Tag: tech

The Academy Awards ceremony is streaming live for the very first time in its 97-year history. The Oscars will stream on Hulu at the same time as it airs on traditional network TV via ABC. The ceremony starts on March 2 at 7PM ET, though there’s a live red carpet show that kicks off a half hour before that.

It’s very strange that it took this long but, whatever, I’ll take it. I don’t even have regular TV, so Hulu will be the only way I’ll be able to watch the telecast live, aside from picking up a shady stream somewhere. It’s likely the same for many of you reading this.

To that end, the Hulu stream could lead to a serious uptick in ratings, with some industry experts saying that the telecast will hit 30 million live viewers. The Oscars haven’t gotten that many eyeballs since 2017 when Moonlight famously snatched victory from the jaws of La La Land defeat. The 2024 ceremony drew 21.5 million viewers, but this was a huge uptick from the COVID years.

This year’s broadcast is being hosted by the king of hot wings himself, Conan O’Brien. The awards nominees won’t be announced until January 17 and there are plenty of flicks that could end up in the top spot. These include Wicked, The Brutalist, Anora and I Saw the TV Glow, among many others.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/the-oscars-will-stream-live-for-the-very-first-time-on-hulu-191638415.html?src=rss

Earlier today, Google debuted Gemini 2.0. The company says its new machine learning model won’t just enhance its existing products and services. It will also power entirely new experiences. To that point, Google previewed Project Mariner, an AI agent that can navigate within a web browser. Mariner is an experimental Chrome extension that is currently available to select “trusted testers.”

As you can see from the video Google shared, the pitch for Mariner is a tool that can automate certain rote tasks. In the demo, Mariner assists Google’s Jaclyn Konzelmann with finding the contact information of four outdoor companies.

Clearly, there’s more work Google needs to do before the software is ready for public use. Notice that Konzelmann is very specific when prompting Mariner, instructing the agent to “memorize” and “remember” parts of her instructions. It also takes Mariner close to 12 minutes to complete the task given to it.

“As a research prototype, it’s able to understand and reason across information in your browser screen, including pixels and web elements like text, code, images and forms,” Google says of Mariner.

If Project Mariner sounds familiar, it’s because The Information reported in October that Google was working on something called Project Jarvis. The publication described it as a “computer-using agent” that Google designed to assist with tasks like booking flights. In November, an early version of Jarvis was briefly available on the Chrome Web Store. A Google spokesperson told Engadget Jarvis and Mariner are the same project.

The confirmation of Mariner’s existence comes after Anthropic introduced a similar but more expansive feature for its Claude AI, which the company says can “use a wide range of standard tools and software programs designed for people.” That tool is currently available in public beta.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/jarvis-googles-web-browsing-ai-is-now-officially-known-as-project-mariner-191603929.html?src=rss

Sony’s PlayStation 2024 Wrap-Up has a slight problem: It isn’t working. The site for accessing your year-end PlayStation stats and achievements has been down for maintenance since it launched nearly 24 hours ago. Push Square reports that, although some folks could briefly access their summaries, it quickly began showing errors to many before eventually collapsing. It now displays the “We’ll be back soon” message in the above image. Oops!

The year-end replay is similar to Spotify Wrapped and other year-end summaries. Assuming Sony eventually gets it back up and running, it will show stats like your most played games, achievements, monthly gaming breakdowns, personal gaming style and more.

For the first time this year, Sony added historical data like the number of games played since creating your account and reflections on trophies you’ve earned. The 2024 edition includes a nod to PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, with a retro PlayStation aesthetic and graphics that pay tribute to the brand’s history.

The year-end rewind will be continually updated until the end of the year, so (once the kinks are ironed out), you’ll still have a chance to change it with some furious December marathon sessions.

When Wrap Up returns, you can find it here. However, there are several requirements to be eligible. You’ll need to be 18 or older with an active PlayStation Network account in your region and have played at least 10 hours on a PS4 or PS5 in the 2024 calendar year. Another point to consider is that you’ll have to opt in to share “Full Data” (or “Additional Data” in some regions, including the EU) from your PS5 console. So, if you’re (wisely) cautious about big corporations hoovering up your data, consider whether a few moments of profiled nostalgia justify that cost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/playstations-2024-wrap-up-has-been-mostly-out-of-commission-for-24-hours-190522062.html?src=rss

Meta apps and services like Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Messenger are down as part of an apparent outage. Staff at Engadget and users across X and Bluesky have reported issues loading Meta’s websites and logging in. Even Meta’s company site is currently displaying the text “This page isn’t available right now.”

