Madonna was rushed to the hospital after reportedly being found ‘unresponsive’ in June of 2023. Here’s everything to know about the ICU stay that forced her to postpone her upcoming tour.
Madonna was rushed to the hospital after reportedly being found ‘unresponsive’ in June of 2023. Here’s everything to know about the ICU stay that forced her to postpone her upcoming tour.
Blake Lively is launching a line of alcoholic beverages just months after welcoming her fourth child with Ryan Reynolds.
Blake Lively is launching a line of alcoholic beverages just months after welcoming her fourth child with Ryan Reynolds.
The school resource officer was found ‘not guilty’ of multiple counts of child neglect when he was tried for not confronting the Parkland shooter.
The school resource officer was found ‘not guilty’ of multiple counts of child neglect when he was tried for not confronting the Parkland shooter.
Volkwagen’s charging network, Electrify America, has pledged to adopt the extremely popular North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector by 2025. This will massively improve access to the NACS connector, which was created by Tesla and originally called the Tesla charging connector.
For those tied to the company’s CCS-1 plug standard, don’t worry. Electrify America says it isn’t going anywhere, as the NACS connectors will join the CCS-1 connectors at charging stations, not replace them. Sibling organization Electrify Canada is also adopting the NACS connector by 2025. The company says this move is part of a larger mandate to “support industry-wide standards” and “streamline public charging” options.
The organization boasts 850 charging stations, totaling over 4,000 chargers, throughout the United States and Canada, so this is a big move. Additionally, Electrify America has officially joined consumer advocacy group the National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX) to help improve the charging infrastructure for EV owners.
Electrify America says it’ll share more information on the transition to NACS connectors in the coming months, along with more future plans to update its charging stations. There are rumors, for instance, that parent company Volkswagen may start integrating the NACS standard for its own vehicles, as reported by Reuters.
This has been a big couple of months for the Tesla-created charging standard. Polestar just announced implementation of the connectors, and Volvo made the same move. Ford, GM and Rivian have also committed to using Tesla’s tech in North America. SAE International, one of the automotive industry’s most important standardization bodies, recently announced its support for the plug, officially making NACS connectors the biggest game in town.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/electrify-americas-charging-network-will-support-teslas-nacs-connector-by-2025-185317197.html?src=rss
This is shaping up to be a banner year for puzzle games, thanks to the likes of the superb Humanity and the brain-melting Viewfinder. Another one has just emerged on the release calendar in the form of Cocoon, which was perhaps the most exciting game we got to check out at Summer Game Fest earlier this month. Publisher Annapurna Interactive revealed during its summer showcase that Cocoon will hit PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Steam on September 29th. It’ll be available on Game Pass as well.
This is the first project from Geometric Interactive, which was founded by two former developers at Playdead, the studio behind Limbo and Inside. Cocoon is an adventure game in which you use orbs to solve puzzles. When you place an orb on a socket, you can jump inside it — each orb is its own world with distinct mechanics and a boss to beat.
Cocoon is all about recursion. You can take an orb inside another world to make use of its abilities, such as being able to see otherwise-invisible paths or activate switches. You’ll have the option to jump back out of an orb as well, which will be key to solving some puzzles and bypassing obstacles. We’re looking forward to this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/recursive-puzzle-adventure-game-cocoon-will-arrive-on-september-29th-190537652.html?src=rss
In to a T, players have to navigate the world as a teenager who can’t lower their arms from an outstretched, T-shaped position. The character, named Teen, traverses an ordinary coastal town alongside their loyal dog, fending off bullies and discovering the strengths of their unique posture along the way. In the game’s reveal trailer, it looks like flying might be the big benefit to T-shaped arms.
The game is an episodic 3D adventure with a rounded, cartoon art style that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s played Katamari Damacy, Wattam or other titles from creator Keita Takahashi. to a T comes from Takahashi’s studio, Uvula, which recently released one of the coolest little games on Playdate, Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure.
There’s no release date or confirmed platforms for to a T, though Uvula began teasing it back in 2022 and it’s being published by Annapurna Interactive. The project is being created in partnership with AbleGamers, a non-profit organization that advocates for people with disabilities in the video game market, leading inclusion efforts in software and hardware development. AbleGamers collaborated with Xbox as it designed the Adaptive Controller, and it provided input to Sony in the creation of the Access controller, the studio’s coming accessibility-focused gamepad.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/to-a-t-is-a-coming-of-age-game-about-a-t-posing-teenager-191135661.html?src=rss
One of 2022’s cutest – and dare I say best – games is heading to Xbox. Annapurna Interactive announced today that Blue Twelve Studio’s Stray will arrive on Xbox One and Series X/S on August 10th.
Stray, for those who don’t know, casts you as an adorable tabby cat in a cyberpunk, post-human world. This short and sweet adventure will take you only about five to 10 hours to complete, but will leave you thinking about its thoughtful and poignant story long after the credits roll.
