RobocraftX by FreeJam is a game about creating games that is currently in early access on Steam. In the upcoming release it is going to be rebranded to Gamecraft at which point it will become commercial software. However if you add RobocraftX to your library before October 24th, it will remain yours forever for free.
Details from the Steam announcement:
On October 24th 2019 Our plan is to shift the game over to $5 Premium (i.e. pay up front) along with the brand name change.
ANYONE WHO ALREADY HAS A COPY OF THE GAME WILL KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.
ANYONE WHO HAS THE GAME IN THEIR STEAM LIBRARY BETWEEN NOW AND THE 24th WILL ALSO KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER. SO – TELL YOUR FRIENDS OR ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED TO OWN THE GAME IN FUTURE, THAT RIGHT NOW IS THE LOWEST PRICE THE GAME WILL EVER BE (i.e. FREE!) AND TO GET IT NOW.
The Gamecraft Team
The upcoming release will also contain several new features, including the ability to share your creations, a move to Unity’s DOTS physics engine and additional logic controllers and bricks to play with.
In the meanwhile you can check out some of the new features in the preview release on Steam. You need to follow the following instructions (more details here or shown in the video below):
Open the Library tab on Steam
Right-Click on RobocraftX
Click on “Properties”
Click on the “Betas” tab
Enter the code “FreedomIsKey” and click on the “Check Code” button
Click on the dropdown and select the “Preview” branch
Give this a minute to download
Make sure the game appears as “RobocraftX [preview]” in the Library
Click Play and enjoy!
You can learn more about Robocraft/Gamecraft in the video below. Another very similar experience is GameBuilder that we covered in this video earlier in the year.
League of Legends celebrates ten years by announcing all of the things
By Joe Robinson16 Oct 2019
Fun fact – before taking over stewardship of Pocket Tactics et al, I did a brief stint in PR (I was a deputy editor at another website before that so this was a bit of an experiment), and that company had Riot Games as a client. I helped out at eSports events (which are fascinating, by the way) and then mainly did a bunch of grunt-work since I was a junior executive.
I’d never really tried to fully appreciate MOBAs before that job, but working for a company like that meant I had to give it a serious shot. It was ok – I definitely appreciated the team-play. I play a lot of Rainbow Six Siege in my personal-time these days so I appreciate it even more in hindsight.
Riot Games has never really been a known entity in the mobile world, at least in the West. There’s that League of Legends mobile variant out in China via Tencent, but so far the MOBA studio have stuck to what they know, which is PC. Now, as they celebrate the 10th Anniversary of League of Legends, that’s all about to change.
Riot made a range of announcements last night about their plans for LoL and other projects, and we’re excited to report that a couple are coming our way. Let’s take it from the top:
Teamfight Tactics Mobile
If you’ve been following the Auto Chess craze, you might have heard of Teamfight Tactics. It was basically Riot’s own take on the format and is the third big ‘player’ in the Auto Chess/Underlords/TFF trifecta. Unlike the other two, it wasn’t on mobile and existed within the main League client as an alternative game-mode.
It’s due to release on mobile in Q1 2020. Pre-registration on Google Play is open from today.
In addition to that, a new set of champions is going to be released to the PC version themed around the elements, called Rise of the Elements.
Legends of Runeterra Card Game
They say the best strategy is to wait until all your opponents have weakened themselves by fighting each other, and then pounce when no-one can put up any kind of resistance. At least, I hope they say that, because it’s the only reason I can think of as to why Riot would announce their own free-to-play strategy card game this late in the day. I would have thought that genre had played itself out.
Still, while Hearthstone remains the champion, the competitive CCG scene has been ripe for a new leader for a while now and, well, Valve failed hilariously with their own attempt. Riot have plenty of lessons to learn from at least. The press blurb for Legends of Runeterra is a little vague, but this seemed to be the most important part:
LoR’s gameplay is built around dynamic, alternating combat that demands players use their skill, creativity, and cleverness to succeed. LoR offers players multiple options to acquire cards, including both robust free-to-play options and the ability to directly purchase any card with either earned or paid currency.
