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Ubisoft is releasing a free Discovery Tour app covering the history of Baghdad, the setting of Assassin’s Creed Mirage. The game launched in 2023 without Ubisoft’s “Discovery Tour” feature, a mode that’s previously been packed into Assassin’s Creed games — starting with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins — and uses the game’s open-world maps and character models to illustrate the history and cultural specifics of their chosen setting.

This new app takes a slightly different approach, reworking the map of Assassin’s Creed Mirage to deliver a two hour narrative adventure set in 9th century Baghdad. The Discovery Tour app also includes “encyclopedic entries on the history, art, and culture of medieval Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate” and an augmented reality feature that lets you view 3D models of famous artifacts.

It sounds like less of a playable history lesson than past Discovery Tours, but still an excellent use of the historical research that goes into each Assassin’s Creed game. It’s a bit unusual the app is being offered for free when Ubisoft has traditionally charged for Assassin’s Creed games or its standalone Discovery Tour apps, but maybe that reflects Assassin’s Creed Mirage‘s unique place in the series. The game was pitched as a back-to-basics stealth game without the open-world fluff of past games, and largely delivered.

Ubisoft’s approach to Assassin’s Creed might also be changing in general. The game franchise was spun-off alongside Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six into a new subsidiary partially funded by Tencent earlier this year. Even grander plans to turn Assassin’s Creed into an always-online live-service game still loom in the background, too.

You can download and try the Ubisoft’s Discovery Tour App: Medievil Baghdad for yourself from the App Store and Play Store.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisofts-free-assassins-creed-mirage-discovery-tour-app-allows-you-to-explore-9th-century-baghdad-182020279.html?src=rss 

We finally have our Lara Croft, well over two years after Prime Video’s Tomb Raider series was first announced. Game of Thrones alum Sophie Turner has been cast in the role, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She had better start trying on khaki shorts and blue sleeveless shirts.

Turner acknowledges the “massive shoes to fill” from previous actors that have played the role, shouting out Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander. She also says she can’t wait for audiences “to see what we have cooking.”

We also now know when the show will enter production. Filming starts on January 19. We don’t know when the series will come out, but at least we know it’s a real thing that’s going to get filmed.

Additionally, the platform has announced that Chad Hodge will join Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a co-showrunner. Bridge was revealed as the creator well over a year ago. Hodge is best known for his work on shows like Good Behavior and movies like Single All the Way.

Bridge may be best known for creating the romantic comedy series Fleabag, but she has had plenty of experience with action-heavy projects. She created the series Killing Eve and co-wrote a James Bond film. She also starred in the most recent Indiana Jones movie, which is a franchise the Tomb Raider games cribbed from.

As for those games, Amazon is also publishing the next entry in the long-running franchise. Crystal Dynamics is developing it, which is the company that has been in charge of the mainline titles since 2003.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/amazons-tomb-raider-series-will-star-sophie-turner-as-lara-croft-183035877.html?src=rss 

IO Interactive seemingly wrapped up its assassination series Hitman in 2023, launching the anthology on practically every game platform. But it’s not done with sneaking, subterfuge, and… sniper rifles. The game developer announced that it was making a new James Bond game, teasing an “unrefined” Bond in training – yes, it’s another reimagined origin story.

At a closed-door briefing at Gamescom, I watched the team play through some early parts of 007 First Light, with Bond part of a team of more seasoned spies hunting down a rogue double-‘o’ agent. Ah, that sounds like a Bond plot.

The gameplay was separated into three parts. First, the creative, exploratory sandbox part, as Bond tries to elbow his way into a bougie mansion – when he should be readying the escape car. Like Hitman, Bond can sneak around, triggering items to draw away guards or distract from his own actions. He scrambles up a building to get in through an open window, while vaguely flirting with staff and pretending he’s meant to be there. The team explained that social interactions will form another part of how the rookie agent can interact with people and progress through areas and toward goals.

Some features differentiate First Light from the aforementioned bald-headed assassination games. First of all, it’s far less centered on all the killing (at least until the full-throttle action sections later), with the team attempting to reflect Bond adventures beyond bullets and grizzly ends.

There’s also an Omega-branded Q Watch that attempts to elegantly fold in HUD features like location markers, weaponry, and gadget selection. It’ll also help analyze the environment for interactive parts and opportunities for Bond. Players will apparently have a degree of freedom to decide how they approach missions and areas, even if we only saw one approach during this presentation. It did manage to convey the stress and pressure I’d expect to feel from an IO Interactive game.

The early demo diverges from Hitman familiarity elsewhere. IO Interactive said that while 007 will offer a linear adventure of sorts, players will still have “control of their adventure.” A blend of action setpieces and more measured, thinking, exploratory sections should separate it from other games and other Bond games, too, which have typically been first-person shooters, some of which are terrible.

The demo jumps ahead as Bond follows the rogue agent in an exciting-looking car chase. These reminded me of Uncharted car segments, filled with destruction and chaos. Bond drives through a Swiss market, with something catching on his car tires for the rest of the chase, while there are jumps, explosions, and near-misses as you fight to catch up. It’s a shame that, at this early stage at least, you can tell that regardless of your honed driving skills, you will never catch up to your quarry until the game wants you to. The chase ends at a very well-guarded airbase.

