Nuclear Monster

  • Blizzard doesn’t have a great track record on remasters right now, their Warcraft III remaster was very poorly received, but this is their announcement trailer for a re-make of Diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack for $40 coming to Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X & S consoles later this year. Sadly, I don’t see any mention of a macOS release, giving up on decades of support by Blizzard.

    Blizzard says that Diablo 2’s 2D graphics are revamped with “…full 3D physically-based rendering, dynamic lighting, revamped animations and spell effects…”, they’ve re-shot the cutscenes, and added surround sound for the game’s audio and soundtrack. Like many recent remasters, Blizzard says you can swap between the new and old Diablo 2 graphics quickly.

    Vicarious Visions and Blizzard are co-developing the re-master and say that progress is supposed to be portable across platforms for characters and their inventories.

    Diablo 3’s console port was awesome, I loved playing it with direct control on a gamepad instead of the sort of indirect control you had on computers with a mouse and keyboard. Hopefully this is an easy slam-dunk for Diablo 2. There’s an “technical test” of Diablo 2 coming soon for Windows players who opt-in and are chosen by Blizzard at their Diablo 2 site. Who loves to get exploited by one of the richest companies in video gaming to test their products without compensation? I guess I do, because I signed up for the test and if it comes without any NDA I’ll write about the experience.

  • NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory put out a statement after the successful landing:

    The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers). Confirmation of the successful touchdown was announced in mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST).

    Packed with groundbreaking technology, the Mars 2020 mission launched July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Perseverance rover mission marks an ambitious first step in the effort to collect Mars samples and return them to Earth.

  • When io interactive released this year’s HITMAN (2016) sequel they also signed up for an exclusivity deal that locked the Windows version into the Epic Games Store. That’s fine, but unfortunately it also meant that HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021) players didn’t have an easy way to import their purchases of the previous games in the series from Steam into the new game. Finally, that’s been solved. Click this link to find out more.

    Unfortunately the complete version of HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) remains a completely ridiculous $100 purchase if you don’t own it already:

    It’s a fantastic series, I loved HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) but it ends up approaching being a very expensive series of games to own if you don’t own any on Windows already. The HITMAN (2016) Access Pass for HITMAN (2016) 3 (2020) is slightly more reasonable at $30 and has been free for Epic Game Store customers in the past. All told you could end up spending $190 on having the base $60 version of the third game, the complete $100 version of 2 (2018), and the gold $30 version of 1 (2016) if you own none of the games and missed getting HITMAN (2016) on sale.

    HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) was on sale for a discounted price for the first two weeks after HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021) was released, so I don’t doubt that some people felt pushed to buy that pass after the confusing launch when:

    • io interactive initially said that players would not need to re-buy the games:

    ..we are pleased to confirm that PC players will be able to carryover their current progression and unlocks from HITMAN 2 on Steam into HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store. It will also be possible for PC players to import locations from the previous two games into HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store. We want to make it a seamless process for our PC players to enjoy HITMAN 3 on a different PC platform and continue to enjoy the benefits of our World of Assassination.

    io interactive, August 2020
    • Closer to the launch of HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021) io interactive said they had no way to make the old games available in 3 for Windows players who had bought them on Steam and instead announced various discounts and other schemes in their Pre-Launch Guide

    We’ve done everything possible to make this process smooth and player-friendly. However, due to various circumstances out of our control, we want to acknowledge that the process is different to our initial plans for PC players. We also want to share some of the initiatives we’ve set-up to make sure that PC players the chance to keep enjoying the benefits of the World of Assassination.

    io interactive, January 15th 2021
    • Before finally changing their mind again and announcing this import process two days later in a tweet:

    We are continuing to work on a solution with our partners to allow PC players who own HITMAN 1 or HITMAN 2 to import locations from those games at no additional cost.

    We guarantee that players will NOT need to repurchase the games.

    io interactive, January 17th 2021
    • HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021) launched three days after that tweet, on January 20th, with those discounts ticking down and no clear path in sight for no-doubt confused players on Windows.

    This new import process should give automatic refunds to players who bought HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) content on the Epic Games Store before the import process was available, but at this time it does not.

    I have sent a request to io interactive to ask if customers who bought those editions and owned the games on Steam will be refunded during the import process.

  • Ars has a guide to what’s going on with the new exploring metal guy today, the automated navigation system that will guide the rover to a safe landing, and a little bit about the first-of-it’s kind drone that will launch from Perseverance.

    You can tune in to watch the status of the mission via NASA TV and elsewhere starting at 2:15PM/1415 EST.

  • UntitledImage A lot of things about the internet are sad these days. With the internet people can find their kind of people and that is how you end up with good things like people who like mechanical keyboards developing their own keyboard projects but you also get groups of white supremacists organizing to storm the U.S. Capitol or people spreading lies about elections to lead up to that kind of action. One good thing on the internet is Radio Garden, a website that aggregates internet-accessible real-world radio stations from around the globe onto a virtual globe directory that you can click through to listen to any of them by clicking on the station’s general physical location.

    Maybe the only downside is that the Radio Garden has dynamic ads inserted before the remote radio station starts playing. It was jarring when I tuned into this station depicted above in Germany only to hear a Verizon ad in English clearly targeted at U.S. customers.

    The mobile version of Radio Garden has one In-App Purchase to remove ads, but it’s only for removing interstitial ad graphics and not the audio ads. Unfortunately the app says the Radio Garden developers have no control over the audio ads. So, unfortunately the internet also let ad publishers and agencies get together for enhanced advertising. Which is why Facebook is now advertising to me and interrupting this German radio station to tell me how their ad programs are safe and definitely not completely evil.