Not content with their experiment with Tencent, Riot has now announced a bespoke mobile and console version of League of Legends known as Wild Rift. It’s still 5v5, and it’s still a MOBA, but it’s main innovation is a twin-stick control scheme, and matches generally designed to last no-more than 20 minutes.
And that’s it as far as known mobile projects go. Riot seem to be working on plenty of other new things as well, from an Overwatch-style competitive shooter, to a fighting game, even some kind of eSports team management game? But none of those have even been hinted at coming to mobile, so we won’t spend too much time on them here.
So, what do you think? Are you excited for any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
Blazor Server in .NET Core 3.0 scenarios and performance
Daniel
October 10th, 2019
Since the release of Blazor Server with .NET Core 3.0 last month lots of folks have shared their excitement with us about being able to build client-side web UI with just .NET and C#. At the same time, we’ve also heard lots of questions about what Blazor Server is, how it relates to Blazor WebAssembly, and what scenarios Blazor Server is best suited for. Should you choose Blazor Server for your client-side web UI needs, or wait for Blazor WebAssembly? This post seeks to answer these questions, and to provide insights into how Blazor Server performs at scale and how we envision Blazor evolving in the future.
What is Blazor Server?
Blazor Server apps host Blazor components on the server and handle UI interactions over a real-time SignalR connection. As the user interacts with the app, the UI events are sent to the server over the connection to be handled by the various components that make up the app. When a component handles a UI event, it’s rendered based on its updated state. Blazor compares the newly rendered output with what was rendered previously and send the changes back to the browser and applies them to the DOM.
Since Blazor Server apps run on .NET Core on the server, they enjoy all the benefits of running on .NET Core including great runtime performance and tooling. Blazor Server apps can leverage the full ecosystem of .NET Standard libraries without any browser imposed limitations.
When should I use Blazor Server?
Blazor Server enables you to add rich interactive UI to your .NET apps today without having to write JavaScript. If you need the interactivity of a single-page app in your .NET app, then Blazor Server is a great solution.
Blazor Server can be used to write completely new apps or to complement existing MVC and Razor Pages apps. There’s no need to rewrite existing app logic. Blazor is designed to work together with MVC and Razor Pages, not replace them. You can continue to use MVC and Razor Pages for your server-rendering needs while using Blazor for client-side UI interactions.
Blazor Server works best for scenarios where you have a reliable low-latency network connection, which is normally achieved when the client and server are geographically on the same continent. Apps that require extremely high fidelity instant updates on every tiny mouse twitch, like real-time games or drawing apps, are not a good fit for Blazor Server. Because Blazor Server apps require an active network connection, offline scenarios are not supported.
Blazor Server is also useful when you want to offload work from the client to the server. Blazor Server apps require only a small download to establish the connection with the server and to process UI interactions. All the hard work of running the app logic and rendering the UI is then done on the server. This means Blazor Server apps load fast even as the app functionality grows. Because the client side of a Blazor Server app is so thin, it’s a great solution for apps that need to run on low-powered devices.
Using Blazor Server at scale
Blazor Server can scale from small internal line of business apps to large internet scale apps. While .NET Core 3.0 was still in preview we tested Blazor Server to see what its baseline scale characteristics look like. We put a Blazor Server app under load with active clients and monitored the latency of the user interactions. In our tests, a single Standard_D1_v2 instance on Azure (1 vCPU, 3.5 GB memory) could handle over 5,000 concurrent users without any degradation in latency. A Standard_D3_V2 instance (4 vCPU, 14GB memory) handled well over 20,000 concurrent clients. The main bottleneck for handling further load was available memory. Will you see this level of scale in your own app? That will depend in large part on how much additional memory your app requires per user. But for many apps, we believe this level of scale out is quite reasonable. We also plan to post additional updates on improvements in Blazor Server scalability in the weeks ahead. So stay tuned!
