#in all seriousness half life alyx is such a good game

[bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls]

The Daily Dad — Feb 20, 2024

Things you might want to know:

‘Everything is hairless’: what 100 women taught me about porn and body confidence 💭 I feel like anyone seriously researching porn’s influence on women’s self-image in the 2020s has to be old as fuck, ‘cause no one under fifty thinks that porn is having a meaningful impact on modern self-image in the era of Instagram. When it comes to generating insecurity, a bruised-up, bored porn slut being impaled by a sketchy cock has got nothin’ on a perfect size 0 lounging —toned and smooth— in an microscopic bikini next to an infinity pool overlooking Santorini while eating an improbable pizza.

Legendary Publisher EC Comics Rises From the Grave - IGN ❝ Oni has become the official home of the EC Comics brand, via a partnership with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. The new line will be overseen by Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson and Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn in partnership with Cathy Gaines Mifsud and Corey Mifsud, the administrators of William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.

Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content 💭 I just nuked a handful of my stories from Reddit. It probably won’t achieve much… they’ll probably let their scraping-buddy —coughOpenAIcough— go through the deleted content too. But it was a small price to pay for the chance to say “fuck you” to our imminent overlords.

The Text File That Runs the Internet ❝ "For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart."

New FDA-approved drug makes severe food allergies less life-threatening 💭 Before long I won’t be able to count on a peanut perimeter to protect me from a full-on snuggle assault… which we in the business call a ‘Blossom Blitz’.

‘Life Is Strange’ and ‘Life Is Strange: Before the Storm’ Have Been Updated for Modern iOS Device and OS Support 💭 Okay, so Life Is Strange’s writing is hella whack, yo. And the expression-challenged character models tend to make it feel like a department store mannequin production of an off-off-Broadway play about loss, death, and Polaroids. But the “rewind” mechanic elevates the material, and I’m glad we’ve been playing it on the stream. If you want a mobile version of it, here ya go…

New York archdiocese calls funeral for trans activist at cathedral ‘scandalous’ ❝ Pastor of St Patrick’s Cathedral condemns service for Cecilia Gentili after she was celebrated as being ‘mother of all whores’

After a decade and $1.2 billion, NASA reveals its booty from Bennu: 121 grams 💭 It saddens me when stories like this —which should be presented as the exciting developments they are— lead with angerbait bullshit along the lines of ‘See how much they spent to get so little?! Here are some paragraphs explaining why this is actually cool, but we couldn’t get you to read without pissing you off first.’ Human beings do something amazing, and it ends up serving random economic grievances.

Asgard’s Wrath 2 Review - IGN 💭 I’m tempted to buy this for my Quest 2, but I haven’t gotten into a VR game since Half-Life: Alyx, and I’m not sure I want to spend 90 hours spinning in circles and trying not to fall into the TV.

ChatGPT vs. Gemini: Which AI Chatbot Subscription Is Right for You? ❝ Everyone wants your $20 per month for access to their best AI chatbot. Who gets it depends on what features are important to you.

OpenAI collapses media reality with Sora, a photorealistic AI video generator 💭 I recently read a pretty convincing argument that the nature of this generation of generative AI is self-limiting… the nature of the models will lead to most machine-created media looking uncannily similar, and thus boring. It won’t look bad, but those who consume enough of it will start to spot the seams. Which is good… in the short term. Hopefully, society will have time to prepare itself for the seamless shit we’ll see in 2040.

For Hundreds of Years, People Thought California Was an Island ❝ Dozens of maps show cartography's most persistent mistake.

How to get on 'Survivor': Behind the scenes of casting season 45 ❝ How do you get on 'Survivor'? Read the incredible stories and watch the audition videos of contestants that made in onto season 45.

Nvidia CEO calls for “Sovereign AI” as his firm overtakes Amazon in market value 💭 I’m not saying that there’s nothing to his argument. I’m just not sure that the dudes who stand to make billions —trillions?— from machine learning hardware are the right ones to be calling for what will essentially become a post-nuclear, multi-polar Cold War.

Walmart might buy Vizio to win the fight over cheap TVs ❝ Walmart is in talks to buy Vizio for $2 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The deal could put Walmart in a position to compete with smart TVs from Roku and Amazon.

#news

[aviyinglet]

Maddy’s VR Game Recs #3: Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds benefits from not being spoiled at all (seriously), so I'm going to speak at arm's length about it: This is a flatscreen game that can be modded to use motion controls using Raicuparta's excellent NomaiVR mod. I exclusively played it that way, and as a result, I remember this game as a series of in-person spaces I navigated through; a remarkable feature to add to a game that's been so frequently and glowingly compared to Myst. This game and its DLC would've already been all-timers for me, and VR has only elevated it; I'd rank it above Half-Life: Alyx as not just the most impressive VR game, but also the best argument yet for making VR versions of every game that takes place from a first-person perspective, at least for those who want it.

Be forewarned, this game was not graphically designed for VR and so requires a relatively modern video card to run smoothly; I played on a card equivalent to a 3060 Ti using FSR and had a pretty good time. It also uses smooth locomotion and contains 6DOF spaceflight, meaning you need to be used to VR to play.

#reviews #games #vr

[jubilee-lining]

just finished watching the vinesauce hla vods and i am LOSING MY MIND at that ending

please valve hl3/ep3 please?? please?? pretty please?

#-alyx #OUGHHHHHH #my soul #in all seriousness half life alyx is such a good game #plot wise mechanic wise and art/sound design wise #if valve is just baiting people again im gonna lose it

[corhore]

The best games of 2020

Doom Eternal

RIP AND TEAR BIG GUTS!

Resident Evil 3 

Could've been better, but Jill lives in my head rent free. 

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

The best FF game since 12. A great reimagining of FF7. Tifa also lives in my head rent free. 

Half-Life: Alyx

A great vr game, that not many people can play cus its a vr game. 

Wasteland 3

The best Fallout game in years. 

Crash Bandicoot 4

Holy fuck is this game hard, but holy fuck do I want to lay my head in Tawna’s thighs. 

Desperados 3

Sleeper hit of 2020. Sneaky cowboy game make me happy. 

Pikmin 3: Deluxe

Yeah its a release of a 7 year old game, but of all the re-releases in the past few years I played this one the most. 

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

The only Dynasty Warriors spin off that I actually like. Being able to play as Urbosa makes it a automatic 10/10.

Honorable mentions

Cyberpunk 2077

The buggy release kinda hindered my enjoyment of it a bit, but what it has to offer is some seriously good stuff. Just gotta wait for the bugs to get fixed. 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Haven’t played it enough to get an opinion of it, but I liked what I played so far.

#best games of 2020 #yakuza like a dragon #cyberpunk 2077 #age of calamity #pikmin #desperados 3 #crash bandicoot #wasteland 3 #half life alyx #resident evil #final fantasy 7 #doom eternal

[aredletterday]

change da world. my final message

I believe it’s been about two months since the discourse surrounding Freemance vs. Freehoun started, though I don’t exactly have a great grasp on the passage of time right now. I’ve spoken on this a few times already. Many of my posts on this topic have been born out of deep frustration, and I even left Tumblr entirely for about a week to calm down and gather my thoughts. I’m going to try to lay out a coherent statement on the Freemance discourse and why it has completely changed how I interact with HL content.