It’s also one of the most fun games I played last year. Stray perfectly captures all the charm and mischief of our feline friends. There’s a dedicated button for meowing, and all of the environmental puzzles push you to think from the perspective of a cat. Best of all, you can lie down to nap nearly whenever you want. No word yet if Microsoft will offer Stray through Xbox Game Pass, but we’ll update this article once we know more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cyberpunk-cat-adventure-stray-heads-to-xbox-on-august-10th-192407987.html?src=rss
Annapurna Interactive’s Thirsty Suitors trailer wraps with the tagline: “Battle Your Exes. Disappoint Your Parents. Find Yourself.” (If that doesn’t proclaim that the upcoming title is venturing off the beaten path, I’m unsure what would.) Annapurna and developer Outerloop Games announced today that the cross-platform RPG about returning home and trying to resolve the disarray of the past arrives on November 2nd.
Initially revealed in 2021, Thirsty Suitors places you in the world of Jala, who heads back to the small town of Timber Hills after a “brutal breakup.” There, she “has to face everything she left behind,” as narrative lead Meghna Jayanth explains. This includes “her immigrant parents’ tattered expectations, claustrophobic small-town gossip and a string of messily broken hearts she left in her wake.” The action unfolds through cooking with her parents, skating at the local park (but watch out for the no-good punk kids) and stylistically over-the-top turn-based battles against her “thirsty ex-suitors.”
The game’s creators say the ex showdowns force Jala to confront each forlorn lover’s perspective: You’re drawn into a world entirely of their subjective creation. For example, when fighting Sergio, her “overconfident, insecure, macho, needy and far far far too thirsty” childhood boyfriend, she sees her immediate environment from his vantage point: “a psychic landscape where he’s the man he imagines himself to be in reality.” In this projection of Sergio’s self-aggrandizement, he appears invincible — that is, until you summon his mother (a giant, foreboding appearance in his immature mind) to cut him down to size with a well-timed slipper smash.
If successful, battles end not with the bloody vanquishing of your opponent but with reconciliation: gaining a better understanding of each other’s perspective. Although the action appears rather busy in the game’s trailers, you can’t deny the apparent creativity and freshness of the development team’s approach to narrative, gameplay and art style.
Thirsty Suitors launches on November 2nd. It will be available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Game Pass.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thirsty-suitors-pits-you-against-pining-exes-on-november-2nd-192600885.html?src=rss
Storyteller is a game about writing, word puzzles and the twisted tales we tell ourselves just to get through the day, and it’ll be playable on Android and iOS via Netflix on September 26th. Storyteller is published by Annapurna Interactive and it landed on Switch and PC on March 23rd — after spending more than a decade in development.
Solo creator Daniel Benmergui announced Storyteller in 2011, and a prototype of the game actually won the Nuovo award for innovation at the Game Developers Conference in 2012. After that, life happened and Benmergui stopped working on Storyteller for a few years, but he eventually picked it back up and found a publishing partner in Annapurna.
In Storyteller, players compose narrative arcs using comic book-style building blocks, altering the lives, deaths, romances and betrayals of medieval characters in the process. It’s a soothing, surprising and often amusing experience that captures the absurdity of the creative writing process.
When Storyteller lands on iOS and Android in September, it’ll come with free DLC that offers new stories for players to weave. This extra content will come to Switch and PC at the same time, also for free.
The Netflix partnership makes sense for Storyteller and plenty of other indie games at the moment. Netflix is rapidly building up its roster of mobile games, all of which are free to play for anyone with a Netflix subscription, and it plans to have nearly 100 titles in its library by the end of the year. Already, Netflix has brought Kentucky Route Zero, Oxenfree, Spiritfarer, Into the Breach, Moonlighter, Laya’s Horizon, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, and other notable names to iOS and Android. The company has even purchased a few renowned indie outfits outright, including the home of Oxenfree, Night School Studio.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/storyteller-is-the-latest-hot-indie-game-coming-to-netflix-192701963.html?src=rss
Annapurna Interactive is developing a game based on the iconic science fiction film Blade Runner. The game’s set between the events of Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, so you can get some closure as to what Deckard was doing before meeting up with Ryan Gosling in an abandoned casino or whatever.
Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth follows a Blade Runner — the name on their ID is blanked out in the trailer — as they explore a mysterious location called the “land of the dead.” You can’t tell much from the trailer, but we see footage of what looks like an early version of the memory-crafting technology seen in Blade Runner 2049.
Annapurna says this game is actually canon and it takes place just one year after the events of the original film, which would put it directly in the crosshairs of some big events alluded to in the sequel. It’s always good to see more Blade Runner in gaming, especially after the criminally underrated and recently remastered 1997 adventure title.
It’s also important to note that Annapurna Interactive is actually developing this title, and not just publishing it. This is the company’s first in-house game, after gaining industry notoriety from publishing titles like Stray, Outer Wilds, Donut County and a whole lot more. Annapurna certainly has great taste, so let’s see if this translates to in-house development. There’s no release date yet, but it’s set to launch on major consoles and PC.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blade-runner-2033-labyrinth-is-a-new-game-set-between-the-two-movies-193828674.html?src=rss