What is Blazor WebAssembly?
Blazor is a UI framework that can run in different environments. When you build UI components using Blazor, you get the flexibility to choose how and where they are hosted and run. As well as running your UI components on the server with Blazor Server, you can run those same components on the client with Blazor WebAssembly. This flexibility means you can adapt to your users’ needs and avoid the risk of being tied to a specific app hosting model.
Blazor WebAssembly apps host components in the browser using a WebAssembly-based .NET runtime. The components handle UI events and execute their rendering logic directly in the browser. Blazor WebAssembly apps use only open web standards to run .NET code client-side, without the need for any browser plugins or code transpilation. Just like with Blazor Server apps, the Blazor framework handles comparing the newly rendered output with what was rendered previous and updates the DOM accordingly, but with Blazor WebAssembly the UI rendering is handled client-side.
When should I use Blazor WebAssembly?
Blazor WebAssembly is still in preview and isn’t yet ready for production use yet. If you’re looking for a production ready solution, then Blazor Server is what we’d recommend.
Once Blazor WebAssembly ships (May 2020), it will enable running Razor components and .NET code in the browser on the user’s device. Blazor WebAssembly apps help offload work from the server to the client. A Blazor WebAssembly app can leverage the client device’s compute, memory, and storage resources, as well as other resources made available through standard browser APIs.
Blazor WebAssembly apps don’t require the use of .NET on the server and can be used to build static sites. A Blazor WebAssembly app is just a bunch of static files that can be hosted using any static site hosting solution, like GitHub pages or Azure Static Website Hosting. When combined with a service worker, a Blazor WebAssembly app can function completely offline.
When combined with .NET on the server, Blazor WebAssembly enables full stack web development. You can share code, leverage the .NET ecosystem, and reuse your existing .NET skills and infrastructure.
Including a .NET runtime with your web app does increase the app size, which will impact load time. While there are a variety of techniques to mitigate this (prerendering on the server, HTTP caching, IL linking, etc.), Blazor WebAssembly may not be the best choice for apps that are very sensitive to download size and load time.
Blazor WebAssembly apps also require a browser that supports WebAssembly. WebAssembly is supported by all modern browsers, including mobile and desktop browsers. However, if you need to support older browsers without WebAssembly support then Blazor WebAssembly isn’t for you.
Blazor WebAssembly is optimized for UI rendering scenarios, but isn’t currently great for running CPU intensive workloads. Blazor WebAssembly apps today use a .NET IL interpreter to execute your .NET code, which doesn’t have the same performance as a native .NET runtime with JIT compilation. We’re working to better address this scenario in the future by adding support for compiling your .NET code directly to WebAssembly instead of using an interpreter.
You can change your mind later
Regardless of whether you choose Blazor Server or Blazor WebAssembly, you can always change your mind later. All Blazor apps use a common component model, Razor components. The same components can be hosted in a Blazor Server app or a Blazor WebAssembly app. So if you start with one Blazor hosting model and then later decide you want to switch to a different one, doing so is very straight forward.
What’s next for Blazor?
After shipping Blazor WebAssembly, we plan to expand Blazor to support not just web apps, but also Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), hybrid apps, and even fully native apps.
Blazor PWAs: PWAs are web apps that leverage the latest web standards to provide a more native-like experience. PWAs can support offline scenarios, push notifications, and OS integrations, like support for pinning the app to your home screen or the Windows Start menu.
Blazor Hybrid: Hybrid apps are native apps that use web technologies for the UI. Examples include Electron apps and mobile apps that render to a web view. Blazor Hybrid apps don’t run on WebAssembly, but instead use a native .NET runtime like .NET Core or Xamarin. You can find an experimental sample for using Blazor with Electron on GitHub.