I also know that at least one vocal anti-Freemance blog has me blocked, and there are probably many more (which I honestly don’t care about because I blocked many users myself today), which means this post will most likely fall on deaf ears. That’s fine. I just need to speak. EDIT: This also seems like a good opportunity to plug the Freemance charity zine that might be happening?

I was first exposed to Half-Life in late 2018, played the games for the first time in March 2019. So I’m certainly not an original member of the fandom, but I’m not “new” either, per se--at least, not relative to many of the people who have flooded in from the popularity of Half-Life But The AI Is Self-Aware. 

It used to be so quiet around here. There was a new post in the tag maybe once every two or three days. When Half-Life: Alyx came out I had hoped it would revive older members of the fandom and maybe bring in some new ones, and it did--but was quickly overshadowed by the odd success of HLVRAI. I really can’t shy away anymore from the fact that I vehemently dislike most of the people in the HLVRAI fandom. I think a lot of these people are the ones who are starting and continuing unnecessary discourse because they’re young and don’t have anything better to do, or don’t know better (even though they should). 

It is canon that Alyx was around four years old at the time of the Resonance Cascade. It is canon that Gordon was 27. It is canon that Alyx is 24 in Half-Life 2, and, get this, it is canon that Gordon is 27. During the gap between HL1 and HL2, Gordon was in a place that is outside of the normal flow of time, and, therefore, didn’t age at all during that time. This is supported by eli_greeting.ogg: “... My God, you haven't changed one iota! How do you do it?”

Because Alyx was a child while Gordon was working at Black Mesa, I commonly see anti-Freemance people using the idea that Gordon interacted with a young Alyx as a reason the ship is not viable. While this is definitely a valid headcanon to have, it’s just that, a headcanon. In al_imalyx.ogg, Alyx says, “... My father worked with you, back in Black Mesa. I'm sure you don't remember me though.” This would imply that Alyx was such a minor presence (if a presence at all) in Gordon’s life, he wouldn’t even have a reason to remember Eli having a daughter. It could even go as far as to imply that he barely knew Eli. 

There is also a scene at the end of Half-Life: Alyx where Alyx sees the G-man and immediately mistakes him for Gordon. If she had met Gordon as a child, the fact that she can’t even remember what he looks or sounds like indicates it did not have any large impact on her. In fact, there are many instances in HL:A where Alyx speaks of Gordon like a complete stranger.

And, if you’ve played HL2 and the Episodes, you certainly remember many scenes with the Vances where Eli hints at the idea he would like to see Alyx and Gordon as a couple; several times throughout these games, Alyx also shows some degree of romantic interest in Gordon. I personally find this a strange and uncomfortable artifact of mid-2000s era heteronormativity, that’s something I’ll absolutely admit even as someone who ships Freemance. However, it’s something I think is worth pointing out.

So. Gordon isn’t a pedophile if he is characterized as being attracted to Alyx, because she’s a grown ass adult. Gordon isn’t preying on Alyx, because there’s no actual, canon basis for the idea that he was any more than vaguely aware of her existence before she was an adult.

It’s well within your right to dislike Freemance--I’ve met people before this who just had a distaste for it, it wasn’t their thing, and that’s okay. What I don’t appreciate is this campaign to get rid of all Freemance content because… you personally think it’s gross? Because you personally have decided based on fanon and not canon that it should not exist?

The thing I think that’s really bugged me more than the specific problem of Freemance is the wider implications of this discourse, one of which being the worrying amount of infantilization of Alyx. People have denied doing this, but will defend their anti-Freemance statements by saying they’re “protecting her,” when she’s a grown adult. She’s 24 and very clearly capable of taking care of herself--for Christ’s sake, she literally kills fascists. She spat in the fact of a dictator. 

I also see a lot of people who hate Freemance turning around to ship Freehoun. Disclaimer: I love Freehoun. It’s up there equal with Freemance for me, I seriously adore the ship. The fact that it’s Freehoun isn’t what bothers me--it’s that people seem to look at a M/M ship of two white guys and go “this is progressive of me to ship,” but yet the M/F (notice how I don’t say “straight” because M/F couples aren’t inherently straight!) interracial ship is somehow gross, or heteronormative, or whatever other word has been thrown out there. Another thing I see is people casting Alyx entirely to the wayside in favor of Freehoun, or even going as far as to dislike her. That’s awfully familiar, isn’t it? The phenomenon of shippers hating a female character for “getting in the way” of their gay ship?

(Side note: I also am heavily bothered by the fact that I think a lot of new Freehoun shippers are coming over from shipping Benry/Gordon, and also the fact that a lot of people seem to think Barney and Benry are somehow the same, when they’re not, but I digress on that.)

The ongoing discourse has made being in the Half-Life fandom completely unbearable for me. I am tired. I can’t draw or write for it anymore. This was my favorite thing in the entire world, one of the only things keeping me going through quarantine, and now it’s just hardly worth bothering with. So this is most likely my final statement on this matter unless something drastic happens.

Freemance-critical and HLVRAI blogs will be blocked upon following me. I don’t care about being courteous anymore, I’m sick of interacting with you and gifting you my patience.

#ash rambles #freemance #ship discourse

[canadian-riddler]

people like to say that Valve writes really good games but if you actually look into it they’re only good at writing characters

half of the stuff that happens in Portal 2 wasn’t intentional.  stuff just lined up in a certain way for some of it and it LOOKS like it was smart writing but, for example, it was entirely circumstance that Caroline even existed.  the people at Valve actually in all seriousness wanted 20,000 years to have passed between Portal 1 and Portal 2.  that was the original idea.  it makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever.  even the ‘GLaDOS can run on a potato’ joke, while very amusing, begs the question of how do you run a sentient AI off of a potato?  there wasn’t even a hard drive.  it was a light hooked up with two wires.  she was talking without having a speaker and listening without having a microphone.  APERTURE IS APPARENTLY TWICE AS DEEP AS THE MARIANA TRENCH????  THERE WAS A BIG GIANT SINKHOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GROUND SOMEWHERE AND THEY SOMEHOW GOT TO THE BOTTOM OF IT IN 1947 AND SAID ‘LET’S BUILD A SECRET LAB HERE!’???

it doesn’t end with Portal.  Half-Life has all the same problems.  who is the Gman, what are his powers, who does he work for?  nobody at Valve knows.  he’s an entity unto himself.  what’s up with the Borealis?  nothing.  it just teleports everywhere by itself and also it can time travel.  hang on, shouldn’t Alyx be having a mental breakdown by now?  nah, she needs to be in a helicopter crash immediately.

“Indy, it doesn’t need to make sense.  Just enjoy it for what it is.”

