By modern gaming standards, Elden Ring gives you hardly any direction, especially past its first major dungeon, Stormveil Castle. The most guidance the game gives you for core progression is in the form of vague compass headings like “east of [X landmark]” or “the northwest part” of a continent you haven’t even discovered yet. Even finding the map fragments needed to piece together a basic layout of the world’s topography and scale can be difficult, especially for the more remote regions. While you eventually unlock a hub of NPCs who give you useful (and some less-than-useful) hints as to how to proceed, it’s ultimately up to you to put it together.
Wright finished the review by calling Elden Ring an “enigmatic, beguiling world worthy of exploration” and afterwards pushed back on the general narrative going around from other reviewers that this is somehow a more approachable Souls-like, but even though I’ve struggled with these games in the past I’m still looking forward to trying Elden Ring when I can. It’s wonderful that From is putting out bespoke unexplained single-player games, that aren’t zeitgeist-chasing daily grinds, on this scale, and has found an audience for them.
Frustratingly, reviewers were supposedly only given about a week to go through Elden Ring’s 80+ hours of gameplay. A week is enough time to understand a game, but it is painful to think of people being forced to rush through what should be a slow burn, and the discussion around it suffering as well.
Elden Ring is $60 on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam for Windows. It comes out on Friday, the 25th of February.
1Password has been the password manager I’ve recommended to anyone who isn’t using one for years. It is relatively easy to use, seems reasonably secure, and available on most of the platforms you’d want it to be on. I won’t be recommending 1Password for much longer if AgileBits, the company behind 1Password, sticks with the plans that AgileBits’ Matt O’Leary announced support for today:
We’re making it easier for Phantom wallet owners to save their account password, secret recovery phrase, and wallet address in 1Password. Phantom is a digital wallet that lets you manage cryptocurrencies, tokens, and NFTs built on the Solana blockchain. This is the first of many partnerships that we’ve been working on in the cryptocurrency space. It’s always been our goal to make it easier for everyone, regardless of their technological proficiency, to protect everything that’s important to them. And for an ever-growing group of people, everything includes digital assets.
[…]
Here at 1Password, we want to help secure everything that’s important to you, including your cryptocurrency wallets. We believe your keys and recovery phrases deserve the same level of protection as your credit and debit card numbers, medical records, and everything else you have stored inside 1Password.
Know someone who thinks crypto is too complicated or overwhelming? So do we. Most people don’t know what a recovery phrase is, or what will happen if they lose it. We know that getting started and securing your hard-earned investments should be simpler. That’s where 1Password comes in.
1Password has always been a place to store wallet addresses, private keys, and login credentials for cryptocurrency exchanges. But with the Save in 1Password button, it’s now easier than ever for Phantom wallet owners to gather and protect this information. We’ve also created a new item type for cryptocurrencies in 1Password, with clearly-labeled fields for everything you might want to store.
Let’s be clear: NFT’s and cryptocurrency are a grift that operate like pyramid schemes. They need fresh new buyers so that the people at the top of the pyramid can cash out. Once new users buy in they quickly become evangelists for the scheme because that is also the only way for them to cash out. Like regular capitalism, only accelerated to the point where there isn’t even the illusion of legitimacy and there is no purpose for these grifts except to provide a way to cash out for people higher up in the pyramid. Capitalism theoretically turns work into a roof over your head and food on a table. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs can’t pay rent or buy food, they have to be converted back into actual money which is going to be tough to do when the traded value of many cryptocurrencies have been tanking and will continue to be volatile and unreliable for everyone who is at the bottom and can’t afford to pump the market.
Even the ads during the Super Bowl didn’t help prop up the fraud to stop the slide and now that’s what AgileBits has decided to get behind. AgileBits are sinking their reputation alongside cryptocurrency grifters. There have already been other cuts that AgileBits have foisted upon their users like switching away from native applications to Electron web apps and pushing users towards toward subscriptions & AgileBits’ online password vault service instead of using another cloud file hosting provider. It seems like much of this is driven by the venture capital money that AgileBits took back in 2019 after operating for over a decade without giving up control of their business.
Support for grifts like cryptocurrencies and NFTs will likely be the final straw for my use of 1Password and I am going to stop recommending it if AgileBits don’t change course in response to the backlash they’re receiving.
Nintendo has a new support document online detailing their plans to discontinue the ability to make new purchases in their eShops for the 3DS and Wii-U:
As of late March 2023, it will no longer be possible to make purchases in Nintendo eShop for the Wii U system and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. It will also no longer be possible to download free content, including game demos. Furthermore, as this date draws closer, related services will cease to function:
As of May 23, 2022, it will no longer be possible to use a credit card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
As of August 29, 2022, it will no longer be possible to use a Nintendo eShop Card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. However, it will still be possible to redeem download codes until late March 2023.