Blazor Native: Blazor apps today render HTML, but the renderer can be replaced to render native controls instead. A Blazor Native app runs natively on the devices and uses a common UI abstraction to render native controls for that device. This is very similar to how frameworks like Xamarin Forms or React Native work today.
These three efforts are all currently experimental. We expect to have official previews of support for Blazor PWAs and Blazor Hybrid apps using Electron in the .NET 5 time frame (Nov 2020). There isn’t a road map for Blazor Native support yet, but it’s an area we are actively investigating.
Summary
With .NET Core 3.0, you can build rich interactive client-side UI today with Blazor Server. Blazor Server is a great way to add client-side functionality to your existing and new web apps using your existing .NET skills and assets. Blazor Server is built to scale for all your web app needs. Blazor WebAssembly is still in preview, but is expected to ship in May of next year. In the future we expect to continue to evolve Blazor to support PWAs, hybrid apps, and native apps. For now, we hope you’ll give Blazor Server a try by installing .NET Core 3.0!
Review: Deebot 661 sweeps and mops your floors so you don’t have to
If you’re looking for a good mid-range robotic vacuum to help keep your home clean, the Deebot 661 might be the perfect fit. This multi-purpose robot can both vacuum and mop your floors, giving you back more time in your day.
Last year, we took a look at Ecovacs Ozmo 601, a combination vacuum-mopping robot that we liked quite a bit. Today, we’re taking a look at the Ecovacs Deebot 661. It features an upgraded suction system and new cleaning modes to help keep your home looking its best.
The build
The Deebot 661 is a round-front style robotic vacuum, rather than the kind that feature a square front. It’s got a lower profile than many other robotic vacuums, coming in at just a little taller than 3 inches, meaning that it should be able to fit under couches and beds. It weighs around six pounds and feels like it’s fairly sturdy.
On the underside of the robot there are two sweeping arms that are used to feed debris into the beater bar where it is swept into the dustbin. The beater bar is rubber with synthetic bristles and pops out so you can remove hair and debris with the included cleaning tool.
The underside of the robot, showing the dual sweeping brushes and beater bar
The dustbin is located on the front of the robot and can be removed by pressing a tab. Emptying the robot is extremely easy and can be done in a couple of seconds. You’ll have to wash the included filter once every couple of weeks and give it 24 hours to fully dry to keep the robot running at peak performance.
The dustbin is also interchangeable and can be swapped with the included water tank, allowing it to double as a robotic mop. There is an included washable microfiber mopping cloth that attaches to the underside of the water tank by velcro.
It includes a remote control which can be used to control the robot if you choose to eschew using the app. The remote works fine, but I tend to lose remotes a lot more than I lose my phone, so I put it in my junk drawer and forgot about it.
Ease of use
Deebot 661 on its charging dock
I’m not entirely sure if there’s an easier robot to use than the Deebot 661. Setting it up took just a few seconds and the app holds your hand through the entire process. It’s worth noting that you don’t need to use the iPhone app to use the robot, though.
If you want it to sweep, just make sure you have the dustbin installed. Then, hit the power button, and it will zip around your house, happily ducking under furniture and into hard-to-reach spaces, sucking up whatever it finds. Like all robotic vacuums, make sure you keep cords and clutter off the floor unless you want it to attempt to suck them up. If you want, you can use the app to initiate spot cleaning mode or edge cleaning, which is useful as many robot vacuums tend to miss the edges of rooms.
If you want the robot to mop, fill the water tank with water, swap it with the dustbin, set it on the floor you want mopped, and hit the power button. It automatically detects that it should enter mopping mode and happily mops your floor for you.
When the robot has finished cleaning or the battery is low, it will return to its dock to recharge.
The app and features
In the app, you can keep tabs on the health of your robot. Robotic vacuums need to have parts regularly replaced if you expect them to clean well. It’s worth noting that this is also a feature of upright vacuums, though those have a bit of a longer lifespan. Having the ability to quickly view the health of your vacuum’s parts, then purchase the replacements as needed is very useful. I was glad to see it included here.
