Our Best and Worst E3 Memories – Podcast Unlocked
DOWNLOAD PODCAST UNLOCKED EPISODE 197
As E3 2015 approaches, each of our Xbox podcast crew shares his best – or worst – E3 memories. Plus: we get teased by Halo 3: ODST releasing for Xbox One (but ultimately it didn't), teased by a real baseball game on Xbox (nope, it doesn't have the MLB license), and more!
NOTES:
The Halo 3: ODST discussion starts at the 22:18 mark.
The Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings discussion starts at the 25:58 mark.
The Need for Speed/Criterion's "GoPro" game discussion starts at the 31:35 mark.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 for PS4 Suffering Performance Issues
Street Fighter has made the jump to PlayStation 4 but things aren't going well.
Users have reported numerous issues with Ultra Street Fighter IV after its launch on PS4 yesterday, according to EventHubs. Problems include a Juri glitch, which makes a copy of her appear on screen (as evidenced by the video posted to YouTube by user nsb5024, as seen below), as well as a separate issue where her fireballs are invisible. Guile also suffers a similar issue with his Sonic Booms.
9 Post-New 52 DC Comics We Can’t Wait to Read
With DC's Convergence takeover ending this week, it's time to look forward to June, the publisher's first month of post-New 52 comics. The New 52 branding might be gone, but half of DC's comics are continuing as normal while a slew of new comics debut at issue #1.
Of all the comics hitting in June, these are the nine we are most excited to read. Check out our list, then let us know what you're jazzed for in the comments.
A Text Message Could Crash Your iPhone
Owners of Apple's iPhone are facing a new crashing bug, which can be delivered by simply sending a text message.
Ars Technica reports that the "CoreText" bug is caused a combination of ASCII and unicode characters, starting with the word "effective." Receiving the text causes the iPhone to crash.
To prevent yourself from falling victim to the bug, you can go into your system settings and turn off text message previews (Notifications>Messages>Show Previews). That will keep you from having an instant crash upon receiving the message normally, but some users have reported that using the WhatsApp for messaging could also trigger the bug. The reports also claim Mac OS X is vulnerable, but only by using the Terminal.
Magnetic: Cage Closed Review
Magnetic: Cage Closed is a game where every second is a battle against loose jumping and even looser primary gimmick powers as you solve mindless puzzles. Unwieldy imprecision is at the core of Magnetic, and it makes for a terribly frustrating experience.
Originally created as a student project for developer Guru Games, Magnetic: Cage Closed is a puzzle-platformer with magnetic force as the primary gimmick. Stuck in some dystopian prison (for reasons that are never properly explained) and sentenced to death row, your character is given a chance at freedom if she can escape the twisted, sadistic warden’s experimental weapons laboratory by becoming the latest guinea pig for a new supertool: a magnet gun.
If that sounds like an intriguing premise, it is. The game was originally designed as Portal meets The Cube, and solving physics-based puzzles in a totalitarian prison environment sounds like an idea with legs. However, it's clear that Magnetic: Cage Closed doesn't have the personality or fresh perspective to pull this sort of material off. The primary villain, the warden, is GlaDos without any of that homicidal AI's charm or humor. And while the game has every right to tell a more serious story, it doesn't, despite many attempts. There's no nuance or subtlety to the villains, your environment, or your actions. Thus, the story is an "evil prison" with no context or heart pushing you forward.
The game's primary gimmick is magnetic attraction/repulsion. You're given a magnet gun--with three different power settings--that you can use to attract surfaces or repel them. You can use your gun to pick up boxes and then shoot them across the room. You can levitate across specialized magnetic pads and use those pads to fling yourself across rooms. But at every turn, it never felt like I was in true control of my movements and actions.
It's the little things that add up in Magnetic: Cage Closed's avalanche of missteps. Mid-puzzle checkpoints are a rarity, almost to the point of being non-existent. For many of the more-involved, late-game puzzles, you will play long sections of puzzles over and over again as you reach the spot where one botched jump or poorly executed magnetic repulsion flight means instant death through impalement or a slow death through chlorine gas poison.