Users who link their Nintendo Network ID wallet (used with Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems) with their Nintendo Account wallet (used with the Nintendo Switch family of systems) can use the shared balance to purchase content on any of these systems until late March 2023. After that, the balance can only be used to purchase content for the Nintendo Switch family of systems.
There are more details in the support article, and reassurances that it will still be possible to download purchases for “…for the foreseeable future…” but the justification is particularly galling:
Why is this happening? This is part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time.
There’s nothing natural about shutting down the ability to purchase software for a platform, this is a decision that Nintendo is making. Just as with the PlayStation 3, Vita, and PlayStation Portable stores shutting down, this decision on the Nintendo’s part is an acknowledgement that they do not care about game preservation and will invalidate your ability to access the enormous libraries of games they sell whenever the lines on a chart start dipping and it becomes inconvenient to continue to support the purchase process.
Once it is no longer possible to purchase software in Nintendo eShop on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, many classic games for past platforms will cease to be available for purchase anywhere. Will you make classic games available to own some other way? If not, then why? Doesn’t Nintendo have an obligation to preserve its classic games by continually making them available for purchase?
Across our Nintendo Switch Online membership plans, over 130 classic games are currently available in growing libraries for various legacy systems. The games are often enhanced with new features such as online play.
We think this is an effective way to make classic content easily available to a broad range of players. Within these libraries, new and longtime players can not only find games they remember or have heard about, but other fun games they might not have thought to seek out otherwise.
We currently have no plans to offer classic content in other ways.
Nintendo quickly removed this paragraph and supporting bullet points, they are missing from the currently published version of the support article. It couldn’t be more clear that now is the time to hack your 3DS and Wii-U because game pirates care more about game preservation than Nintendo. I do everything I can to avoid buying games for consoles digitally, preferring to buy physical cartridges and disks, and recommend you do the same.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes comes out on June 24th, 2022. Looks like your typical Dynasty Warriors-esque spinoff like Hyrule Warriors was.
Advance Wars 1+2 Re-boot Campcomes out on April 8th. CO’s have voices now. I love the look of this remake or reboot, Advance Wars was one of my favorite games for the GBA and really does a good job of giving us a simplified turn-based strategy game. Hopefully this reboot is good, too.
No Man’s Sky comes out “This Summer.” It’s a fantastic chill-out game, No Man’s Sky will have a good home on the Switch if it can handle it performance-wise, and at that point the Steam Deck should be in more hands so it will be interesting to compare performance between the two versions even though I’m sure someone could enjoy it either way.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is out on June 10th. It’s a new sequel to the Mario-universe soccer games that were on the GameCube and Wii. I feel like the entire internet has memory holed Super Mario Strikers for the Super Nintendo which doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Battle League has customizable gear with different stats for the characters to wear. The single-player game is 5-on-5. Multiplayer is 4-on-4 local or online, presumably with an automated goalie.
Splatoon 3 is still scheduled for “Summer 2022.” showed off the co-op multiplayer Salmon Run: Next Wave with three new Boss Salmonids. The first was a Fish Stick tower that got dropped in and the squid kids had to paint and slide to the top to destroy the flying fish around it. The second was a Flipper-Flopper in the shape of a dolphin that drops a huge ring of ink before doing a body slam on whomever is caught in the ring. The third was a giant Kaiju without any more details given on it. Inklings can now pass eggs by throwing them to another player.
Front Mission 1st: Remake is coming out “This Summer” from Square-Enix. Never thought I’d hear about Front Mission again. It’s a turn-based tactical RPG with mechs called Wanzers. The sequel is also getting a remake later on.
Disney Speedstorm is a free-to-play kart game coming out “This Summer” from Gameloft SE using Disney and Pixar characters. Cross-platform multiplayer was mentioned, so it’s coming out for other platforms. It also has split-screen. This seems like a cash-grab.
Star-Wars: The Force Unleashed is coming out on April 20th from Aspyr. It’s a re-release of the Wii version with motion controls that are newly “enhanced” and 1 versus 1 local multiplayer duels. This looks like a lot worse than I remember Force Unleashed looking but maybe that’s because it’s starting from the Wii version.
Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection is coming out on February 17th from Ubisoft. It gets touch-screen controls (Why?) HD-rumble, and “optimized on-screen display.” They’re still great games if you like stabbing dudes.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance is coming out “This Year” from Bandai Namco. SD is short for “Super Deformed” which means the Gundams are all cute smushed versions of the original designs.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Editionis coming out on April 9th from Square Enix. It’s a remaster of the PlayStation RPG that Nintendo says will let players turn off enemy encounters (weird!), an enhanced soundtrack, and the Satellaview’s Radical Dreamers interactive fiction game from Japan.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is coming out on March 25th from Nintendo. Kirby partially inhales a car in the new footage and we find out about the oddly-named Mouthful Mode that enables Kirby to do so. Kirby can drive the car when it’s stuck in his maw. Similarly, he can shoot cans from a vending machine that gets inhaled or pierce things when a traffic cone is inhaled. Kirby also inhales a few other items like lightbulbs and scissor-lifts and upgrades Waddle Dee Town. A vendor in Waddle Dee Town upgrades Kirby’s copy abilities. Looks fun.
MLB The Show 22 is coming to the Nintendo Switch on April 5th from Sony. A grizzled announcer let us know there’s a single-joycon mode for exhibition matches and has cross-play and cross-progression so the Switch can carry on from the PlayStation or Xbox versions of MLB The Show 22. Still very weird to see a PlayStation logo on a Switch box. This version looks like a PSP game, the gameplay footage wasn’t even scaled correctly for the Nintendo Direct stream so portions of the footage were cut off.
Kingdom Hearts: Cloud Versions is coming out tomorrow the 10th from Disney and Square Enix. Three-ish Kingdom Hearts games are getting released as streaming garbage. Really incredible to take offline single-player games and then make them truly offline by making versions that will stop working some day once the streaming services are shut down.
Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series is coming on July 8th from Bandai Namco. It includes the two original side-scrollers from the PlayStation1 & 2.
Portal Companion Collection is coming to the Switch “This Year” from Valve. It’s got both Portal 1 and 2, including the co-op features for the sequel. I believe this is the first time Valve has released a game for a Nintendo platform. The gameplay looks good, if a bit lower resolution than these games were originally intended. Portal 2 also recently got updated to work better on the upcoming Steam Deck. It’ll be interesting to compare the versions.
Live A Live is coming back on July 22nd. The Square Enix RPG was only ever released in Japan on the Super Famicom. Nintendo called this updated version a form of “HD-2D” which looked great in the video. It seems like Nintendo is doing the work to bring this updated version out since Square wasn’t mentioned.
Nintendo Switch Sports is coming on April 29th from Nintendo, it’s a new iteration of the Wii Sports motion control games that probably sold millions of the Nintendo Wii. Glad these are coming back, there are plenty of people who never got to play the originals and I’m hoping they’ll be more accurate to the newer Joy-Con technology instead of the old Wii-motes. There are the original games like Tennis, Bowling, and Chambara which looks like a padded ring-out game similar to something out of American Gladiators, and new games like Soccer with a huge in-game ball. Badminton and Volleyball are also new. The leg-strap for the Joy-Con from Ring Fit is included with the physical version of Nintendo Switch Sports for some of the games like a kicking mode in soccer. All of the games have local multiplayer and online either against friends or random matchmaking. Nintendo says that an update later on in the summer will add leg strap support for full soccer matches and that another update will add Golf in the Fall. Nintendo will have an online play test between February 18th to the 20th and people can register at https://sports.nintendo.com on February 15th at 5PM Pacific Time. The online test will only have random online matches for Tennis, Bowling, and Chambara and it requires a Nintendo Switch Online membership.
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rythm Festival is coming “This Year” from Bandai Namco. It sounds like an adventure with a storyline instead of just selecting different songs, although you still get to play to 76 different songs and some that haven’t been in Taiko no Tatsujin before like an orchestral version of The Legend of Zelda Main Theme. Namco added a way to replay sections of songs in order to practice getting better at them, a four-player multiplayer mode called DON-chan Band, and a two-player Great Drum Toy War. Bandai Namco is also selling a subscription service that they say has more than 500 songs to play along with. I really recommend getting a drum for these games if you can find it. They can be a lot of fun, hopefully this new game turns out well.
Triangle Strategy is coming from Nintendo, they’re also releasing another demo that lets you play up through Chapter 3 and transfer the save data to the finished game. Nintendo previously announced a March 4th, 2022 release date but that wasn’t mentioned during today’s Nintendo Direct.
Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course DLC is coming on June 30th from Studio MDHR. New levels, new bosses, a new playable character called Ms. Chalice. That DLC is also on its way for the other platforms that Cuphead came out on.
Metroid Dread is getting an update today that adds two new difficulty levels. Dread Mode difficulty game over’s Samus after one-hit. Rookie Mode improves Samus’ health regeneration. Another free update comes out in April with a boss rush mode.