I am able to do that and of course I do, but that doesn’t mean the writing is good.  the characters are great and there’s no denying that.  the main plot?  excellent.  the DETAILS for those plots?  a dumpster fire.  the real reason there’s no Half-Life 3/Portal 3 is because Valve went ‘hey this will be cool, let’s write this into the game’ and then when they got to the end of the stories they realised they still hadn’t come up with an explanation for all those bits and just gave up

it’s one of those things where one part of it is so good you don’t notice the rest of it is an unmitigated mess

#so says Indy #it's just #it's not good writing I'm sorry

[audiogrizzly]

GOTY 2020 - Runners Up

I feel I should start off with saying a bit about what this year was like for my gaming hobby,  it was the first in many years that the PS4 was not the system where I took away the most games, for me it was the PC for a change which has slowly been becoming my number 1 place to play.  Though this year also brought a new console generation and I have picked up a PS5, as well as an Oculus Quest 2 (so technically I can now play PC VR, which for a couple of years was always a platform that gates off a few key releases for me despite having a headset for my PS4.  And yeah, working from home has allowed me to use the time that would have been taking up with commuting to play games, so I have had more time to play than usual.

Just a note, I’m only one person and despite what I said in the previous paragraph, I cannot play every single game that comes out in a year, I try to prioritise the games I want to play and I do pay attention to games that get good write ups from critics.  At the time of writing, I have yet to give a good amount of time to the following titles which are likely to come up on many other GOTY lists: Half Life Alyx, The Pathless, Hades, Cyberpunk 2077.  I’m sure these are great games, I have enjoyed many other titles that the developers of them have released before, but however much I enjoy them further down the line, they have missed their chance at being included in this particular list.

So in addition to my GOTY, Ghost of Tsushima, here are the other games I have enjoyed most of all in 2020, ordered by release date:

Journey to the Savage Planet

This was the traditional January game for me.  I know a lot of people see the first month of the year being a bit slow for games but I feel there’s always at least one gem.  It was great to see a Metroid style game that took a lot more from the Prime series rather than the 2D roots of that genre.  The humour didn't quite connect with me but this was a fun distraction that I wasn’t expecting at the start of the year

DOOM Eternal

One of the earliest games I had added to my 2020 watchlist, the sequel to one of my top games of 2016 was always going to be something to be all over.  I felt it was a little more arcadey and leaned on typical game mechanics (e.g. extra lives, traversal puzzle, arena based encounters) rather than the exploration aspects of the 1993 original that the 2016 reboot left intact.  But you don’t get action as satisfying and as brutal as DOOM

Final Fantasy VII Remake

The earliest game I picked up that I put forward for this list and wasn’t on my original watch list.  I didn't play the original FF7 all the way through, but I had played to the point where this remade 1st episode stops at, it essentially covers the first disc on the 1997 original.  I’m more into action RPGs than the turn based menu cooldown mechanic that’s more typical of Japanese RPGs, so with that out of the way I was able to enjoy the world and the story.  I got really engaged by this one and I can’t wait to carry on the story.

Gears Tactics

I always loved the idea of the turn based tactical strategy game when XCOM Enemy Unknown came along.  But I was always more a fan of the combat side than the whole running of the base part of the game.  XCOM was also one of those top games that I always sort of pretended to be into, to make myself seem more like a thinker than a button masher, y’know?  I can name a large number of people who fall into that category too.

I reckon Gears is perfect for this genre and I’m glad to see that Tactics doesn’t make me collect resources and develop new technology while making sure my underground bunker has enough power.  It’s pure action and I love it.

Streets of Rage 4

This game was on my watch list but even I was surprised at how good it turned out.  SOR4 will appeal more to those who played the original games, and the second in the series is my favourite SEGA game ever as well as being quite high up my all time list in general.  This 21st century continuation does not diminish the originals in any way and even makes you come around to the third in the series in a way by including references and it’s best elements.  A hyper stylish tribute and great brawler in its own right.

The Last of Us Part 2

I assigned Ghost of Tsushima as my game of the year, but TLOUP2 would have come a close second.  I just enjoyed being in the world of Tsushima more than I did in the zombie infested post-apocalyptic Seattle.  I see this game as being the equivalent of a great box set, typical more of the second season of an excellent American TV series where they do add a few interesting ideas, a few “wow” moments, but more than its share of devisive moments too.  I can get why people didn’t like the twist as we are used to playing heroes in our games, it can throw us when a bit of perspective is added.  Personally, I felt it was an act too long, but still an intense action adventure.

Rocket Arena

I still played a lot of Destiny at the start of the year and both last year and this year's Call of Duty's were on my most played list.  But Rocket Arena held my attention for most of the summer.  Ultimately, I fell off the game because I was sick of teammates leaving matches, it’s the sort of game where leavers get penalised but are not replaced.  But I found the game to be enormous fun and soon I hope to jump back into the game as I see a few changes have been made.  The game has also taken all sorts of steps to be made available to as many people as possible thought giveaways on Twitch and PlayStation plus as well as being added to EA Play Pro, everything that stops short of just being made free to play which is something I actually hope it shouldn’t have to come to as I like the idea of the Overwatch model where new maps and characters are added for free every now and then.

Carrion

Carrion was a game I added to my watch list after it was shown in Devolver Digital’s over-the-top and sometimes sort of ‘trying too hard to be subversive’ E3 presentations (2019 and 2020).  It looked like a take on the Metroidvania game that took, if you ask me, one of the most appealing aspects of the Metroid games, it’s atmosphere.  Plus it sometimes feels great to be the menace, especially when you go out to total massacre your captors (see also Ape Out)

Fall Guys

I’m sure a lot of people have just totally fallen off of this game since about a month after it’s launch in August, I know I have.  But when it was new and in the conversation, there was no doubt that this was a fun game.  It also came out around the time where you could have guests round and it made for a great “pass the controller” type of game, despite having no split screen modes.  It may be my lack of desire to play a new multiplayer game which stopped me from playing it, though it’s appeal to me is that it’s one of those first of games you can just leap into matchmaking by yourself with.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

I don’t normally put ports or remakes into my year lists, but I will make an exception here (and one later on) as it has been so long since the games included in this collection first appeared and to compare old with new, it’s almost a whole new world.  Yet it is still familiar, and there’s no bloat, even the item shop (where you can buy decks, wheels, profile pictures etc) doesn’t get in your face.  It also, thankfully, takes influence from the right places of the follow up to both of these games, Pro Skater 3, in making the most finely tuned Hawk’s experience.  I only wish they had included the 3rd game, at least as DLC, but there’s still time.

Star Wars Squadrons

Air or space combat has never appealed to me all that much over my many years of gaming.  I’m not even all that big a Star Wars fan, but I got on board with Squadrons in a big way.  Playing in VR and with a HOTAS really immerses you too, there’s nothing like playing past someone and turning your own head to see where they heck they have got to.  And although I am not all that big into Star Wars, I can tell they have taken great care with the universe and turned out something that doesn’t interfere with cannon all too much.  Put this alongside Gears Tactics in the “I like the idea of this sort of game but I never get on too well with it, but I really liked this one” bucket

Watch Dogs Legion

I know Legion got a hard time in reviews, and I did experience a less than optimal performance in the game, but it was great to run around modern London on foot for a change.  I enjoyed Watch Dogs 2 before this and yes, I get why people think the game is just silly, but Legion finally shows that the game knows when to not take itself seriously and it's all the better for it.  A great touch is when you recruit people for your organisation, they can all get into any car and drive it around, but every now and then you will find a recruit for whom one of their perks is “has their own car”, that is London in a nutshell!