This leads into the other facet of First Light: gunplay and way too many oil drums and trucks filled with gasoline. The final segment includes Bond rushing the airbase and chasing a military transport craft as it takes off. Fighting is a mix of duck-and-cover, using the environment, and, if all else fails, throwing your gun once it’s out of bullets.

There’s a great point after Bond barely makes it on board the plane just before it takes off. He uses his Q Watch to tilt the plane, swinging cargo and enemies into the walls of the plane or even out the cargo door. Eventually, 007 is flung from the plane too, and as he falls, has to claim a parachute.

It’s a real change of pace from the early part of the demo but suggests First Light might cover all the Bond movie beats. I might not be sold on another Bond origin story, but hopefully, IO Interactive can successfully blend three different types of game together.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/007-first-light-hitman-meets-action-movie-183551755.html?src=rss 

The sports broadcasting piracy network Streameast has been shut down after it was investigated for a year by a US-based anti-piracy group. Streameast is the largest illegal sports streaming platform in the world, and while active it offered its users free access to 80 unauthorised domains. This allowed people to pirate live soccer matches from the Premier League and Champions League, as well as NFL, NBA and MLB games. According to ACE, annual traffic to the site topped 1.6 billion visits.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which describes itself as the “world’s leading content protection coalition dedicated to combatting the illegal acts of digital piracy,” cooperated with Egyptian law enforcement on a sting that took place on August 24. ACE comprises more than 50 global entertainment companies and studios, including Disney, HBO, Fox, Netflix and Sony Pictures.

As reported by The Athletic, two men in Sheikh Zayed City — part of the Greater Cairo urban area — were arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement and have been detained. Laptops and smartphones were seized in the raid, and according to The Athletic, investigators discovered links between Streameast and a shell company in the UAE allegedly used to launder advertising revenue of more than $6 million over the last 15 years.

Streameast’s original domain is no longer active, but according to The Athletic’s report, there may now be a number of copycat sites seeking to fill the void left by the now defunct streaming platform. ACE told the sports journalism outlet that it’s aware of these sites and is investigating whether they’re related.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-largest-illegal-sports-streaming-service-has-been-shut-down-after-sting-operation-173537889.html?src=rss 

Netflix has upgraded its Moments feature for the mobile app. It already lets users save iconic scenes, but now there’s a simple editor to bring it in line with something like Twitch’s clipping tool. Viewers can use the tool to set start and end points, so they can turn preferred scenes into “full clips to save, relive and share anytime.”

Just tap the “Clip” button when watching something on mobile and the new editor will pop up. Once something is saved, it’ll reside in the “My Netflix” tab. The company says users can “make the clip as long or as short” as they’d like, so there aren’t any time constraints. These clips can be shared on various social media sites and in text messages.

Netflix is launching this alongside a new batch of Wednesday episodes, so maybe there’s something potentially viral in there like that dance scene from the first season. However, that’s not even the most-saved moment on the platform. That honor goes to a song from the recent smash KPop Demon Hunters.

Again, this tool is only available for mobile users. Believe it or not, the most used device to stream Netflix is still the television. Studies indicate that televisions are involved with 60 to 70 percent of streaming on the platform.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/netflix-adds-twitch-like-clipping-function-complete-with-an-editor-154518598.html?src=rss 

Perplexity, the NVIDIA- and Bezos-backed AI company, is partnering with PayPal to get its Comet browser in front of millions of the financial tech giant’s users. The deal will see PayPal and Venmo customers in the US and select international markets gain access to the AI-powered browser, as well as a free 12-month subscription to Perplexity Pro, which normally costs $200. There are, of course, some conditions.

The promotion is part of PayPal’s new subscription hub, where users can manage all their recurring PayPal payments. The company is also offering users a $50 credit when they link and pay for three subscriptions using the hub. PayPal users in the US can claim their free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription from the PayPal app today. Likewise, Venmo users can access the offer from within the Venmo app. The deal is on offer through the end of this year, and the Perplexity Pro subscription will auto-renew after the free 12 months is up at the then current rate unless cancelled.

The Comet browser was in beta testing earlier this summer before launching in July as part of Perplexity’s $200-per-month Max subscription. Perplexity’s AI is integrated into Comet and serves as the browser’s default search engine. This incorporation allows users to pull up the AI in a sidebar to ask questions about what they see on screen, summarize text and even take actions on behalf of the user, like sending an email or looking up directions on Google Maps.

The browser is built on Chromium, the same open-source codebase beneath Chrome, Edge and Opera. Perplexity actually offered to buy Chrome in August for $34.5 billion when it appeared that the courts might force a divestment, but a judge ruled this week that Google can keep its browser.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/paypal-and-venmo-users-get-a-free-year-of-perplexity-pro-and-early-access-to-its-ai-browser-155844658.html?src=rss