There were over 90,000 reports of issues for Facebook.com alone on Downdetector, and the site is also showing outage reports for Whatsapp, Threads, and Messenger too. The issue is clearly not concentrated on a single Meta app or service. The company’s own status page for enterprise customers shows multiple issue across APIs and ad tools, too.

Engadget has reached out to Meta for more information on the outage and will update this post once we learn more. The company noted that people have been experience issues on X and said a fix is in the works.

Meta last dealt with a major outage in March 2024 that prevented users from accessing its apps and services for two hours. The last outage was attributed to a “technical issue” by Meta communications director Andy Stone, which is the same explanation Meta has offered so far today, but it’s not clear when the issue will be resolved.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-threads-whatsapp-and-more-down-as-part-of-meta-outage-184608535.html?src=rss

The latest Day of the Devs showcase has come and gone, but the stream placed a spotlight on a whole bunch of promising indie games. The event is curated by Double Fine and iam8bit and this digital showcase highlighted dozens of in-progress titles to keep an eye on. The virtual show included some world premieres and release date announcements, along with a bunch of new trailers about games we already knew about.

We winnowed down the list to our 14 favorites, so it’s a baker’s dozen plus one. These are all vastly different titles, with their own publishers, genres, budgets and visual styles. They have just one thing in common. These are indie games, in the truest sense of the word.

New games

Neon Abyss 2

The hit run-and-gun roguelite is getting a sequel, and it looks like an improvement over the original in every major way. There’s an updated weapons system and plenty of new melee and long-distance weapons to choose from, including a gun that quite literally shoots out a giant dragon. Item synergies are back, and are even crazier this time around. The sequel also includes many of the random elements from the original, like slot machines and claw games.

There are brand-new minigames, such as a nifty-looking match-three puzzler. The graphics look similar to the original, but that’s not a bad thing. I put like 80 hours into the first one on my Steam Deck, so this is definitely going on my wishlist. Neon Abyss 2 is due to hit early access in 2025.

Recur

This goofy-looking puzzle platformer tasks players with controlling a postal worker that can manipulate time. Is a pack of angry dogs (they hate postal workers) harassing you on the beat? Rewind time and put them behind a locked gate. There look to be all kinds of unique puzzles that take advantage of the overlaying game mechanic. The graphics look gorgeous, with a cartoony art design, and the world looks both silly and dangerous. It’s being published by Astra Logical, who released the well-received Rebots and Star Stuff. We don’t have a release window for this one, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

PBJ – The Musical

As the name suggests, this is a musical game that stars peanut butter and jelly. The handcrafted art style is breathtaking, calling to mind stuff like the recent Yoshi games. The title chronicles the invention of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so it follows a peanut and a strawberry on their journey to get grinded up, salted, sugared and spread between two slices of bread. We don’t know exactly how this game will play, though I spied some quick-time events in the trailer, but the music sounds great and the child-like mangling of Shakespearean dialogue is super-cute.

Read the full story here.

Tankhead

This is a third-person action game in which players control flying drones that can connect to robots and vehicles, allowing for unique vehicular combat scenarios. The title Tankhead is quite literal, as the drone typically sits atop the head of a tank. The trailer shows other bizarre combinations, like some kind of nightmare hybrid between a building and a horse. Customization seems to be the name of the game here, with a myriad of chassis and weapon combos available. Want some good news? Tankhead is available right now on the Epic Games Store.

Blippo+

Here’s something really interesting from Panic, the publisher behind Untitled Goose Game and the creator of the adorable portable console Playdate. Blippo+ looks less like a game and more like those interdimensional cable episodes of Rick and Morty. The FMV title is a portal to an entire cable platform of made-up TV shows, complete with a directory of what’s airing and more oddities than you can shake a stick at. It’s being developed by YACHT and Telefantasy Studios, and seems to have a similar vibe to the latter company’s archive, drag performer included. We aren’t sure what the actual game will be, or if there even is one beneath the layer of public access grime, but the trailer sure has us intrigued. It’ll be available for PC via Steam in the near future.

