Cbirdsong

It now asks me to allow Safari push notifications on the Mac, which seems handy, but the notification settings are all about emails. Will that be coming online at some point? It also automatically opted me into instant email updates for every post on every followed thread, even though I had disabled that on the old version. 😬

Here's a positive bit of tea leaf reading: on various storefronts the "Hitman Complete Pack" has been renamed "Hitman: The Complete First Season"

I feel like that reader mail about overhearing conversations in Overwatch parties is a nice feature article waiting to happen.

Did something indicate it was Mass Effect? I would have assumed it's the next Dragon Age, since I imagine you'd want a writer to be involved in the early stages of a game. I suppose he could guest-write an add-on for Mass Effect Andromeda, but it seems like the real meat of Bioware writing is the characters in your party. Definitely a great interview, at any rate. With how well this went, I'd love more guests on Idle Weekend!

I generally agree that the graphics ruin the mood a bit in spots, but more importantly, all the little doodads on the ground everywhere made it a lot harder to read an encounter on the fly, based on my experience with the remaster. In certain spots would have a hard time spotting smaller enemies through grass and get ambushed, but flipping over to original graphics let me more accurately assess danger. It's a bit like turning everything down in Quake 3, I guess. The extra weird thing about Halo 1 in the Xbox One collection is that it's a port of a port - the Anniversary version with graphics switching was originally on 360.

I basically did this, Also: The target will be around for another few days, so if you're reading this thinking you missed out it's not too late!

Yeah, there's also not really any technical logic to the idea that the iPhone losing a headphone jack is because Apple wants to control the output methods on the iPhone for sinister DRM reasons. Bluetooth is an open standard that you could easily record from using cheap stuff available on Amazon right now, and ultimately all audio will be decoded to analog sound for human ears that someone could tap into and pirate. Realistically, the music is the digital media market least encumbered by DRM, as all the major sellers don't use it and haven't for years, but purchased music is still on the wane in favor of streaming services where you don't own anything anyway.

Yeah, he shouldn't feel too crazy. There was an old crappy version of Lumines for iOS in 2009 (TouchArcade review is 2/5), which was not well liked and was delisted at some point. I can't find anywhere talking about it being removed, which is probably why the Wiki entry doesn't list this new decent one as a separate release. A recent Touch Arcade article say the rights were acquired by someone else a year or so ago, which is why there are new games now.

Cool idea for a level. The screenshot looks huge: I still need to find time to really dig into Bangkok.

Galaxy Trucker, an amazing adaptation of an amazing board game, is on sale for $1, and there's a new expansion out with a second campaign. iPad: http://appshopper.com/games/galaxy-trucker iPhone: http://appshopper.com/games/galaxy-trucker-pocket

If it makes you feel any better, I was pretty underwhelmed by the bonus missions.

Did you... Because I did, and I felt like a complete idiot.

There's an elusive target in Paris this weekend: You have to kill a guy and steal a thing. Exciting! They also released details on the Thailand level, coming August 16. Looks like it's set in a fancy hotel in Bangkok: https://hitman.com/news/episode-4-release-date

I attempted to do this, but

That elusive target is live! Good luck.

Considering how well Valve does, listing out all the ways they get their community to do work for free was pretty depressing.

As I recall, the side quests it cuts off are ones listed as Secondary Quests, which mostly involve the your friends like Dandelion, etc? You can make a manual save and as soon as you cross the threshold you'll get a bunch of "quest failed" messages for whatever has become impossible to complete.

In his amazing Spelunky book, Derek Yu talks about getting started with Klik and Play as a kid.

I am going to have to finally put in some hours in Marrakesh this weekend. I feel like I need a good 2-3 hours to really get a feel for each new level, so I've only briefly walked around Marrakesh, and have been doing older escalations when I had a few minutes to play.

There is, but it actively warns you with a popup. You have ways to go.

Looking forward to next year's Wizard Jam entries for this one.

I downloaded Killer Instinct and Forza since they're free, and it was a perfectly fine store/download experience. Universal Windows Platform games are actually really pleasant to use - alt-tabbing happens almost instantly, without the annoying flicker typical of Windows games. My current major complaint is that I can't find a way to add them to Steam as a non-Steam game, which means no usage on the Steam Link. From what I understand, the possible problem with UWP is that non-Windows Store UWP apps/games could hypothetically have a scary "this app might be malware" screen, because they aren't signed by Microsoft. This dialogue/check is currently disabled, but you can understand how devs would be reticent about them with the possibility of that changing in a future Windows update.

If the NX is a portable that can also be used on a TV (almost the Wii U in reverse?), then they wouldn't want to design anything around the idea that you will be using two screens.

I have had performance issues when playing over my Steam Link, but it's fine on my actual computer. Elusive target mission report: My score was hot garbage, but I did it. Is there a way to get up on the actual roof in Paris? I haven't fully explored the attic.

Will Nick ultimately come to terms with his fate? Find out on Idle Thumbs 1157.