Dirt 5

Dirt 5 wasn’t on my list, and I have had a sort of on-off relationship with the series.  Dirt 5 represents a sort of middle point in the scale between the off-road racer and the serious rally simulation.  I would actually say it's closer to the former actually, it’s definitely the most arcade like the franchise has been in years.  It forgoes point to point rallys in favour of an “all racers” starting grid in most disciplines.  The inclusion of a story is a bit weird, especially as you never actually see any of the characters, it made me wonder what the point was, but I loved the racing as well as all the weather and mud effects.

Assassins Creed Valhalla

I’ve literally just finished this game at the time of writing and what a monster this was at over 55 hours in my playthrough.  I had my doubts that a game set in Viking/Saxon era England could rival the BC Egypt in AC Origins, and that game is still my fave, but there was a lot of beautiful scenery in Valhalla as well as crazy plot points when you got near the end.  It was great to finally play one of these “new” AC games with a steady frame rate (I always had technical problems before) as I have enjoyed the new combat system since Origins and it was fun to visit settlements whose names I recognise from modern era England.  Apart from one really annoying game breaking bug (saved by a previous save file) a number of freezes and it being maybe a bit too long, I’d recommend this heartily.

Replay corner:

Master Chief Collection (throughout the year)

As I said earlier when I talked about Pro Skater 1+2, I don’t normally put ports and remakes, but I wanted to give a shout out to the Halo Master Chief Collection, which I played on PC throughout the year.  It’s in it’s own section here as part of it was released last year, but each couple of months in 2020, it was great to replay each of the games in this series, especially as I said goodbye to Xbox in 2013, Halo was one of the franchises that I knew I would miss and it’s great that I can finally get reacquainted with all the ones I have played before.  It's a shame that Infinite did not come out this year, though I can tell why they wanted to put it back in the oven, plus I still haven’t really played Halo 5 yet as it’s one of the few games that are actually Xbox One only, I have my fingers crossed for a PC port of that though.

[how-i-met-your-mulder]

"Red Dead Redemption" programmer R Celebrity will launch 3A VR game; "Rockman" VR version will be launched on July 18

It is a good habit to read the regular newspaper. Capcom launches the VR version of the vintage game "Rockman", which will be launched on July 18 at the VR arcade store VR Gyro July 7 news, Capcom will launch another popular game on its Japanese virtual reality arcade device-"Mega Guy VR" (Mega Guy VR). "Rockman VR" will make its debut at Capcom Plaza in Ikebukuro, Tokyo on July 18. It is a one player game. Gamers may decorate as a glowing blue bomber and challenge the enemy along with his iconic weapons and cannons. From the latest promotional poster of "Rockman VR", you can observe that the villain in the series, Dr. Willie, placed on their own headset to conquer the digital world. Gamers will have to enter the digital dimension themselves as Megaman to block his strategy.

After actually coming to Capcom Plaza in Ikebukuro, we watched the business's two "Resident Evil" VR arcade video games, which were exhibited in very last year's VR Culture Show. Just over the road from The Void, the virtual reality theme park in Bandai Namco, you can even enjoy the virtual reality version of Mario Kart and the digital reality version of Pac-Guy in Mazaria-this area of ??Tokyo is simply virtual Reasonable heaven. It is not clear whether "Rockman VR" will replace one of the previous competitive video games, but based on available space constraints, this is probable. As of now, no other news about "Rockman VR" has been introduced, but it is basically impossible because of this game to surface in theme park games in various other regions, aside from on a house headset platform. Up to now, non-e of Capcom's various other Japanese virtual reality games have done this. Valve Index shows indications of replenishment for the very first time because the epidemic broke out Because the outbreak of COVID-19, the supply capacity of Valve Index has been seriously insufficient, and contains been sold-out globally for a long period. Also affected by the epidemic, Oculus Quest and Rift have obtained sufficient stock replenishment generally in most nations and regions accessible in the previous two months. But on July 6, 2020, we discovered that Valve Index had indications of replenishment. By searching the Valve Index's stock availability in 31 saleable regions worldwide. We discovered that although the Valve Index VR package still shows around delivery time of more than 8 weeks, the delivery period of independent orders because of its VR headset devices only takes 3 to 5 5 weeks.

With the launch of "Half-Life: Alyx" in later March this year, the new inventory of the Valve Index has been purchased instantly, and the estimated delivery time for several its sales regions has been showing that it will take more than 8 weeks. This is actually the first-time since March that we have observed the estimated delivery period of Valve Index displaying less than 8 weeks. Although Valve Index still does not have any stock in stock, we can still register beforehand through the following website. After registering and reserving, Valve Index will notify you by email a week in advance if you find about to be stock, nonetheless it will not guarantee that it could be shipped immediately. Due to the epidemic, China's manufacturing industry has suffered a dual blow. Not merely is the demand for VR devices on a global scale facing an increase, but the source is reduced because of production interruptions. Although during the past two months, Quest's stock has begun to increase, indicating that the way to obtain VR tools has begun to slowly recover, nonetheless it is not clear whether Index will also go back to normal source in the near future. Valve continues to promote Index wireless, or launch SteamVR Link According to the news on July 7th, Valve is currently vigorously advertising the wirelessization of Index headphones, and it is expected that design can look within the next generation of headphones. The Valve representative confirmed in a statement to foreign media that Valve is still exploring the chance of wifi VR. In regards to a year ago, the initial Valve Index headset begun to appear in top of buyers, also it brought PC users among the best VR experiences on the market. However, this version still doesn't have a wireless option, and you can find other easy-to-set wireless products on the market (such as for example Oculus Quest), that will become a shortcoming to restrict the advancement of PC VR.

During the headset meeting this past year, Valve President Gabe Newell commented they are learning several ways to put into action Index headset cellular. This is his investment in Nitero's wireless chip company (before AMD's acquisition) and Newell's declaration in 2017 Said that wireless VR is really a "solved issue" following the latest touch upon the topic: "We have been excited about the chance of wireless VR and will continue to explore its options." The wireless competition is founded on Oculus technical guidelines. John Carmack commented on Oculus Connect this past year: “Establishing a devoted wireless link between Oculus Quest and PC might be a priority for Facebook. For example, an encrypted slot inserted into a USB port may be used Present Wi-Fi rate of recurrence bands supported by Quest, and not affected by other network traffic, may maintain a more consistent knowledge. This practical accessory is simpler to set up than earlier Vive wireless adapters, which might affect the usage of PC VR And the usage of Valve Steam's headset combination includes a huge impact. However, Index isn't a stand-alone gadget, nor is there a battery, so if Valve will be working on wireless options for the headset, its development direction may be various from the products produced by Facebook. Of course, Valve also released the "Steam Link package" in 2015, which identifies a technologies that expands your Steam game library to any space inside your home by way of a home system. In the past 2 yrs, Valve halted the production of Steam Hyperlink and instead provided something that can transfer the traditional Steam game library to numerous different devices, including Android and iOS. Can Valve produce something similar to "SteamVR Link" that allows Index and other PC VR headphones to use this unfettered headset knowledge? Such accessories may have a large impact on the usage of PC VR Impact, nonetheless it is clear that the recent statement didn't supply any hint. The VR game advancement team of "LA Noire" will create a fresh 3A open world VR game for Rockstar On July 6, Sydney game developer Video Games Deluxe posted a job posting on LinkedIn, claiming that it had confirmed that it could develop an "AAA open world" for Rockstar, requiring the recruitment of appropriate senior programmers, designers, animation particular effects and other game technologies personnel.

