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The world is full of artists - thankfully, as we as a species so clearly need art to express ourselves and just to survive day to day. But revolutionaries are fewer and further between. They command attention with new ideas and thoughts that shake up what the world was before them, and change the future after them. They shine brightly but sadly, eventually must fade away into the firmament as inspiration for a new generation of artists. They change the world. Andy Warhol challenged the notion of art, experimented with it, criticized its failings and then reinvented it. He was a renegade and ultimately, the pop culture icon that would really define what pop culture was. Warhol, who studied at Carnegie, pursued a career and was successful as a commercial illustrator, netting big name companies like Tiffany and Co and Columbia Records, and his work appeared in renowned publications like Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times and Vogue throughout the 1950s. But Warhol wanted more, and decide to pursue a career in the fine arts. His work in advertising had frequently brought him in front of the mundanities of everyday life, and much of his commercial work was based on photos and other source images. After a trip around the world in the late 50s, he began painting. His fascination with Hollywood lead him to celebrity portraits, though his work also had a touch of the macabre with things like his acclaimed ‘death and disaster’ series. Not only a painter, Warhol experimented with art in all forms, including silkscreen, photography, sculpture, performance art and film-making, and has been credited with being the first to exhibit video as art. Simply put, Warhol was never satisfied with one vision of what art was, or how to make it. He was vastly influenced by the world around him, and pioneered new techniques. He didn’t just observe pop culture, he was a part of it, throwing legendary parties at his studio, making frequent appearances at Studio 54, and creating his own travelling art show “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” He may even have pioneered the selfie, as the artist was a frequent fan of self portraits across mediums. Warhol even owned a dance club called the Gymnasium in Manhattan that had gym equipment on the dance floor. No matter what happened to him or around him, Warhol could create art from it. He retired from painting in 1965, with his iconic flower paintings, but came back to the art world the very next year and began a foray into performance art, with exhibits like Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds. On June 3, 1968, the artist was near fatally shot after an altercation with writer Valerie Solanas, and would spend the rest of his life requiring a surgical corset. But Warhol persisted until his death in the ‘80s, eventually even adding two MTV shows to his credit - Andy Warhol’s TV and Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes. Andy Warhol’s contributions to our ideas of art and culture are monumental. He challenged and changed the boundaries of art and remains relevant as not only a pioneer of his time, but a challenge to the future of art, constantly questioning what can and should be considered art. If you, like me, were inspired by the artist, consider checking out (virtually or in person) the new Warhol exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art in Glen Ellyn, IL. For more on the exhibit, click here.

Andy Warhol’s contributions to our ideas of art and culture are monumental. The commercial illustrator had a hugely successful career long before the Campbell’s soup cans but ended up not only transitioning into the world of fine arts, but also transforming it forever. Warhol was never satisfied with one definition of art, one medium, or one viewpoint. He didn’t accept the boundaries people placed on it and what it could and should be, and explored the mundane, boring and macabre as valuable, beautiful, and worthy of portrayal. Warhol was a renegade who embraced new media, new ideas, and pop culture in general in ways that transformed the world of art forever. Though many of us know something about him, and his impact on the world at large and the art world, we’d wager there’s much more to discover about the artist, through his work and the story of his life. Thankfully, if you’re living in Illinois right now, you’ve got the unique opportunity to see a deep dive into who Warhol was. Visitors can walk through his timeline, peruse his ad work for several industry giants, visit and experience the Silver Clouds exhibit, and of course, be able to see paintings, photographs, sculptures and other works on display at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, located in the Mac, or McAninch Arts Center at the College of DuPage. Our last visit here was for the fabulous Frida Kahlo exhibit, which was similarly expansive and immersive. Somehow, though, they’ve outdone themselves again. What you see when you first walk in the doors at the Cleve Carney is just a small piece of the giant exhibit, which goes so far as to have recreated Studio 54 and even Central Park with the NYC skyline Andy would have enjoyed while he was living there, complete with specially commissioned gas street lamps that match the ones in the real Central Park. Near every inch of the museum has something to contribute to the Warhol experience, whether it’s tributes to his work by other artists, the aforementioned Studio 54 experience or the beautiful children’s area, where there’s a special program for kids to learn about Warhol and make art. Whether you’re from Chicago or even out of state, the exhibit is worth the trip, even if you’re more interested in the 94 original works from the artist than the phenomenal surrounding exhibit. Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop is another can’t miss from the Cleve Carney. Whether you’d been a longtime fan of his life and work or didn’t know much about the revolutionary artist, you’ll leave inspired and challenged to look at and create art in new ways. Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop will run from June 3 to September 10, 2023, and tickets can be purchased on site at the MAC box office at 425 Fawell Blvd. in Glen Ellyn, IL or online.

