Tag: Google

‘Fallout Shelter’ Hit’s Android! FINALLY!

by Shane O'Hare

The HUGELY popular mobile title from Bethesda has just hit the Google Play store!

Fallout Shelter is Bethesda’s way of holding fans of Fallout 4 over until this November. The mobile game tasks players with designing, building and maintaining their own Valtec Vault. Players have to strategically place rooms and keep the health and happiness of the vaults dwellers up.

BUILD THE PERFECT VAULT
Create a brighter future…underground! Select from a variety of modern-day rooms to turn an excavation beneath 2,000 feet of bedrock into the very picture of Vault Life.

 

OVERSEE A THRIVING COMMUNITY
Get to know your Dwellers and lead them to happiness. Find their ideal jobs and watch them flourish. Provide them with outfits, weapons, and training to improve their abilities.

 

PROSPER
A well-run Vault requires a variety of Dwellers with a mix of skills. Build a Radio Room to attract new Dwellers. Or, take an active role in their personal lives; play matchmaker and watch the sparks fly!

 

EXPLORE THE WASTELAND
Send Dwellers above ground to explore the blasted surface left behind and seek adventure, handy survival loot, or unspeakable death. Find new armor and weapons, gain experience, and earn Caps. But don’t let them die!

 

PROTECT YOUR VAULT
From time to time, idyllic Vault life may be disrupted by the dangers of post-nuclear life. Prepare your Dwellers to protect against threats from the outside…and within.

Originally released on iOS, Fallout Shelter earned Bethesda a STAGGERING $5.1 Million in just two weeks!

So if you’ve got Android, head on over to the Play Store and get your hands on some Vault action!

 

 

SDCC 2015: Legendary’s Booth Once Again Steals The Show With Awesome Giveaways & An Incredible Lineup!

by Derek Kraneveldt

I can’t believe it’s already been a year since 2014’s Comic-Con International. Last year was my second incredible adventure through San Diego, which featured the opportunity to see plenty of old friends, make a whole bunch of new ones, and work my way through a myriad of unbelievable experiences, including the always show-stopping Legendary Entertainment booth, which gave me my very, very first experience with virtual reality, and also introduced me (in person) to one of my favourite directors of all time, Guillermo Del Toro.

During booth setup on Tuesday, I wondered just what Legendary could have in store for attendees this year. Gone were the impressive yet gigantic Oculus Rift-equipped Jaeger Pilot seats, and gone was the SDCC highlight Crimson Peak Gothic Gallery. In fact, during setup, Legendary’s area appeared decidedly more spacious, aside from an beyond-impressive, life-sized Orgrim Doomhammer.

It turns out that the company needed all of that extra space, as this year’s convention appears bigger than ever for the industry giant, and also includes a partnership and giveaway that (I believe) is unparalleled in Comic-Con history.

During the company’s preview night event on Wednesday, which we were lucky enough to attend, Legendary representatives spoke at length about the fact that, while a film studio at its core (and an impressive comic book company to boot), they’re also an experience company, and creating market defining experiences is extremely important to the company and its future. As such, the company decided to release its stellar Pacific Rim: Jaeger Pilot experience, along with two new VR experiences (one for Warcraft, and one for Crimson Peak), to the masses with the help of Google and its Cardboard viewer.

Cardboard

Legendary and Google have partnered up to give away 50,000 Cardboard viewers (the new design, too) during the course of the convention, and if yesterday (Thursday) was any indication, these things are hot. The lineup to grab a Legendary-logoed cardboard viewer was longer than the lineup for many of the actors around the show floor. Apparently, people are dying to get their hands on these things. Learn more about the partnership via the video below, and if you have a Cardboard viewer (or would just like to pan the camera around these experiences) head to legendary.com/vr.

https://youtu.be/G8vZXau9nFg

There was far more to see at the Legendary booth than just VR, however. As I mentioned above, the company also officially revealed the film’s version of Orgrim Doomhammer for the horde, but also brought us over to the nearby Weta booth to unveil the Alliance’s King Llane.

KingLlane

Llane was unveiled by Warcraft director Duncan Jones, and WETA founder (yep, WETA’s freaking founder) Richard Taylor. Following the unveiling, Taylor, Jones, and press members returned to Legendary’s booth to chat about what we just saw. Here’s Richard talking about the amount of work that went into this portable Doomhammer.

https://youtu.be/sf40gbOBga0

And here’s Duncan Jones talking about the prospect of magic in Warcraft‘s world, and also whether or not gamers would see any noticeable easter eggs in the upcoming film.

https://youtu.be/s3L3-AP5R-A

Overall, it was another amazing preview night from Legendary Entertainment. The company really is a juggernaut in the film industry, and always manages to somehow get me interested in properties that I didn’t know that I had interest in, for instance, the upcoming Straight Outta Compton.

Of course, those weren’t all of the revelations that Legendary had in store for us. Also announced were three incredible looking Mondo prints that will be available at Mondo’s booth this Saturday (pictured below), and yesterday, a Warcraft prequel graphic novel from Legendary Comics was debuted.

An exciting night, an incredible way to kick off Comic-Con, and an incredible preview of what Legendary Entertainment has in store for us this year. I can’t freaking wait for Crimson Peak, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. As always, thanks for those at Legendary for hosting an amazing night!

