Month: January 2021

The space-based Factorio-like Dyson Sphere Program has garnered serious traction on Steam, with over 200,000 copies sold in two days. Released back on January 21 in Early Access, Dyson Space Program is a factory simulator similar to Satisfactory and Factorio, where players are challenged to build an industrial installation that rapidly escalates in automation and complexity.

Dyson Sphere Program sets itself apart from its competitors by taking place at a galactic scale. The ultimate goal of the game is to build titular Dyson Spheres, which are hypothetical constructs from the pages of sci-fi author Olaf Stapledon. Theoretically, if humanity could build a gigantic sphere around a given star, we could harness much of the star’s power output to meet the energy requirements inherent to intergalactic travel.

Several of the game’s Steam reviews describe Dyson Space Program as a step forward for the factory-building genre. However, they note that the game lacks certain quality-of-life features that players might expect, such as the ability to easily dismantle groups of buildings.

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The latest patch for Bethesda’s Fallout 76 has arrived, and it’s a big one. The new update is out now on all platforms, and one of the main changes is that the Stash limit has been increased to 1,200 pounds, which will enable you to carry more loot on your journey.

Another highlight is a UI change that makes it easier to view your inventory. There are now three tabs in your inventory, one each for “New,” “Armor,” and “Food/Drink.” The game will also now show you the total weight of the items in your inventory when you stack them. Additionally, vending machines on the map now show you how many 1-, 2-, and 3-star items they have available, so you can set out knowing what’s in stock.

The Fallout 76 build mode also gets an update that adds blue outlines, replacing the green ones, to help players who are colorblind to more easily identify the pieces.

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Blackkklansman director Spike Lee is getting a Funko Pop. Lee is the latest filmmaker to be turned into one of the hugely popular vinyl figures.

The Spike Lee Funko will be available in May and will retail at $11. If you’re willing to wait until June, Walmart is selling preorders for $9. It’s wearing the distinctive purple suit and hat that Lee wore to the 2019 Academy Awards, where Blackkklansman won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The Spike Funko also has knuckle rings displaying the words “Love” and “Hate,” which is a reference to Lee’s classic 1989 movie Do the Right Thing. It was announced as part of the company’s Funko Fair 2021 event.

Spike Lee Funko Pop

$9

See at Walmart

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Garena Free Fire is one of the most popular mobile shooters out there, competing with the likes of Fortnite and PUBG Mobile, and that means that a lot of people play it every single day. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of cheaters flock to the game as well; in fact, according to a new video from the game’s publisher, Garena banned over 30 million cheaters in 2020 alone.

The video goes on to say that 31% of the accounts that were banned were reported by players, meaning that 69% were detected by the game’s automatic anti-cheat measures. Auto-aim was the most common offense for these hackers, with 36% getting banned for it, followed by hacks that let you see through walls, teleport, and one that puts an “antenna” on all opponents, allowing you to see them from afar.

Garena Free Fire is a free-to-play battle royale game for mobile that has a lot in common with Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. Players parachute down to an island with fifty or so opponents and shoot it out in ever-tightening battle circles, with only one player or team surviving to claim victory. Currently, the game is only available for mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

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The publisher of the Lord of the Rings game centered around Gollum has announced the next game it will publish, and it’s completely different. Daedalic Entertainment has announced it will publish the game Hidden Deep, which is a game made by a single person: Łukasz Kałuski.

Kałuski started the game in 2014 as a passion project and Kałuski has been funding it himself for three years. “Without a doubt, Hidden Deep is the biggest project of my life into which I put all my heart and sweat and I love doing this,” Kałuski said on his website.

In Hidden Deep, you explore a “vast suboceanic research and mining facility” that is overrun with aliens. You’re trying to find out what happened to the crew, and you’ll use weapons and gadgets to survive in the depths of the ocean and try to survive as the aliens close in. The game is inspired by movies like Alien and The Thing, as well as the first Half-Life game.

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The latest generation of video game consoles have been a prime example of what happens when high demand collides with low supply numbers, as UK retailer Argos found out this week when it was targeted by PS5 scalper groups.

As reported by IGN, users of the scalping group Express Notify managed to obtain and share links for the limited supply of new PS5 consoles amongst its members, a full day before Argos publically announced the stock refresh to consumers on January 26.

While Argos did react and shut down any rogue links from the loophole that Express Notify had discovered, by then several of the consoles had already been ordered and collected from Argos outlets. Several members of the group posted pictures of their successful purchases, with some users having bought multiple consoles as well. This resulted in there being even less stock available for the official stock drop, with other technical issues only compounding the experience for legitimate customers.

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Soda manufacturer Pepsi is getting into the content game and has announced it will be launching Cherries Wild, a new game show slated to debut February 14 on Fox. Created by Wes Kauble (Beat Shazam) and hosted by Jason Biggs (American Pie), “this fast-paced half-hour game show will feature two rounds of pop-culture trivia gameplay.” According to the show’s official site, contestants will spin wheels to “attempt to capture all five wild cherries to win” the $250,000 jackpot.

“Consumers are in control more than ever,” Todd Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Pepsi told Variety. “They have skip buttons. They can DVR-fast-forward. They can pay to eliminate ads with a subscription… the concept of interrupting content with your message has serious limitations. As fans are consuming, they don’t want to be interrupted.”

And so, Pepsi is apparently trying to get in front of fans who won’t watch ads, and maybe won’t notice they’re watching a show with Pepsi branding influencing the set design, colors, and even “the shape of the buttons contestants press.” Even more explicitly, reportedly each episode will feature a “Pepsi Wild Moment” when a slot machine appears to “go haywire… and will serve as a prod for viewers to play at home.” Wild.

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The Guiness Book of World Records has certified another achievement; this one for the largest Lego mini brick build ever, and the construction itself is a Lord of the Rings-themed diorama.

The epic design that you can see in the video below was built by a team of 50 designers who used an astonishing 150 million pieces to construct the set. It took the builders three years.

The diorama is inspired by battles from various battles depicted in The Lord of the Rings, and it is truly a sight to behold. It boggles the mind to think about the time, effort, and planning that was required to pull off such a feat of creativity and engineering.

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