Release date announcement 

Hyper Light Breaker

Can you believe it? The successor to the surprise hit Hyper Light Drifter is nearly here, as the game releases as an early access title on Steam on January 14. Notice I said “successor” and not “sequel.” Hyper Light Breaker drops the retro 2D Zelda aesthetic in favor of an all-new 3D engine, while the story itself is positioned more as a prequel. It’s also no longer a single-player affair, as this game places an emphasis on co-op play. One thing that hasn’t changed? The action is still relentless and there will still be waves of enemies to slash through. This follow-up has faced some delays, so it’s good to see we are only a month out from giving it a go.

Read the full story on Hyper Light Breaker here.

Other stuff that looks dope

Kingmakers

Have you ever wanted to change the course of history by going back in time with a few machine guns and laying waste to hordes of medieval-era bozos? That’s the basic premise of Kingmakers. The game asks players to “grab a gun and lead an army of thousands into massive, real-time simulated battles.” It’s a blend of action and strategy, like many medieval real-time strategy games, but with an exceptionally strong hook. Also, everything is destructible and can be blown up, which is always a nice touch. The game can be played solo or in a co-op mode with up to four players. It comes out sometime next year as an early access title.

Bionic Bay

This nifty-looking title takes its inspiration from games like Gravity Rush and Limbo. It’s a side-scrolling platformer with a gorgeous aesthetic, just like the aforementioned Limbo, but the protagonist has the ability to control time and gravity. He can also teleport objects. This leads to all manner of precision-based platforming and plenty of unique puzzles, all set across an ancient biomechanical world. Publisher Kepler Interactive, who released the incredible Pacific Drive, are calling it “a platformer like no other.” It comes out on March 13 for PS5 and PC via Steam. It’s available for wishlisting right now.

Faraway

Looking for something simple, yet hopelessly addictive? Faraway is a one-button affair that tasks folks with exploring the furthest reaches of space. This is done by drawing constellations and connecting stars together. It’s a puzzle game, complete with various modes, a high-score counter and multipliers. The maps are procedurally generated and the graphics look appropriately minimal. This one has the Annapurna pedigree, so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. We could all use a new iconic puzzle game. Faraway will be released for PC sometime in 2025.

Read the full story on Faraway here.

Sleight of Hand

This is a third-person hybrid game that combines stealth action with deckbuilding, all set in a magical noir-tinged city. It’s extremely easy on the eyes, with a darkened color palette and a cast of oddballs. Players control an occult detective pulled out of retirement to do one last job. You know the drill. It’s noir. As for gameplay, the developer’s say it’s like Metal Gear Solid, only with the guns and tools replaced by cards. These cards dictate what moves and powers are available. The protagonist can disappear in a puff of smoke or set a bunch of nameless thugs on fire, so long as the deck is right. It looks fun! Sleight of Hand is available to wishlist right now and will be released for Xbox consoles and PC via Steam. It’ll also be available on Game Pass when it launches.

Read the full story on Sleight of Hand here.

Blue Prince

This game is described as a “roguelike Gone Home mixed with a board game.” From the trailer, that doesn’t sound so far off. The game tasks players with exploring a large estate that changes every day, due to an ever-shifting blueprint (thus the title.) There are plenty of family mysteries to unravel and a strategy component that allows for purposeful rejiggering of the aforementioned blueprint. The vibe is appropriately eerie and, well, who doesn’t like exploring a creepy old mansion? Blue Prince is a PC title that launches in the early part of next year.

Read the full story on Blue Prince here.

Feltopia

This “hand-felted stop motion” game looks absolutely stunning and it was developed by a pair of twin siblings. The felt. The fabric. It all looks so real. Feltopia is, basically, a shmup, but with some unique mechanics that set it apart from rival shooters. First of all, there will be no killing of enemies. Instead, players shoot positive vibes that transform monsters into friends. The developers are calling it a “cute-em-up” instead of a shoot-em-up. Also, every single sprite in the game has been needle-felted by hand. That’s some dedication. You can wishlist this one on Steam right now, but it doesn’t actually come out until 2026. All of that fabric work takes time.