Legendary’s booth #3920, which is right across from #3919 (us). Be sure to go and give them a visit (after saying hi to us, of course), and check out Orgrim for yourself!

Mondo

APRIL FOOLS! Google Maps for Nintendo Entertainment System!

by Steven Kunz

This was an April Fools joke… but still it would have been cool!

When it comes to Google Maps, it’s the only tool I use to find directions on where I need to go, as well as look up alternate routes. However, there’s always something in the back of my head, nagging me, irritating me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until now. I had to ask myself this question: “Wouldn’t Google Maps be SOOOOOOOO much better if it had a 8-bit retro look? I would be SO much more invested in Google Maps if it only could do just this!”

Well, Google listened to my oddly specific request. When you access Google Maps, on the top right of the map where you can choose Satellite/Earth/Street views, there’s a new mode called Quest. By clicking it, all the streets, trees, and mountains all become Dragon Quest lands. The maps are still plotted out the same way, and it still works the same, so you can still go to where you need to go. Except now, you can do it to the look and style of the original Dragon Quest. What’s also funny is if you go to Street View, everything is extremely pixilated, as if the NES’s technical capabilities are working overtime to provide even a simple version of Streetview.

Apparently, this is only a trial version and that an actual cartridge is coming out for the Nintendo Famicon and Nintendo Entertainment System. I don’t have a reason to really play my NES all that much anymore, but this is one reason to bring it back out from my closet. Now if only there was an update for Super Nintendo, I’d be all set…

Google Play: Needed Upgrade or Disastrous Marketing Move?

by Shane O'Hare

Three days ago Google made a push to make it’s online store more like Apples. You may have noticed on your phone when you opened the marketplace you were greeted with a prompt to upgrade to Google Play. Like most, you probably just hit yes and moved on but what is really changing and what do these changes mean for you.

If we watch the hipster fueled marketing video we get the very basic understanding of what the Play change is. It centralizes and aggregates your “Google experience”. Instead of having your Google: Video, Market, Books, Apps and Music market places and accounts, you will access everything through your Play account.

Now the boffins over at Google have been pretty good with the apps and games on the Android platform. If you get a new device and log in with your account, all the stuff you bought and downloaded on the previous device will automatically start downloading right away, even the friggin backround is saved. So their big push to make the move to Play is to unify their Music and Movies market.

For the longest time the two sites were connected but still separate by having different features and access. Google music lets you upload a very LARGE collection of songs to their cloud service as it stands, and leading up to the Play name change were offering crazy cheap deals on songs an albums. On the Movie side, they offer rentals and purchases of films and television yadda yadda yadda more of the same.

The saving grace of the Android Marketplace was that it wasn’t Apple. It brought a compelling removal of the evil locked down monolith that the I-Devices brought, and that all changed when they moved to Play.

If you have an Android device that is rooted, like a good majority of people have (Cyanogen users being the most prevalent.) then you are kind of screwed. Any rentals or purchases on the Play Movies store on a rooted device will not play. They will take your money just fine but when it comes to actually consuming the content you paid money for you get a nice little warning

Well shit. Looks like in the sideways move to be more and less like Apple at the same time they’ve gone and fucked it all up. Couple that with certain Motorola devices telling Play that they are rooted when they are not Google inadvertently gave the middle finger to some of the most influential users on their devices. Geeks. Another prime example of being considered guilty before trial. All rooted users are evil pirates!

Then you have the NON-Geeks. The everyday users who bought a HTC phone from ATT when they updated their package or those who got a cheapy Android smartphone when they got upsold at Verizon. Those people have no idea what is going on.

Check out this collection of confused consumers.

Now I know what you’re thinking, those people are idiots. They are, they had to click “YES I AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND PLAY”, but these people are the ones who are most likely going to be using your market. When a Geek goes on the marketplace they usually are going there to get something specific, an app or game they were told about by another.

These consumers are easily swayed by commercials and blind marketing. The slightest problem with their Android and they will fly out and get an iPhone. Take my mother as a prime example. She had been complaining about issues with her Samsung Galaxy. Said she wants to get an iPhone 4 because it lets her “do the zoomy thing”. Holding her phone I showed her that the multi touch gesture she was thinking of also worked on her Galaxy she “Just didnt think of trying it”.

So…whats the end game for Play? The centralized content management has worked in the past with Apps and Music. If they can knock the bugs out of the rooted devices issue and figure out why Motorola hates them, then they should be “A+ Would Do Business With Again” status with geeks in a heart beat. The marketing issues will still be there. Doing a hard flip the switch on the unaware or people who are just click happy and agree to any TOS was horribly stupid. As in Microsoft BOB stupid.

I guess it’s a time will tell story. Will the features work themselves out? Will the advent of centralized code actually be a good thing? Myself, having a Nexus One with Cyanogen Mod 7 on it, I am facing the same issues the other geeks are having. Though I never really found the need to have movies or content like movies on my phone, I’m just mad because I can’t. It’s like owning a gun, sometimes you do just because you can, and GOD DAMMIT I WANT DRM FREE JERSEY SHORE!