There’s also the ability to set up a regular cleaning schedule, which I think is the strongest argument for getting a robot vacuum in the first place. I found that this feature worked perfectly, so the Deebot 661 gets points there.
It should be noted that the Deebot 661 does not have a mapping feature like other higher-end robots do. This means that there’s no way to red-zone specific areas to keep the robot out. This could be problematic for areas around desks or tables replete with cords.
Vacuuming
The front view of the robot’s dustbin
When it comes to vacuuming, the Deebot 661 is pretty good. It doesn’t seem to miss a lot, and I found that it had no trouble sweeping up hair, crumbs, and little bits of paper. Like the Roborock S4, it also pulls an unsettling amount of grit out of the 25 year old carpeting in my apartment. It isn’t as powerful as an upright vacuum, but it is significantly quieter, and if you run it a couple times a week, it keeps your house from getting dirty enough to run that upright vacuum regularly.
The Deebot 661 features two cleaning powers, normal and maximum. The normal mode is sufficient for your average messes. The maximum mode is good if you’ve not cleaned in a while and want to be extra thorough, though I’d imagine it works well for homes with a lot of pet hair as well.
As far as volume goes, it wound up falling somewhere around 58 decibels when I was right next to it. Maximum mode barely made it over 60 decibels. Both modes are unobtrusive enough to allow the vacuum to run while you’re in the room or during the night while you sleep.
For comparison, my upright vacuum —a little green Hoover Air —hits 90 decibels with the beater bar turned on.
Mopping
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m skeptical when it comes to the idea of a robot mopping for you. To mop a floor to an adequately clean state, pick at least two: friction, cleaner, and heat. The Deebot 661 doesn’t, though.
When you mop the old fashioned way, your best tool is elbow grease, or more accurately, friction. Humans do this by exerting downward force on a mop, brush, cloth, etc. Robots don’t really have this capability. Ideally, a robot would be heavy enough to push down and loosen anything that is stuck to the floor, but the Deebot 661 is lightweight, even when fully filled with water.
Heat also helps by softening sticky and persistent dirt and allowing it to be swept away. However, there’s no heating element in the Deebot 661, and due to the plastic water reservoir, I’d be hesitant to fill it up with boiling water in the first place.
Chemical cleaners also help quite a bit. Surfactants prevent hydrogen bonding and the low surface tension cleaning solution unsticks dirt and grime from the floor. That’s all well and good, but the Deebot 661 can’t actually use chemical cleaners. The instruction book warns to avoid using cleaners as they will jam the reservoir.
As far as I can tell, most vacuum-and-mopping robots work this way. Some of iRobot’s Braava line seems to be able to use specialized cleaners, but only on the higher-end models that feature a Swiffer-style spray function. This means that this isn’t a problem of the Deebot 661, but of robotic mopping in general.
The robot’s water tank and included microfiber cleaning pad
That doesn’t mean that the mopping function is worthless, it just means you’re going to need to be a little clever. The Deebot 661 doesn’t suck any water back up into its cleaning reservoir, so you can soak the included cleaning pad in cleaning solution if you need to. I also found that spraying difficult stains with a cleaner of my choice —a solution of hot water, white vinegar, and rubbing alcohol —and letting it sit for a few minutes before running the Deebot 661 did wonders.
On top of that, because it’s a quick process to fill the robot and press the power button, you can run it more often. One of the biggest issues that the Deebot 661 solves is consistency. If you mop your kitchen or bathroom a couple times a week with the Deebot 661, chances are you’re not going to have any buildup of dirt and grime that is going to need a lot of effort to clean up. It’s a win-win.
In short, if you start with a clean kitchen, the Deebot 661 will help you keep it clean. As an added bonus, it doesn’t leave that nasty build-up that happens if you use an easy-mop like Swiffer.
