meets-supernatural way when it was released in 2015.

Now there’s a prequel: Before The Storm. Set in Arcadia Bay once more, it rewinds the timeline by three years, following a 16-year-old Chloe Price. It’s two years since her Dad died, her best friend Max – the lead character of the original Life Is Strange – has recently exited her life, so she’s a mix of angsty teenage emotion. And the game really plugs into that.

The play style of Before The Storm is the same as the original game: navigate locations, interact with people and make choices that will affect not only the short term, but resonate as longer term consequences throughout each of the three chapters – the first is released August 31, 2017, with the other two to follow as downloadable chapters.

What’s particularly interesting about Before The Storm is that it’s done away with the “rewind” mechanic of the original game. This is was what gave Life Is Strange its unique quirk: Max was able to stop and rewind time, to make changes, fix mistakes; it was a core concept that gave the game a point of difference.

With rewind ditched in Before The Storm – and there’s no other similar mechanic according to Deck Nine’s co-director – the game depends on emotion, of pulling on the heart strings. Maybe that’ll work just fine, maybe the prequel will lack that point of difference that made the original so strong.

Square Enix

There are similar mechanics between the two titles, however: Chloe can write graffiti onto objects, in a similar way to how Max would take photos in the original game.

We were shown a 30 minute play session across three distinctive areas of the game’s world. It begins with Chloe breaking into a rock concert, where she can make choices about stealing a band tee, a wad of cash, of apologising for spilling someone’s drink or not.

The new location introduces familiar characters: from Frank (your weed dealer) to Rachel Amber, the missing girl from the original Life Is Strange. But this story, while it’s about Rachel to some degree, isn’t about her disappearance – Deck Nine says it’s not about going in a straight line to a known conclusion, to give fans something fresh and new.

Square Enix

If you’re into point-and-click puzzle adventures than Life Is Strange: Before The Storm looks like it’ll go down a storm. It’s got all the teenage angst and attitude of the original. The only question mark over it is whether the lack of a rewind power will shift the game from the supernatural masterpiece of the original into something more linear and familiar.

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm’s first chapter is released on PS4, Xbox One and PC on August 31, 2017.

Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus gameplay preview: The intense first-person shooter is back and in fine form

Wolfenstein: The New Order was more than a little intense. When the classic shooter was relaunched by Bethesda back in 2014, it set hearts racing for not only its first-person action, but its intense Nazi characters and their casual brutality. Some scenes were almost tortorous to watch, but propelled the game forward in giving it a gritty, must-play setting and story.

The follow-up, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, continues in the same stead. You play as William “B.J.” Blazkowicz. But – spolier alert – things aren’t so rosy, given he was left to die at the end of the last game.

But death can’t take ol’ B.J., so for The New Colossus he’s back, albeit in less than fine form. Having been in a coma for five months, his body is broken and the opening section of the game sees him in a wheelchair, which gives a whole different dynamic to first-person play.

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Wheeling around is slower, strafe is tougher and, obviously, climbing ladders and going up stairs isn’t possible. B.J. can roll down stairs at speed and there are various moving platforms in the engine sections of the submarine setting, which is where B.J. has been taken to recover and hide from the Nazis.

However, the sub has been tracked down by Irene Engel, the cruel antogonist from The New Order, whose appearance is less then ship-shape, given that B.J. tore half her face off in the original game. Scars in place, she’s mighty pissed off and the hunt is on.

Bethesda

Engel is a masterclass in acting: cruel and unusual in her ways, flipping between German and English, fat-shaming her plus sized “daughter”, while being fearless in her brutality once B.J. is captured. There’s an axe involved with chants of “do it, do it” before our demo cuts to a close, leaving us to wonder what happened.

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What we love about Wolfenstein is how it plays as a single player first-person shooter. In our minds there aren’t that many in the genre that really nail down the solo campaign. But that’s the lifeblood of Wolfenstein. It’s got a rich story and greater characters, five levels of difficulty, heaps of weapons and enemies that vary in their attacks and methods to dispatch them.

The submarine also has vaporising traps which can be switched on or off to entrap enemies – just make sure you don’t roll B.J. through them once they’re switched on! – and one of the ramps is so steep that B.J. will tumble from his chair, making for an intense crawl back into the hot seat.

Bethesda

Of course, we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. But even from this teaser taster playthrough, we’re already convinced it’s going to be one of 2017’s top shooters. A compelling and different one at that, which is just what gaming needs.

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC on October 27, 2017.

In ‘Far Cry 5,’ your teammates might be the real stars

Far Cry 5 is one of the most anticipated games at E3 2017, even if it won’t be out until 2018 — like so many other titles previewed this week. That distant launch might be why I felt surprised that the early demo on show at Ubisoft’s booth was already so polished. In typical Far Cry style, the environments are lush and detailed (and delightfully colorful too). Cultist fighters also swarm on your location and chase you through the forest, just as you’d expect. The most notable change, then, isn’t the series’ relocation to Montana, but the company you keep as you battle the cult. Yep, while you are still pretty much a one-man army, at least one person (or canine) has your back this time around, which not only makes things slightly easier but also affects how you play through the game.

The demo offered three allies for the same church-based flashpoint you might have seen in the gameplay trailer earlier this week. That teaser showcased all three characters in action at once, but I only got to choose one. My Fallout 4 sensibilities kicked in and went immediately for Boomer the dog, who mauls and distracts enemies, retrieves weapons and is such a good boy, yes you are. (You can pet Boomer anytime you want. It’s the gameplay feature we always needed.)

I’m not the stealthiest of players, so my play-through consisted of a lot of botched sneaking attempts, some sticks of dynamite, and some lucky breaks: One dynamite explosion set off a chain reaction of fiery vehicles and killed off most of the peripheral enemies around the church. I also noticed that this iteration of Far Cry ditches the mini-map (thanks, Zelda!), opting for a compass-like halo that more subtly points you toward objects and enemies.

Without the sniper character or pilot to act as support, teaming up with Boomer creates a more direct approach as you flank enemies, revive the dog when needed and just generally get up in the face of gun-toting troublemakers. I completely forgot to actually go into the church (I probably should have) and was soon on my way to the next mission, which involved smashing an 18-wheeler into other cars, hopping into a tiny prop plane to blow up some silos and then even a quick dogfight with a rival pilot. (He lost.)

I didn’t have time to play the demo with the other backup characters, but a sniper would have definitely assisted in my gung-ho play style, and while I got to meet the pilot during the demo’s missions, I ended up flying his plane myself. Far Cry 5’s early trailers hint that both allies and other non-playable characters will have stories to tell and motives for their actions — it’s something I’m looking forward to hearing more about. Oh, and the idea of your online buddies getting in on the action through a cooperative mode? That sounds even more intriguing.

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!