At the beginning of the game, it's not an issue. Magnetic is simply dull. But the back half of the game featured multiple puzzles that I spent over half an hour on (and two that took over an hour) not because the puzzles were difficult to solve--puzzles are never more involved than "get boxes here"--but because the platforming refused to cooperate. Various "puzzles" rely on trial-and-error guessing instead of logic. You're required to shoot boxes at certain buttons surrounded by magnetic attraction/repulsion pads, which create magnetic fields around the button keeping you from shooting the box directly at the button. And that's cool...in theory. But what it ultimately comes to is figuring out early where exactly you need to shoot the box and then spending 10 minutes nailing the sweet spot.
The game also features "moral choices," but they're extremely simple. The first choice (arguably the most clever) involves simply pressing a button or not pressing a button within one minute. The rest are stale: sentence someone to certain death or don't (without ever putting a face to the person you're making a decision about); seek revenge or take a more selfless action. The choices could have been interesting, but you’re never given any context to make you care about why you're doing anything.
Magnetic: Cage Closed is not a puzzle platformer that will tickle your brain and push your problem-solving capabilities. Extreme repetition, poor controls, and a barely there story makes this game a dull proposition from start to finish.
The History of the Lightsaber
Welcome back to Star Wars School, where we delve into the past, present and future of that franchise we all love so much. Today we’re discussing the lightsaber -- truly one of the greatest weapons ever imagined!
9 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Millennium Falcon
But where did the lightsaber come from? And where is it going in the new series of films, comics and books? Yes, there’s much more to the ultimate Star Wars weapon than just lopping off hands and slicing and dicing battle droids. This, padawans, is the history of the lightsaber…
Star Trek’s Chris Pine Eyes Wonder Woman Role
Star Trek star Chris Pine is reportedly in talks to join the Wonder Woman cast as U.S. Army intelligence officer Steve Trevor.
According to Variety, Pine is in negotiations with Warner Bros. to play Gal Gadot's love interest in the DC Comics film. Warner Bros. had no comment on the casting report.
In the comic books, Wonder Woman (then known as Princess Diana of Themyscira) takes care of and starts caring about Trevor after his plane crashes on Paradise Island during World War II. When he returns home, the Amazon princess follows him and eventually becomes the titular hero.
Doctor Who Returns to Comic-Con This Year
Following their absence during the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, several cast and crew members of BBC America's Doctor Who have been confirmed to appear at the event in 2015.
Peter Capaldi will be in attendance for the first time after a season as the new Doctor, along with Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, lead writer/executive producer Steven Moffat, and executive producer Brian Minchin. All five will be on a panel held in Hall H on Thursday, July 9.
The newest season of Doctor Who will air this fall with a two-part episode on BBC America, and showrunner Steven Moffat doesn't expect the show to end any time soon.
Sinister and Menacing: The Darth Maul Play Arts Kai is Great
Square-Enix’s Play Arts Kai line has revealed its take on Star Wars villain Darth Maul.
Although the Play Arts line is known for its reimagining of iconic characters, the Darth Maul figure takes a familiar, albeit sinister, approach.
The 10 inch figure comes with two heads--one with a mean glare, the other like it’s going to seriously mess you up--three sets of hands, two sets for gripping and one set in the style of a force-choke, and of course, a double-ended lightsaber. The set also comes with two regular lightsaber shafts and two red energy beams that can be placed in either the dual-saber or the two single sabers depending on what suits your fancy.
The Darth Maul Variant figurine will be available in Japan from August for 13,000 Yen ($100).
Transformers Origin Film Reportedly in the Works
Ant-Man writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari have joined Paramount’s Transformers brain trust, possibly to work on a Cybertron origin film.
Deadline reports that Barrer and Ferrari, who did production rewriting on Marvel’s Ant-Man, are the latest scribes to sign on to the Transformers “writer’s room” that has been spearheaded by writer-producer Akiva Goldsman in recent months with the goal of creating new sequels and spin-off films in the series. Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Pacific Rim 2’s Zak Penn, and Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lost’s Jeff Pinkner are also part of this team.