There is, however, one major problem. The Deebot 661 doesn’t seem to have hard floor/carpets detection or the Braava’s “never go behind the line where it started” feature. This means that if you have carpet, the Deebot 661 will try to mop it. I solved this problem by setting a box in front of my kitchen doorway, which prevented the robot from crossing onto the carpet. However, I have a galley-style kitchen in a studio apartment, so anyone with a more open-concept layout may need to hold back from this purchase or come up with a more clever solution than mine.
Overall
The Deebot 661 is a solid purchase if you’re looking for a good mid-range robot vacuum. The ability to set it up on a regular schedule can help keep your house clean with minimal effort on your behalf. If you’d like to pick up a Deebot 661 for yourself, they retail at Amazon for $319.99.
Pros
Schedule feature keeps your house clean with minimal effort
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-23-2019, 02:55 AM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Surface Pro 7 and Surface Laptop 3 available now
Surface Pro 7 and Surface Laptop 3 in both 13.5” and 15” sizes are available starting today in Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United States and 17 European markets.
Surface products have always delivered a balance of performance, quality and versatility that lets our customers create and work in the way that best suits their style, and these new products drive that vision forward with innovation inside and out. We’re incredibly excited to read the early product reviews and we look forward to our customers experiencing these new products.
Surface Pro 7
Surface Pro 7, powered by the latest 10th Generation Intel Core processors, is twice as fast as Surface Pro 6, and supports fast charging so that you can charge to 80% in about an hour. Like its predecessors, it offers all the versatility of a kickstand and touch and pen input, with new Surface Pen and Surface Pro Signature Type Covers in vibrant Poppy Red and Ice Blue. We’re excited by the early product reviews, like this one from Windows Central.
Surface Laptop 3
Surface Laptop has enjoyed the highest customer satisfaction rating for this class of device, and Surface Laptop 3 delivers more of what customers love in both 13.5” and 15” sizes. The new devices deliver more power, fast charging and a 20% larger trackpad. There are new color options like Sandstone and new finish options with both Alcantara and machined aluminum. Surface Laptop 3 remains true to the product’s fundamentals of an amazing display, a keyboard that is second-to-none, and great battery life that together make Surface Laptop a joy to use. Along with models powered by 10th Generation Intel Core processors, this is the first time we’re launching a product powered by the exclusive AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processor, delivering amazing computing, graphics and battery performance in a slim 15” form. Initial reviews of the product are strong, including these from CNN, Gizmodo, Inverse and Anandtech, and we can’t wait to hear feedback from our customers as well.
Make your Python code look good with Black on Fedora
The Python programing language is often praised for its simple syntax. In fact the language recognizes that code is read much more often than it is written. Black is a tool that automatically formats your Python source code making it uniform and compliant to the PEP-8 style guide.
How to install Black on Fedora
Installing Black on Fedora is quite simple. Black is maintained in the official repositories.
$ sudo dnf install python3-black
Black is a command line tool and therefore it is run from the terminal.
$ black --help
Format your Python code with Black
Using Black to format a Python code base is straight forward.
$ black myfile.py
All done! 1 file left unchanged.
$ black path_to_my_python_project/
All done!
165 files reformatted, 24 files left unchanged.
By default Black allows 88 characters per line, meaning that the code will be reformatted to fit within 88 characters per line. It is possible to change this to a custom value, for example :
$ black --line-length 100 my_python_file.py
This will set the line length to allow 100 characters.
Run Black as part of a CI pipeline
Black really shines when it is integrated with other tools, like a continuous integration pipeline.
The –check option allows to verify if any files need to be reformatted. This is useful to run as a CI test to ensure all your code is formatted in consistent manner.
$ black --check myfile.py
would reformat myfile.py
All done!
1 file would be reformatted.
Integrate Black with your code editor
Running Black during the continuous integration tests is a great way to keep the code base correctly formatted. But developers really wants to forget about formatting and have the tool managing it for them.
Most of the popular code editors support Black. It allows developers to run the format tool every time a file is saved. The official documentation details the configuration needed for each editor.