Sydney game programmer Video Games Deluxe developed the highly acclaimed "Una Noire: VR Situation Files" (L.The. Noire) for Rockstar. The game is a darkish and violent crime thriller game that turns gamers into law enforcement detectives. Crack through the brutal crimes, tips and conspiracies of the true crimes in LA in 1947, experience the almost all corrupt and violent period in LA in the 1940s, and present them in incredible virtual reality.

Certainly, Rockstar is quite satisfied with the game effect of "LA Noire: VR Case Files" (L.The. Noire) and proceeds to invite programmer Video Games Deluxe to take part in creating fresh VR game tasks. According to LinkedIn's recruitment info, Video Games Deluxe appears to be a fresh breakthrough in VR game effects. At the moment, the VR game project is still in early advancement and is worth looking forward to. Glastonburry hosts Misplaced Horizon, the world's largest VR music festival, developing a new type of music festival in the future From July 3rd to 4th, 2020, Glastonbury, the world's largest songs event, cooperated with virtual VR streaming systems VR JAM and Sansar to successfully host the world's largest VR songs art event Lost Horizon.

Glastonbury is normally held in the UK for 5 times and is one of the largest outdoor songs festivals on earth. In the past 15 many years, it offers effectively invited the world's top songs lineups including Radiohead, Coldplay, Beyonce, David Bowie, Jay-Z, Oasis, Paul McCartney, etc. Due to the fresh crown epidemic, Glastonbury had to cancel the songs festival intend to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year. However, Glastonbury didn't totally abandon its anniversary celebrations. Rather, it innovatively cooperated with the VR public platform Sansar to effectively create an unforgettable interactive, multi-stage particular program-VR Music Artwork Feast Lost Horizon Music Event . Through the Lost Horizon virtual VR music event, Glastonbury not merely successfully presented its beloved and popular “Shangri-La” area to the audience, but additionally created the primary hall, independent hall, art gallery and 4 virtual VR stages with different themes. According to Kyle Melnick, one of the audience of the virtual songs festival, when he enters the VR songs festival hall for the very first time, there will be staff members to welcome and help the participation process of the virtual VR songs festival. The personnel in the Lost Horizon Virtual VR Music Festival are VR virtual personas with independent individual characteristics. For example, you can obtain professional assistance from the skateboarding breakdancing cartoon personas to take part in the VR songs festival and take a seat on a chair in the united kingdom to take pleasure from the breeze. , Playing beach ball with other digital unfamiliar music event netizens is a wonderful virtual experience.

In addition to these interactive virtual experiences, the largest highlight of the Lost Horizon Virtual Music Festival is songs. In the 2-day event, 4 stages of various genres, more than 50 exciting music exhibits, more than 100 top songs performers, more than 200 music and artworks, including Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Nastia, Nick Warren b2b Jody Wisternoff, Orca Audio, Partiboi69, Peggy Gou, Pete Tong, Sasha, Seth Troxler, etc. have understood the usage of live real music to create an immersive digital music art entire world. Audiences of the Lost Horizon Virtual Music Festival can change between different performances at will through multiple digital camera angles on computer systems, cellular devices, and VR devices, and can freely explore some hidden egg venues in the music event.

This Lost Horizon Virtual VR Music Festival successfully created a music event of the future, developing a new virtual immersive interactive experience by way of a brand-new music art platform, and breaking through the boundaries of time and space, allowing audiences to use electronics anywhere Equipment participation has realized the most cutting-edge live entertainment and creative community concepts. The Under Gifts will reproduce Shakespeare's classic drama "The Tempest" in VR The Under Gifts is going to release a classic Shakespeare drama "The Tempest". Release period: July 9th to the end of September Screening period: 4 hours altogether, screened from 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm Pacific Time about weekdays, and 11:00 am - 3:00 pm Pacific Time on weekends Ticket price: Us all$15 (available for in-app purchase at The Under Gifts) Equipment: Rift or Quest

"The Under Gifts" premiered by the end of this past year. It mixes immersive drama and digital reality technologies, allowing audiences to interact with actors and other audiences in the storyline, and have the immersive experience of real actors and script performances in VR. It is a VR program that combines multiple elements such as for example singing and dance performances, time journey, video games, and drama. According to Tender Claws, the programmer of "The Below Presents", the freshly launched Shakespeare's "The Tempest" will undoubtedly be split into two components, multiplayer interactive video games and reside theater performances. While the audience is free to watch the drama, "The Tempest" will also supply about 45 a few minutes of multiplayer game time, however the audience can also spend $11.99 in the app to get the Timeboat single-player game experience which includes unlimited multiplayer opportunities . In addition, the audience will also have the opportunity to execute a live life VR drama performance of about 40 a few minutes with the actors.

However, this new work "Storm" is currently not available within the Steam version of The Below Gifts, and its own release process may change based on the prices of the entire project (at least for Rift and Quest devices). In the VR theater of The Under Gifts "The Tempest", the audience can experience virtual drama costume dressing and take part in pantomime performances. This is an immersive knowledge that you'll not have when watching drama performances in true to life. And the performances that the audience participates in changes, because each theater will have 6 to 8 8 player groupings, and each performance will be performed by various actors and participants simultaneously.

Samantha Gorman, the co-founder of Tender Claws, said that after 7 a few months of exchanges and studying with live actors in The Under Gifts, this individual clearly realized that innovative theatrical strategy combined with VR virtual technologies can give a lot more prominence to the performers. Especially with the outbreak of the epidemic, many theaters were forced to close, which is a huge professional challenge for many drama performers. In addition, people are residing at home, hoping to find new ways of socializing on the premise of making sure the safety of the epidemic. Samantha Gorman believes that The Under Gifts can bring fresh vitality in lots of ways. The launch of Shakespeare's traditional drama "The Tempest" not merely provides new career possibilities for theater actors and audiences, but also produces VR. A fresh chapter in digital performance theater. *Understand XR info the first time * Follow the state website of VR Gyro (vrtuoluo.cn) Contact info of VR Gyro: Business Cooperation | Job interview | Contribution: Watermelon (Line quantity 18659030320) Yuga (Line No. 13129537525) Wen Jing (Collection number mutou_kiki) Exchange Sharing | Breaking the news headlines: Line shimotsuki_jun Contribution e-mail: [email protected]

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Half-Life: Alyx review – a legend returns in elegant form • Eurogamer.net

The Strider is the greatest of all Half-Life’s creations, if you ask me. Sure, you could argue that it’s just another spin on HG Wells’ tripods, but seriously, look at the thing! Those legs, so horribly long and horribly jointed, that hideous hint of poultry flesh and machinery spliced together, all pain and wrongness. In Half-Life 2, I watched one of this awful lot stoop to duck under a bridge, and the thing about the Strider is that it never reminds you of just one thing, always a horrible bodging-together – almost a flamingo as its joints worked, yet almost grandparent nipping up into the attic for something heavy too. An internal life: that sense of self-preservation and cruel intelligence they have, of seeing only their own priorities. That sense of being autonomous in the moment, but also deeply mission-driven. They give me goose-bumps because it’s so entirely clear that they can probably get goose-bumps themselves.