Read the full story on Feltopia here.

Incolatus: Don’t Stop, Girlypop!

Here’s something I’ve never seen before. Incolatus: Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is a first-person shooter inspired by early 2000s girly pop. The soundtrack is pumping, everything is pink and players communicate via a Nokia-style flip phone. There’s another twist, beyond those retro-soaked vibes. The game encourages people to never stand still, like the early 2000s action flick Crank. Constant movement will reward players with bonus damage and healing. Finally, there’s a dress up minigame that’s inspired by CD ROM titles from the 1990s and early 2000s. Inject this game into my Y2K-loving veins please. It’s available to wishlist on Steam right now and will be released “soon.”

Read the full story on Incolatus here.

LOK Digital

As the name suggests, this is a digital version of a pre-existing puzzle book. It may look like a traditional word search puzzle, but players are dropped in without any guidance. We’ll have to figure out the rules on our own, which can be deduced by working through the 90 puzzles. There’s a legitimate story and an entire made-up language. That’s right. The words that comprise each puzzle grid will not be in English, or in any recognizable language. Every time a player unlocks (or unloks) a new word, it provides a unique power up. The whole point is to use these power ups to black out the entire grid. It looks pretty fun and, guess what, it’s available right now on PC. The devs say it’ll be released for mobile devices next year. This does seem like the perfect tablet game.

If those 14 games aren’t enough, check out the whole Day of the Devs stream here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/here-are-the-14-most-interesting-titles-from-the-day-of-the-devs-game-awards-stream-183001600.html?src=rss

There’s been a bit of a resurgence of stop-motion games in recent years. For one thing, The Spirit of the Samurai is set to arrive on Thursday and it looks pretty compelling (you can play as a cat in some sections!). During the Day of the Devs showcase, we got a look at another intriguing stop-motion game that’s a bit further out. This one’s animated entirely with felt.

Feltopia is the first project from creative director Andrea Love and her team at Wooly Games. Love has long used needle-felted wool to create stop-motion animations for commercials, short films and social media, but hadn’t seen the medium being used in a game before. “We realized there was a gap in the market for this type of aesthetic, and decided to fill it,” Love said.

Love describes Feltopia, a cozy spin on the side-scrolling shoot ’em up genre, as a “cute ’em up.” You play as a sheep herder named Skyrider who uses magical powers to purge the world of an encroaching smog and save their Rainbow Flock. You’re not killing enemies here. Instead, you’re restoring infected creatures and bosses to their true forms.

Wooly Games

“Wool lends itself really well to the natural world, so I knew I wanted to create a game with sweeping landscapes and lots of elemental effects,” Love said. “The classic side scroller mechanics mixed with our hand-felted, stop-motion techniques gives Feltopia both a novel and nostalgic feeling, which is a balance I like to hit with my animation work. Our goal is to take a typically violent genre and invert it so it is about transformation and healing rather than destruction and death.”

Feltopia looks charming as heck. It’s immediately apparent that Love and her team have infused a ton of personality into their first game, and this could be one worth keeping your eye on.

Wooly Games, which started work on Feltopia last year, is aiming to release the game in mid-2026. It’ll hit Steam first and arrive on other platforms later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/feltopia-is-a-side-scrolling-shoot-em-up-animated-in-felt-182353538.html?src=rss

What would it look like if you took the fast-paced arena shooter stylings of Doom Eternal and flipped the gory, grimdark aesthetics upside down? You might end up with something like Incolatus: Don’t Stop, Girlypop!.

It’s a “Y2K girly-pop arena-style movement shooter where standing still is not an option,” as game director Jane Fiona of Funny Fintan Softworks put it during the Day of the Devs showcase on Wednesday. “The faster you go, the more damage you deal and the more you heal.”

In Incolatus, a mining corp is trying to drain the world of love, its most precious resource. Trees are dying and fairies have been ejected into the world at large, and it’s up to you to save their homes — so you might argue that it’s even darker than Doom Eternal. Thanks, capitalism.

Funny Fintan Softworks

After you (a revolutionary eco warrior) eliminate an enemy robot, you can grab the remaining love that it was running on to power up your weapons and deliver more damage. The love that you collect also plays a factor in the dress-up metagame. You can change the look of your character’s arms to personalize things a bit. If you donate love to fairies you encounter, you’ll get more customization options for your arms and guns.