Black is a must-have tool in the Python developer toolbox and is easily available on Fedora.
Video: DOOM 64 Scrubs Up Pretty Nicely, It Turns Out
DOOM Eternal has been delayed until next year, but the fact that you can get a free copy of DOOM 64 when you pre-order has taken the sting out of the news a little bit.
We’re now getting the chance to see how this N64 classic scrubs up on modern hardware, and the answer is: pretty good. The short trailer above shows that the 2D sprites have retained that slightly fuzzy look, but the whole package is a big improvement on the rather soupy original (which we played using an RF connection, if you can believe that).
DOOM 64 launches alongside DOOM Eternal on PS4, Xbox One and PC on March 20th, 2020. As has been previously reported, the Switch version will be coming “at a later date”.
Review: Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip – Undead, Unfunny And Unnecessary
High Voltage Software’s Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip keeps alive the great video game tradition of absolutely terrible, overpriced movie tie-ins. With a campaign that clocks in at around about the two-hour mark, extremely basic twin-stick shooting action, bland graphics, inexplicably long loading times, rotten narrative segments that freeze the on-screen action at random points as you’re trying to play and the excruciating decision to send players right back to the very start of a level when they die, what we have here is a shambling, lazy experience that costs upwards of thirty pounds on Nintendo Switch and, quite frankly, barely warrants a review at all.
But review it we must! Set between the events of the first and recently-released second Zombieland movies, the game sees you take control of one of the four main characters from the franchise – Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock. All of these protagonists – apart from Abigail Breslin’s character – are voiced by replacement actors in dismal little banter segments that bookend each of the ten levels that see you travel from the West to East coast of a zombie hellscape America. Not that you really see any hellscape; the game instead throws you into the most banal and derivative environs imaginable, tasking you with stuff like shooting a load of portaloos until they blow up, stealing a single twinkie from a supermarket and – over the course of two of its ten levels – escorting the exact same grandmother character around her neighbourhood as extremely dull enemy AI tries (and fails) to present any kind of a meaningful challenge.
There is, in fact, practically zero challenge in this game on its default setting; the only time we perished was during a level set at a gas station where we had to hold down a button to retrieve fuel and were killed as we waited for a little bar to fill up and let us know we were done. This pitiful incident is how we discovered that, upon death, you return to the very start of the mission you’re currently playing – they run around ten-to-fifteen minutes apiece – and get to re-sit your way through faux-Woody Harrelson having the absolute anti-craic with faux-Jesse Eisenberg as faux-Emma Stone and actual Abigail Breslin throw in the odd excruciating cheesy line of dialogue.
In terms of gameplay, you’ll spend your time grabbing guns from the badly-textured trunks of cars, milling around bland environments doing menial jobs and shooting hapless undead enemies until you’re alerted that you’ve completed the necessary task, at which point you’ll be unceremoniously ripped from whatever you were doing and kicked back to an XP screen to allocate some points to your chosen character. These points do things like give you a bit more firepower (we didn’t notice a difference if we’re honest) or beef up your character’s special move. Oh, and those special moves, by the way, are just bad; Woody Harrelson spins around the screen windmilling things because the developers clearly decided they’d given up by this point and were content to just throw it in there and not think about it.
Over the course of the game a handful of different zombie types are added to the mix in an attempt to conceal how terribly repetitive everything is, but the only ones we thought made any difference were the zippy little ninjas, simply because they were momentarily harder to hit as they approached. There’s also an exploding fat zombie, a clown and a vomiting lady zombie, but we can’t say we really noticed that they added any meaningful variety or tactical nuance to proceedings; they’re just more crap to shoot your limp guns at.
There are a bunch of boss encounters, each of which boils down to facing off against a larger zombie type whose distinguishing characteristic is that they’re slightly more of a bullet sponge – oh, and one of them is a chef that throws flames at you, the absolute standout moment in the game – but they still present pretty much zero challenge. These boss types – except for the chef – are then mixed into the general zombie populous but have their longer kill-times reduced so that they die in the same number of shots as the rest of the enemies. In other words, they are absolutely pointless beyond looking a bit different.