Half-Life: Alyx review

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Platform: Reviewed on PC with Index

Availability: Out 23 March on PC

I had been waiting for this moment, then. Half-Life: Alyx, set five years before the events of Half-Life 2 and delivered sixteen years – is that possible? – since Half-Life 2 and thirteen years since Episode Two, the last installment. (How we had talked at the time about that gap between the first two Episodes. We had no idea.) Suddenly, City 17 lies before me once more. I am on a rooftop somewhere: Alyx Vance, 19-year-old daughter of Eli Vance, on reconnaissance for the resistance.

The metropolis is a mess of alien cables, black and heavy, draped thoughtlessly and sagging over honey-coloured European architecture with its weary finials and tiles and crenelations. It’s VR, so a moment or two to look at the creamy skybox dithering into distant mist, then another moment to delight in a nearby radio, fiercely analogue tech, that can be picked up and heaved around, the dials turning and moving a little marker along the display, an aerial that properly extends and everything.

Behind me, inside a little conservatory, there is a video call from Dad, and more importantly there’s a range of felt pens that have been used on the dirty glass to map Combine movements, but which can also be used to – what? – do anything really. Graffiti, Killroys, my daughter’s name in my own instantly recognisable handwriting, somehow captured inside a video game space. I’m on the move, so I heave back a hidden door and explore a few dingy Winston Smith bedsit rooms. Then out again onto a different ledge and, do tell me, what in the world is that sound?

That sound is a strider, horribly large and horribly close, heaving its carcass body up the side of a building, stepping where it wants because the crumbling world of human things is not really a concern for an alien invader. It stops. Has it seen me? I stare up – because it’s VR, I’m actually staring up – at this awful, wretched thing that I have always loved, and which is now here more fully than ever before, its knotty joints bolstered with servo-motors and shards of the Combine’s black-slate tech. It hasn’t seen me. It doesn’t care. It turns and unplugs a clump of cables from a nearby building – the human world is its junction box – and then it’s off into the distance. And yes! I had been waiting for this moment. And this moment did not let me down.

Not my only encounter with a strider in Half-Life: Alyx, but I’ll honestly try to spoil little more than that. What I should say is that for the last few days I have been a bit of a strider myself, strangely focused on a private agenda, strangely blind to the finer details of the human landscape around me, as I have navigated City 17 with a VR headset covering my eyes – two worlds, one laid over the other. All this, as I’ve taken on headcrabs and Combine troopers and all the rest, all this as I have puzzled and rewired and upgraded – while simultaneously bodging around my own PC set up by my desk. House cats and scarves dumped on the backs of chairs startled me when I brushed against them at the wrong moments – generally moments involving headcrabs. My daughter, moving a doll’s house behind me one afternoon, almost finished me off in a boss fight when we bumped together. “When you’re behind me, tell me you’re behind me!” I said. Five minutes later, when I was deep in the horror of the underground somewhere, she obliged, having snuck up close before announcing, “I’M BEHIND YOU, DADDY.”

In other words, Half-Life was always going to work in VR. But what’s fascinating is how it works. If you’re expecting an explosion of let’s-try-anthing creativity a la Boneworks, a game in which every conceivable kind of physics interaction is gleefully gimmicked together as you tumble through its wonderfully scrappy campaign, you’re going to be a bit disappointed. Half-Life would rather focus its ambitions – and in turn rein-in the scope of what you can do – than risk breaking the illusion or frustrating the player. Something is lost in that decision, certainly. It’s Alyx’s way or the highway. But a lot is gained too.

As a result, Alyx is marked by restraint. Which is to say, I think, that it understands that VR itself is still such a continuous gimmick for many people that it can play things straight, paring the Half-Life concept back closer than ever before. Yes, it has radios to play with and the inevitable VR piano to prod out a Goldberg Variation on, but it’s not one of those VR games that serves as the equivalent of those early 3D movies where people were forever throwing knives at the screen. Most of the time, it uses VR to steadily put you deeper and deeper into the fabric of this grimy, flaking Victory Gin world.

This is a simple story, direct yet consequential, studded with wonderful set-pieces, most of which are pitched towards a sort of sci-fi-tinged survival horror: you, a gun, ammo scavenging and them lurking all around as you slowly inch towards your next destination. VR is used to continue the Half-Life ambition, begun with that tram-ride back at Black Mesa and extended via the Gravity Gun and the magnifying glasses and the facial animation tech of Half-Life 2 to truly embed players in its reality. Cats, children, scarves and bookcases aren’t just victims of this approach. They feel like an important part of it.

The basics are straightforward. All I’m going to tell you of the plot is that you’re trying to meet up with your dad and figure out what big strange thing the Combine’s currently so excited about. Events zip along quite briskly and objectives are always clear. If there’s a problem, it’s that the game is hemmed in a little, in terms of narrative, because it so clearly has one specific job to do.

The controls are as clear-headed as the narrative. Playing room-scale or simply standing with a more confined space, you can choose one of four movement options, two of which work brilliantly as teleport jobs while the other two offer continuous movement guided by either the hand or the head and seemed to me pretty clumsy and nausea-inducing. Whatever movement you choose, one hand generally holds a weapon or gadget – switching them is as easy as pressing a button and waving your arm up and down – while the other is always free for interacting with the environment, opening doors, grabbing ammo clips from your backpack and ramming them home, priming grenades before lobbing them.

Both hands wear gravity-gloves, a cobbled-together precursor of the gravity gun. They’re beautiful things. Hold your hands up and it’s like some addled genius has built mittens for your out of diodes and Technical Lego, while little displays show you your health and ammo levels. These things are not for pulling sawblades out of walls and firing them into crowds of zombies, though. They’re precision affairs, a little flick of the wrist yanking a highlighted object out of the environment and bringing it into your hand with a neat little slap.

The gloves have been created by a new character, Russell, played by Rhys Darby, who despite being cast as a genius, stays wonderfully close to Murray, the dim and easily bruised band manager from Flight of the Conchords. Because Alyx also speaks – a performance from Ozioma Akhaga that is forever revealing different facets of personality, while being wonderfully alive to graveyard wit – the game is essentially a two-hander, Alyx out in the world while Russell monitors her progress from a distance, cowardly, prideful, tender and quirky by turns. I love this combination. Beyond anything else, following up the biggest video game in the world with a Rhys Darby simulator is a total power move.

The texture of the game these two travel through is relentlessly – and gloriously – practical, pragmatic and down-to-earth. This is a game about navigating space and killing everything you meet, but it’s all so carefully wrought. A nervous skittering on the soundtrack is ultimately the buzzing of an old fluorescent light tube. Puzzles are made of gravity, stacked boxes, and wood used to prop open windows. These challenges can be maddeningly clever, but Newton always keeps them honest at the same time. Elsewhere, a vaguely celestial sounding clue in the main plot turns out to have a very mundane solution, while car posters you pass on the remains of the subway show boxy Soviet saloons accompanied by ad-talk that’s even more oppressive than usual: Reality Defined. This is science-fiction with both feet on the ground.

