Iwill be as blunt as a hammer with you: I barely remember Arx Fatalis’ plot. It must have been noteworthy because people are still talking about it in 2021. Arkane Studios’ beloved role-playing game bridged genres and paved the way for gems like Dishonored and Prey. Arx Fatalis had a fairly unique setting, complete with a dying sun to set the mood. But what really managed to burrow into my mind was its frustrating magic system. Some of you may call it inventive and immersive in comparison to today’s button-mashing followed by random numbers flying off foes. …

Medium articles now have a table of contents. For years, Medium writers have had to resort to complicated workarounds to link directly to specific content in their articles. After all, search engines favor longer pieces over scattered bits of helpful information. First spotted over at Elemental, a quick look to the left on the desktop site shows you a helpful list of headings that you can quickly head to.

While it would make more sense on the mobile version (it hasn’t been implemented yet), it’s still a move in the right direction. I hope the feature goes live for everyone soon. Medium’s table of contents will certainly come in handy for a certain laptop guide that I’ve been meaning to work on.
Thank you, Medium.

Casey Botticello, I can’t wait to see your take on this.

Cyberpunk 2077, perhaps the most divisive game in a year shackled by a pandemic, counts the cost of identity among its many themes. While its dystopian future drips with neon and sensory pleasure, the game does punctuate the action with moments that soothe the mind. And that’s despite an AI construct (hello, Keanu) renting out a portion of your brain. Using the personal information of a deceased person to create a digital entity might sound like a thought experiment for the future. But Microsoft has been granted a patent that lets it do just that. Someday.

The move draws comparisons to several existing cyberpunk and dystopic forms of fiction. The first thought that traversed my mind was that of Johnny Silverhand, the snarky dead but alive co-protagonist in Cyberpunk 2077. In the game, fictional megacorporation Arasaka’s Secure Your Soul pilot program lets one create a digital engram of a person’s mind and store it in Mikoshi, a ginormous mainframe server built for that very purpose. …

Why would a writer in India pen a piece on a Canadian grocery chain?

The fact that I‘ve heard of No Frills and No Name Brands is itself a marketing triumph for a store that doesn’t have to stretch its marketing budget across the swathes of the internet. And while India has its share of marketing genius with online retailer Flipkart’s iconic kidult advertisements, few embody the spirit of marketing better than No Frills.

It’s almost as though the folks at No Frills decided to tick off every single option in the marketing checklist while championing a message of glorified smart buyers who saved on every purchase. …

It’s no surprise that Microsoft has had a stellar 2020. Riding high on the spikes in usage across everything from Xbox services to Teams video conferences in the middle of a pandemic, 15 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers were the icing on the cake. With perhaps the best deal in gaming and the most affordable next-gen console (the Xbox Series S at $299), the Redmond giant charted a course vastly different from Sony’s PlayStation strategy. While I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, Microsoft really did get off to a good start this time.

After a year of earning the respect of its customers, the age-old Xbox Live Gold began to feel long in the tooth. It wasn’t the key breadwinner for Microsoft anymore and with the $15 a month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription granting access to all the latest Microsoft titles, the old online multiplayer service began to feel redundant. The new free monthly titles are a far cry from the generous pickings during the service’s golden age. Microsoft seemed to agree, with a new price hike that seemed to serve no purpose beyond embedding the final nail in Xbox Live Gold’s green coffin. And filling their coffers, of course. …

The meteoric rise to fame that Among Us enjoyed this year was as much of a surprise as the rest of 2020. With over half a billion players, the cultural phenomenon let people of all ages forge and break friendships amidst the clutches of a pandemic. Designing a game geared towards social gameplay that is both co-operative and competitive and giving it away for free on mobile platforms was a formula that worked wonders.

InnerSloth’s minimal yet iconic crewmates took center stage, inspiring all kinds of fan art and tributes. You can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon an eerie cursed image (a national pastime in 37 countries) that was in fact very real. …

Nostalgia is a fickle beast. While I miss simpler times when gaming backlogs weren’t a thing, I’m not a fan of how some companies shove half-baked remasters down gamers’ throats. Speaking of old thrills, I could hardly contain my excitement when I saw the cover image of Joe’s piece on retro case retrofitting. It reached out to the recesses of my mind in ways only a pleasant memory could. A Google search later, I had mixed feelings. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest released in 1992. I had never played the game.

And yet the game called out to me like a beaten path that I had tread before. A little digging helped me unearth an archaeological find: the title’s elaborate manual. Peppered with gorgeous visuals and in-depth explanations of the game’s mechanics, it was no surprise that the text was etched into my mind. Turns out that this little relic was the source of my Mystic Quest memories. I even remembered Benjamin and his larger-than-life quest to restore balance to a chaotic world. While the premise of “secure four magic crystals” doesn’t sound all that different from a fetch quest, it helped me connect with Mystic Quest despite being way too young to experience the depth of role-playing games. …

If you’ve noticed news circulating across social media about a certain Redmond-based giant acquiring the entirety of Sony’s media empire, hold off on the champagne. While it is too late for an April Fools’ prank, this year has been anything but conventional.

The news went viral when a Spanish site reported on the matter. Soon, several sites began to stir up a console war storm, dormant from the lack of next-gen console stock. Not everyone did their research before tossing their philosophical hats in the ring.

December 28 is observed as the “Day of the Holy Innocents” in several Hispanic cultures, celebrated in the vein of an April Fools’ affair. While you won’t see the news plastered across renowned publications, plenty of folk over at Twitter experienced the equivalent of having a wrapped Christmas present stolen. …