Five cool points to anyone who correctly guessed that movement is a critical aspect of Incolatus. The quicker you move, the more your guns expand with additional barrels and scopes.

Funny Fintan has incorporated its own take on bunny hopping (a classic arena shooter movement technique that a player can use to boost their speed). It’s called wavehopping, and you’ll need to slam to the ground, double jump and dash — oddly enough, mimicking the form of a wave — to take advantage of it.

Incolatus, which is coming to Steam “soon,” immediately stands out thanks to its hyperpop vibe with bright pinks and greens, as well as the era-appropriate soundtrack. As it happens, the “don’t stop moving” mantra has lodged that one S Club song firmly in my brain.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/incolatus-dont-stop-girlypop-may-be-the-y2k-fever-dream-arena-shooter-you-never-knew-you-needed-182348483.html?src=rss

Since its announcement in March, it’s sounded like Sleight of Hand should be a fantastic stealth-action game in a magical noir setting — and now it looks that way, too. Its latest trailer, revealed in the Day of the Devs 2024: Game Awards Edition stream, showcases witchy card-slinging gameplay on the gritty streets of Steeple City for the first time.

In the stream, creator Joshua Boggs describes Sleight of Hand as, “If you took Metal Gear Solid and replaced the guns and tools with cards.” This is followed by a shot of the protagonist, Lady Luck, trying to sneak past a guard, only to trigger a brass-backed exclamation point as she’s spotted. The classic stealth references don’t end there, either: Lady Luck is voiced by Debi Mae West, who played Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid. (The new trailer begins at 37:20 in the below video).

Lady Luck is a retired occult detective who takes on one last case in order to destroy her former coven, which has a stranglehold on Steeple City. The game combines third-person stealth action with card-based strategy, and in the new trailer, these mechanics appear to work in hardboiled harmony. Cards in Sleight of Hand allow Lady Luck to see through walls, deploy smoke bombs, blind enemies, teleport, sling hexes and crush all the bones in someone’s body, to name a few abilities.

Side note: On its face, Sleight of Hand‘s premise is eerily similar to Deconstructeam’s The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a fabulous 2023 game starring an exiled witch who enacts revenge on her former coven by reading and building tarot decks. The games are entirely different otherwise — Sleight of Hand is third-person stealth action and Cosmic Wheel is an isometric narrative affair — and I don’t point this out because I think anything nefarious is going on. I just thought it was interesting. Clearly there was something in the zeitgeist that made card-wielding witchy women a hot concept at both studios, and it’s fascinating to see how the same conceit can be interpreted in such vastly different ways. 

Sleight of Hand looks like a stylish new entry in the stealth-action genre, and its witchy noir universe seems to support a variety of approaches in each encounter. It’s developed and published by New Zealand studio RiffRaff Games. RiffRaff was originally founded by Boggs in 2019 under the name MayDay, following the success of his spy-comic game, Framed. Tencent threw down an undisclosed amount to become a minority investor in the team in 2022, which is when it changed names to RiffRaff and hired up talent from around the globe.

Sleight of Hand doesn’t have a firm release date, but it’s on track to hit Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass in 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/sleight-of-hand-gameplay-trailer-showcases-occult-card-strategy-in-a-noir-world-182341033.html?src=rss

The much-anticipated follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter has a new early access date. At Day of the Devs, Heart Machine announced that Hyper Light Breaker will enter Steam early access on January 14.

The project is a co-op action game where you can play alone or with up to two allies to face down enemies and bosses in the colorful biomes of the Overgrowth. In classic roguelike fashion, players can try different builds, weapons and abilities on each run, and it should be interesting to see how those skills combine when multiple people are in battle. There is also, and this is very important, a hoverboard.

Hyper Light Breaker was first announced back in 2022 as a spiritual successor to the team’s original indie hit. Since then, there have been a couple of delays slowing the game’s arrival in early access, but today’s announcement seems like the real deal. The studio hasn’t shared any additional details yet about a full release date or additional platform support, but we’re excited to see this latest installment of the neon universe Heart Machine has created.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/hyper-light-breaker-will-begin-steam-early-access-on-january-14-180858877.html?src=rss