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Get ready for another round of Red Light, Green Light.
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This year may not have been as jam packed as 2023 was for gaming, but there were still plenty of amazing new releases. Whether you love a good indie or a big-budget production, this year had you covered. All you needed to do was look a bit deeper than you might have in 2023.
Animal Well
The core of Animal Well isn't that structurally complicated: It's a lock-and-key Metroidvania. You go to places to unlock other places and abilities. There are puzzle bits. Platforming bits. Bosses. A sense of progression. Beating the core "story" opens up a couple layers of admirably elaborate and increasingly meta secrets, but let's be real, most people interested in those are just going to look up the answers online.
And yet, you play it, and you can't help but think there isn't much like it nowadays. Why? It's not just the lo-fi aesthetic. It's the fact that you never learn what your little blob guy is. It's giving you a map to mark up yourself instead of providing any instructions. It's accidentally realizing the disc you've held onto for the last three hours isn't just for throwing. It's the big monkey that flings rocks at you, just because. It's the way each screen is a static shot, the way the camera centers the world instead of the player. It's the eternal wonder and pleasure of uncovering what lies in wait in the dark, behind us, under our feet, outside of our little wells. And then having no clue what it actually means. That's real stuff.
Animal Well is that rare thing: a modern video game
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For Christmas 2024, NORAD has added an AI chatbot to its tracking site, although its AI capabilities are quite limited in scope, according to an initial test. NORAD Tracks Santa officially started on December 1, but the actual simulation starts at midnight on December 24.
Check out the NORAD Tracks Santa site in advance to play web games, watch videos about Santa and NORAD, listen to Santa's favorite holiday songs, learn more about Santa and his traditions, discover what NORAD does, and chat with Radar (the AI chatbot).
The real-time simulation can take on martial proportions, as this video from Christmas 2013 shows. In the video, Santa's reindeer sleigh is referred to as "The Big Red One" (which is also the name of the famous 1st Infantry Division of the US Army):
NORAD is a joint command of the United States of America and Canada that monitors the airspace over North America and provides "early warning of missile, air, and spacecraft attacks on North America." Ba
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Citing the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Union (EU) has requested "further explanations" from Apple regarding its decision to close down the developer account of Fortnite publisher Epic Games. Apple says it does not trust Epic, citing the game developer's history of untrustworthy actions.
This is bad news for Epic, which had hoped to launch its own Epic Games Store on iOS in the EU now that Apple has been forced to open up to third-party stores there.
But perhaps Apple has a point.
When friends become enemies
Apple fans will likely know the background story: Epic kicked off a wave of investigation, litigation, and complaint against Apple's App Store business practices. By doing so, it broke its developer agreement and installed an external payment system within its app, which it knew Apple would reject.
To read this article in full, please click here
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