Alongside the campaign – which you can probably tell by now we weren’t particularly fans of – there’s a four-player co-op and a horde mode, both of which we can’t imagine anyone being enamoured with for any particularly worthwhile length of time as even the ten-minute campaign levels were a struggle to get through. There’s just no energy or fun to be extracted from any aspect of the gameplay. Even the guns have zero feedback or feel to them; you can’t even reload when you want to, taking away the one little strategic bit of control you might have had: ensuring your mag was topped up in moments of downtime.
In terms of positives, well, it’s a top-down twin-stick shooter and mechanically works well enough that you could potentially just turn your brain off and blow through the whole thing without being troubled and, maybe as a completely free-to-play game on your phone, you might even think it was a pleasing enough distraction to pass a journey. This Switch version works fine in both handheld and docked (although blowing it all up to TV-size does the bland visuals absolutely no favours whatsoever) and we didn’t experience any bugs on our playthrough. It also has characters from the movie in there – we’re really struggling – and, if you love Zombieland then you get to… spend time with people who you love, we guess?
Conclusion
Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip is everything you’ve come to expect from a lazy movie tie-in. Its gameplay is mechanically competent but it’s bland beyond belief, short, cynical and lazy. It has the most tenuous of links to the actual film it portrays and is ultimately a very basic twin-stick shooter with a tired-looking Zombieland skin tossed carelessly on top – it also costs far more money than it has any right to. If this was a free mobile game you might get an hour or two of braindead time-wasting out of it, but as an almost full price console release, it’s pretty much indefensible.
For this week's legendary bounty, Red Dead Online players can journey up to the swamps of Lagras to apprehend or kill Philip Carlier. The middle-aged fugitive is extremely volatile, so proceed with caution. Carlier is wanted dead or alive, and revisiting the Bounty board lets you replay the mission at a higher difficulty.
RDO players looking to channel their Halloween spirit can head to Madam Nazar to pick up some limited-time masks. And those in any of the three Specialist roles get a free one: Bounty Hunters get an exclusive Creature Mask variant, Traders get an exclusive Swine Mask, and Collectors get an exclusive Masquerade Mask. These masks for any of the Specialists are free of charge. Further, Outlaw Pass Club Rank 10 owners are rewarded an exclusive Freak Mask variation, while those Rank 20 will receive the Freak Mask and an exclusive Horror Mask variation. Check a few of them out below.
Also this week for RDO, the Free Aim Series has a new mode: Make It Count. This battle royale-like mode pairs players down to a bow and arrow or throwing knives to fight against enemies in a gradually-shrinking arena until one is left standing.
There are plenty of opportunities to gain extra experience in RDO this week as well. You will earn an additional 2,000 Club experience points and a 30 percent experience booster towards progress in the Wheeler, Rawson & Co. Club, and The Outlaw Pass by doing a variety of activities. These include all A Land of Opportunities and Free Roam missions, a range of Series game modes such as Elimination and Takeover, and more.
CloudBees And Google Cloud Partner To Accelerate Application Development On Anthos
CloudBees and Google Cloud are collaborating to deliver a modern DevOps platform based on open source technologies powered by Google Cloud’s Anthos. The companies are using transformational technologies like Jenkins X, Kubernetes and Tekton to create a unified, end-to-end software delivery system. CloudBees provides companies large and small with Jenkins-based continuous delivery solutions that are secure, open toolchain-enabled and scalable to transform software delivery processes across hybrid computing environments. Google Cloud is delivering to enterprises a secure, open, intelligent and transformative enterprise cloud platform. Anthos, a hybrid and multi-cloud platform, is built on open source technologies pioneered by Google Cloud and enables consistency between on-premise and cloud environments. (Source: Press Release)