EarthBound is coming today to the Nintendo Switch Online SNES emulator and EarthBound Beginnings to the NES emulator. They’re classic RPGs and the only other release EarthBound Beginnings got was on the Wii-U Virtual Console in 2015. EarthBound 3 has never been released outside of Japan but there is a popular community translation of the Japanese ROM for Mother 3.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War is coming out on April 26th from Rebellion. Have we ever killed enough Nazi Zombies?
GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is coming out today from Konami. It looks like a side-scroller with watercolor art that looks nice.
Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles is a mouthful of a name of a game coming on June 20th from Sega.
LEGO Brawls is coming from LEGO Games some time in June. It looks a little bit like a platform fighter.
Two Point Campus was already announced for other platforms from Sega, and it’s coming to the Switch on May 17th. This is a collegiate follow-up to Two Point Hospital.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass is 48 remastered courses from old Mario Kart games as $25 paid DLC for Mario Kart 8. They tracks will be released in 6 waves of 8 courses through 2023. Coconut Mall, Choco Mountain, and Tokyo Blur were three mentioned courses. The first wave will be released on March 18th, 2022. It’s also included with the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack that costs $50 year for one person or $80 for a family membership. I’m still on the regular subscription and honestly don’t like paying for it. I’d recommend buying the DLC for $25 and then it’s yours for as long as Nintendo keeps the download services alive.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was announced for September 2022.
Slackware 15.0 is out today, this is the first new version of one of the oldest Linux operating system distributions since Slackware 14.2 was released in July of 2016. The first version of Slackware was released 28 years ago in 1993.
Well folks, in spite of the dire predictions of YouTube pundits, this
morning the Slackhog emerged from its development den, did *not* see its
shadow, and Slackware 15.0 has been officially released – another six
weeks (or years) of the development treadmill averted.
This has been an interesting development cycle (in the “may you live in
interesting times” sense). Anyone who has followed Linux development over
the years has seen the new technology and a slow but steady drift away from
the more UNIX-like structure. The challenge this time around was to adopt
as much of the good stuff out there as we could without changing the
character of the operating system. Keep it familiar, but make it modern.
And boy did we have our work cut out for us. We adopted PAM (finally)
as projects we needed dropped support for pure shadow passwords. We switched
from ConsoleKit2 to elogind, making it much easier to support software
that targets that Other Init System and bringing us up-to-date with the
XDG standards. We added support for PipeWire as an alternate to PulseAudio,
and for Wayland sessions in addition to X11. Dropped Qt4 and moved entirely
to Qt5. Brought in Rust and Python 3. Added many, many new libraries to the
system to help support all the various additions. We’ve upgraded to two of
the finest desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.16, a fast and
lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and
the KDE Plasma 5 graphical workspaces environment, version 5.23.5 (the
Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition). This also supports running under Wayland
or X11.
We still love Sendmail, but have moved it into the /extra directory and made
Postfix the default mail handler. The old imapd and ipop3d have been retired
and replaced by the much more featureful Dovecot IMAP and POP3 server.
The Slackware pkgtools (package management utilities) saw quite a bit of
development as well. File locking was implemented to prevent parallel
installs or upgrades from colliding, and the amount of data written to
storage minimized in order to avoid extra writes on SSD devices.
For the first time ever we have included a “make_world.sh” script that allows
automatically rebuilding the entire operating system from source. We also
made it a priority throughout the development cycle to ensure that nothing
failed to build. All the sources have been tested and found to build
properly. Special thanks to nobodino for spearheading this effort.
We have also included new scripts to easily rebuild the installer, and to
build the kernel packages. With the new ease of generating kernel packages,
we went on to build and test nearly every kernel that was released, finally
landing on the 5.15.x LTS series which we’ve used for this release. There
are also some sample config files to build 5.16 kernels included in the
/testing directory for anyone interested in using those kernels.
There’s really just way too many upgrades to list them all here. For a
complete list of included packages, see:
Slackware has always been my favorite distribution of Linux. In the 90’s and early 2000’s Slackware epitomized the hacker lifestyle that if you wanted a new piece of software you had to compile it yourself and if you messed something up, that was your fault. It was extremely unfriendly to use and that was perfect for the shitty teenager I was at the time. Fortunately I had some friends who were much nicer and helped when I ran into trouble. Even the install process today has no GUI to help partition your hard drive before the console-based setup program runs, it’s all up to you.
Part of the reason for the delay between releases may be due to Slackware’s Patrick J. Volkerding struggling after getting ripped off by his former business partners.Slackware was never easy, but it is a huge part of the history of Linux and it is a shame that big businesses continue to profit off of this free and open source software without contributing back to the people who made their businesses possible.