This works because the interaction, enlivened by VR, is tangible and playful. It elevates everything, from wiring puzzles – a real theme of this game, using both a gadget that allows you to see electricity flowing through gates inside the walls, and a bit of good-old-fashioned cable-following – to hunting for ammo and other supplies, including the worm-eaten hockey pucks of grey stuff you use as currency in the machines that allow you to upgrade your weapons.

Weapons are real presences because of VR. It’s not just that you have to change clips and pull that slidey thing at the top of the pistol before you can shoot the zombie that’s already groaning towards you. It’s that they have a complex, weighty, rattly presence in your hand. You can sense these guns are each one thing made from many smaller things working together. Valve has always been good with this stuff, and the upgradable weapons of Alyx are very special. From that pistol and a shotgun to something a little more exotic, they’re filled with character and a sense of power, even before you start adding laser sites and bigger clips.

Gun management as well as gunplay, wiring puzzles as well as hacking challenges, traversal with physics hurdles so nicely weighted that you can predict the outcomes in your head: all of the various aspects of Alyx appear simple, but they all work together to bed you deeper and deeper into the game until you reach the point where, if you’re like me, you’re talking back to Russell out loud as you catch up after each fight.

Oh man, but never forget: at the very center of it is all is those incredible gloves. The gravity gun has always had a habit of working its ways into other games for me. Not directly, of course. It’s just that I’ll be playing Gears of War and I’ll see a grand piano or a panel truck and think: I wish I could just lob that somewhere. The gravity gloves have already gone beyond that. They have a habit of getting into my head. I’ll be lying on the sofa and thinking: I wish I could just flick that book from the other side of the room into my hand. At the front door I’ll wish I could turn around and grab my keys from the stairs. The things I could do with Jaffa Cakes, mate.

The gloves are a less ostentatious kind of magic than that offered in Half-Life 2 – again, you won’t be chucking a car at anyone with them – but in some ways they’re a more startling kind of magic. I was half an hour in and pausing mid-reload to pull an interesting bit of set design off a distant shelf and inspect it. The levels are filled with bits and pieces to pick up and examine: cutlery, pipes, video cassettes. Chuck in the reloading and this is stuff you can get good at – you can master it until you’re fighting through the apocalypse and foppishly checking out the detailing at the same time. Half-Life has always sought to startle, which is probably why the last instalment came out in 2007. The right material, the right opportunities, take time to present itself.

What detailing that lost decade or so has allowed for! This is a game that has been allowed to percolate. City 17, strangely noble in its ravaged state, a faded relic being steadily eaten by alien technology, is still one of the great locations in video games, even if you tend to just see bombed out apartment buildings, train yards and subway stations for a lot of the campaign. But the greatest details this time around are the Combine tech, which has never been so monolithically grim. Outside it’s grey sheeting and stark angles: designs that could give you a nasty cut. Inside, though, it’s often big chunks of offal instead of circuitry, as if Darth Vader had teamed up with Fergus Henderson, the man behind the nose-to-tail eating movement. Health stations, pretty much unchanged from the first game, are so much more visibly present in VR. You inspect the squealing white worm that is squished to make the lurid Mountain Dew healing substances, and then you have to pull down a plate and rest your hand on it, enjoying the dancing jabs of a dozen little syringes while you scan the surroundings for oncoming threats.

All of this stuff comes together with wonderful set-pieces. Due to the exhausting nature of VR combat, massive pile-ons like Nova Propsekt are out of the question, ditto the open-world ram-raiding of the White Forest. Instead, troops are dropped in surgically – their strangled tannoy barking giving you a moment to panic and hunt for ammo and hopefully come up with a plan. As for the bestiary there’s a shocking new enemy who I won’t spoil, but even the old guard return and bring a vivid kind of enhanced fear with them. I had dreaded VR headcrabs, and then the game not only introduces them but immediately loses the first one in some pipework. That was a nice two minutes. (I regret to inform you that there’s a new kind of headcrab now too, even if its design can’t quite match the queasy supermarket horror of the original.) Elsewhere it feels like a testament to the brilliance of the original creature design on this series that you feel dread rather than nostalgia whenever one of the classics turns up again. Or maybe it’s another sign of the sheer weight of immersion Alyx can conjure: there’s a real sense of apprehension when the game leads you out of the light and back underground for a spell. You live in these spaces while you move through them.

There are ingenious set-pieces, increasingly piling up towards the end of the campaign, but I’m so struck through by the sheer thrift of a lot of it. It’s that restraint again: make the VR work, get a handful of killer things out of it, and then repeat and remix without breaking the spell. There are Hollywood moments that will stick with me, but I also remember being in a room filled with oil drums while a tank of explosive gas was being winched up towards the mouth of one of those horrible limpet things that sit on the ceiling. That’s the kind of clock Valve likes to put in a scene to add suspense. Hitchcock would be proud: you can see all the moving parts and yet the magic is still there.

And the more I played of Alyx, the more I thought about how VR and Half-Life were made for each other. And the more this left me thinking about the G-Man, the shadowy figure in a suit who turns up at crucial moments throughout the series and does intriguing stuff. The G-Man is the focal point for a lot of lore conspiracies in Half-Life. Who is he? Is he human? Is he Gordon Freeman himself?

Let’s not worry whether he makes an appearance in Alyx or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Because throughout the course of this game, I think I worked out who he really is. He’s Valve. Think about it: inscrutable Valve, a company that seems to see further than most, that seems to have a separate agenda to that of most developers – and who, granted, doesn’t always seem to be entirely benevolent. The G-Man disappears for long periods of time, but then turns up just as events have caught up with his intentions. It’s his way or no way at all. He waits for the right pieces to appear, and then he makes the most of them with little apparent effort.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/half-life-alyx-review-a-legend-returns-in-elegant-form-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=half-life-alyx-review-a-legend-returns-in-elegant-form-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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2020 Preview: 11 Things We’re Stupidly Excited About In 2020

Another year over. Finito, done, never to be seen again. But there’s no time to mourn its passing because – quite frankly – we’re just too amped-up with excitement and hoopla for everything that’s coming up in the next 12 months.It’s goodbye 2019 and hello 2020, you absolute, spanking new beauty. And if you’re not up to speed yet with all the buzz, here are 12 things to get seriously excited about in 2020 – and year-defining cultural and social happenings about to change your world.Little Tony SopranoBig franchises might continue to dominate the multiplexes in 2020 – Marvel, DC, Fast & Furious – but the follow-up film to be excited about in 2020 is The Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark.Going back to the late 1960s, it will tell the story of Sopranos-verse OG Dickie Moltisanti, much talked about father of Sopranos wild-child Christopher and mentor to Tony Soprano himself. Series creator David Chase is behind this, so there’s no need to worry about it not living up to the standards of what is still (no arguments, please) the greatest TV show of all time.There’s a stellar cast lined up, including Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, and – most excitingly – Tony Soprano actor James Gandolfini’s real-life son, Michael Gandolfini, playing the young Tony. In a word: fuggetaboutit.The Return of BondIt’s been a strange few years for 007. After the huge success (but critical meh) of 2015’s Spectre, it sounded like Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond was finished. “I’d rather slit my wrists,” were his words, though he was probably joking, about returning to the role.Then Trainspotting director Danny Boyle dropped out of the problem, the first of several production problems. So many, in fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Bond’s arch nemesis Blofeld had a cat-stroking hand in it.But after five long, Bond-less years, Her Majesty’s finest is back for No Time To Die – now confirmed as Craig’s final outing as 007. The trailer has got us excited already – stunts, suits (yes, we haven’t even seen the film, and already Bond is looking fine), the sexy cars, and deadly woman. Ana De Armas in eveningwear shooting the place up? Take our money. Take it now.Football Coming Home (For Real This Time)Remember when football sort of came home for the World Cup in 2018, but then also sort of didn’t at the last minute? Well, this year it comes home for real when the Euro 2020 stages games in both London and Glasgow, plus 10 other European cities for the tournament’s first ever multi-nation event.Expect the football fever that gripped this country during the World Cup to be booted all the way up to 11 because a) England are actually good again, for the first time in a quarter century and b) games on home turf always make it more special.But also expect football style to be at the forefront of menswear this summer. Retro football shirts will be out in force, a callback to the terrace fashion, while contemporary labels are also game for football these days.Exploring A ‘What If?’ WorldWhile alternate history novels usually explore what might have happened if the baddies had won (such as in Robert Harris’ Fatherland about a Nazi-controlled future), the real world feels a bit like an actual dystopia these days.Science-fiction maestro William Gibson is putting a spin on the concept with Agency – both a sequel and prequel to his time-travel novel The Peripheral – about a future in which Trump didn’t win the 2016 election, Brexit never happened, and – presumably – the world isn’t burning and on the verge of war. It could be the anti-nightmare escapism we need in 2020.Getting Up To Speed With 5GAfter a staggered (and sometimes controversial) soft launch last year, 2020 is the year that 5G will become the new, super-fast standard in data networks. But it’s not just about facilitating our mobile phone addictions at increased speeds; the capacity of 5G will change our devices, technology, how business operate, and how we communicate with each other.In short, in a world ruled by technology and connected by digital communications, 5G is going to have a major impact.Samsung already has a 5G phone available here in the UK and an Apple phone is set to follow sometime in 2020. In the UK, 5G is slower than many other parts of the world but it’s just getting started – already in the US, 5G is capable of speeds almost 100 times faster than 4G smartphones.Manly ArtWe’re now 20 years into the century, during which time the state, consequences, and future of masculinity has been fiercely debated, and the parameters of what it means to be a man redrawn. It’s quite right that in 2020, a number of exhibitions are set to offer interesting perspectives on this undefinable thing we call masculinity.Between February and May, the Barbican will host Masculinities, a collection of film and photography exploring how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to now. Exhibitions at the Tate on David Hockney and Andy Warhol show will social and cultural perspectives from two of art’s great male personalities.But most exciting is an exhibition at the Tate (Feb-May) celebrating 25 years of the Turner Prize and Oscar-winning artist Steve McQueen’s work, one of the most crucial, diverse, and relevant masculine voices in 21st Century British culture.An Upgrade For GamersAfter years of being promised that VR is the future of gaming, that looks set to actually happen with the arrival Half-Life: Alyx, the much-anticipated VR game(-changer). Couple that with the Oculus Quest, and we’ll be glad to spend 2020 escaping the real world for virtual alternatives.Regular gaming is also due an upgrade with next generation consoles due towards the end of the year. The Xbox Series X is rumoured to be four times more powerful that its predecessor, and will see the return of Master Chief with the all-new Halo. If you think 4K looks sharp, its 8K resolution will poke your eyes right out.Never one to be outdone by a rival machine, Sony will also launch the PS5, rumoured to include next-gen VR and visual techniques used in Hollywood blockbuster SFX. Rainbow Six Quarantine, Godfall, and a mysterious new title from the designers behind Shadow of the Colossus are all confirmed.50 Years of GlastonburyThe greatest music festival in the history of mankind will be throwing a whopper party for its 50th anniversary this year. Sorry, Burning Man, you’re good, but your sunbaked pretentiousness can never top some music-in-a-field debauchery.Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift have been confirmed to headline Glasto, with Kenrick Lamar tipped to headline the Friday night.If you haven’t got a ticket, don’t worry – tickets go on resale in April, but even if you’re not there, Glastonbury is more than a party in Somerset – it’s a cultural happening that will rock the entire country. Even from the comfort of your living room, expect to discover new bands, experience amazing sets, and make promises to yourself that you’ll never miss getting a ticket ever again.Eco-TravellingInspired perhaps by the shame of getting a thundering, disapproving look from Greta Thunberg, there’s been a surge in people seeking out environmentally friendly travel options – and 2020 could be the year we all think about saving the planet as well as travelling it.Both Rolls Royce and Airbus will put electric aeroplanes to the test this year, while zero-waste travel accessories and eco travel apps such as Green Globe and Olio are becoming hot (but not too hot, they’re keeping the emissions low) trends. Train travel has also seen a rise in popularity.And it’s not just the means of getting there, but destinations themselves, with eco-friendly resorts across the world. Usually for a less-than-modest price, of course, but less extortionate options are out there – nature-based travel, or hiking, climbing, and rambling hols. And if you can hang on until 2022, the world’s first energy positive hotel – Svart in Norway – is due to open.Streaming Wars = Massive BingeIf you’re old enough to remember the lukewarm battle between VHS and DVD, you’ll know what this is all about. It’s happening all over again, but this time nuclear, as top streaming platforms will lock and load to compete for your eyeballs’ attention.Apple TV has already launched and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max is set to launch in May. But the real fight will be between Netflix and Disney+. Netflix will aim to continue its dominance with After Life Season 2, The Haunting of Hill House follow-up series Bly Manor, and – probably – Stranger Things 4. Not to mention it’s never-ending supply of soul-troubling true crime docs.On the other channel, Disney – whose stronghold on all other areas of entertainment is reaching Galactic Empire levels – will fire back with Star Wars series The Mandalorian, Marvel series The Falcon & The Winter Solider, and 90 years’ worth of back catalogue blockbuster hits.While 2020 is the year these entertainment titans battle it out, for the rest of us it’ll be a year of pure relaxation and binging.Getting Your Body BiohackedYou may have heard of the biohacking – a tech-based, systems-thinking approach to reaching optimum fitness and health. The term is associated with the kind of eccentric, Silicon Valley bros and entrepreneurial lifestyle gurus who claim they’ll live to the grand old age of 160, like some sort of super-healthy Bond villain.But biohacking isn’t all that bonkers. In fact, it’s going mainstream, with leading biohacker Dave Asprey’s dedicated body-hacking gym in Los Angeles and the opening of BelleCell, London’s first biohacking clinic, which offers sports performance optimisation (using 3D body scanners), “body potential treatments”, genetic testing, and tech-based beauty treatments. Source link

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