I’m a sucker for a good soulslike game, but you have to wade through a lot of bad titles to find the gems. Despite having its origins as a mobile game, I have been having a good time playing through the stylish Bleak Sword DX. Bleak Sword DX is a stylish lo-fi soulslike. You play as a sword wielding hero who is on a quest to lift the curse of the Bleak Sword. To do this, you’ll have to fight enemies across twelve different zones, with each zone containing about twelve (sometimes fewer) diorama-like levels. Its music and melancholy mood invoke that Dark Souls feel, but Bleak Sword DX uses a lo-fi, almost retro style. Your character is little more than a stick figure, fighting against a whole array of lo-fi enemies. Each level in Bleak Sword DX is a single square, usually consisting of a number of obstacles. Sometimes there are hazards like blowing wind, fire, and traps or even enemies that fling projectiles from impossible to get to locations. There are some exceptions, but most of the time you’ll be fighting on a single tile with a fixed perspective. It’s a holdover from Bleak Sword’s mobile roots, but it’s not too restrictive to make Bleak Sword DX seem inferior. Combat is simple, but familiar to those who have ever played a soulslike. You can only swing your sword for as long as your stamina allows, and there’s a dodge button. You’ll also have to learn how to fight each of the enemy types you’ll encounter: Enemies broadcast moves. Block and riposte with a well-timed button press. Unblockable attacks are announced by a large red exclamation point above an enemy’s head. Most single enemies aren’t that difficult to fight -- so it’s not until you have to deal with a multitude of different enemies — most with their own attack behaviors and movesets—that things become really difficult. Dying in Bleak Sword DX is expected. When you die you leave any picked up items and your experience on whatever level you died at. If you can successfully conquer that level without dying again, you’ll get your items and experience back. Despite Bleak Sword DX’s pocket-sized nature, I found myself pressured to keep playing so I didn’t lose my good items or experience points I had building up, because quitting a level has the same effect as dying in one. Items you find in Bleak Sword DX only last as long as your current “life” and will be forfeited when you die twice at the same location. Most items I’ve encountered have been mundane, and give me a few extra stats in attack or the occasional health item to heal while in a level. There are different stats you can put points into if you accumulate enough to gain a level. They’re all pretty straight forward: defense, health, and damage output. If you’ve played Bleak Sword on mobile, you’ll be pleased to know that DX includes all of the DLC chapters, and adds new level layouts and enemy placement. There’s also a campaign randomizer that gives you a remixed version of Bleak Sword DX by changing item and enemy placement. There is a horde mode that allows you test your mettle against increasingly difficult enemies. There’s also a boss rush mode that has you face off against all 12 of the game’s bosses with a single health bar. I’m usually a bit skeptical when I hear about a phone game coming out on other platforms. However, Bleak Sword DX is a rare exception. Its gameplay transcends platform and it ends up being pretty solid. Despite Bleak Sword DX’s single screen gameplay, there were enough surprises to keep me interested. It’s a unique takes on the soulslike formula, and is definitely recommended for those who want a bite-sized challenge. Bleak Sword DX is out today for PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

I’ve been a fan of developer Frictional Games since I played Penumbra: Overture. In fact, I heartily recommend their game Soma to anyone who might ask me for game recommendations. But Frictional Games is best known for their Amnesia series. While I thought their previous entry Amnesia: Rebirth might have pulled the curtain back a tad too far, Amnesia: The Bunker is a return to form for Frictional Games, with gameplay that calls back to the Penumbra series. It’s also damn scary. Amnesia: The Bunker is a first person survival horror game. In it, you play as a World War I soldier who has recently recovered from a wound only to wake up to a horror: trapped alone in an underground bunker with a bloodthirsty creature. The officers escaped, and collapsed the tunnel behind them, so you have to find a way out of the bunker while avoiding the creature. It won’t be easy, however, as you also have to find your way around obstacles, through locked doors, and around traps left by the soldiers who have died before you. You have to do all of this while trying to keep the lights on at all costs, because the creature prefers to hunt in the dark. But the generator loves to gulp down fuel, and you’re either forced to use your noisy wind-up flashlight, improvise a light source, or attempt to survive the bunker by groping around in the dark. When you first start up Amnesia: The Bunker ( or The Bunker) you’re forced to play through a clumsy beginning that establishes the setting, and works a bit like a tutorial. It’s an unfortunate first impression, but it’s quickly forgotten as the game immediately creates a tense atmosphere that only gets more intense as you continue to play. Once you’re on your own, there’s a message that informs you that “if you think it’s possible, it probably is” in regards to what The Bunker’s physics-driven interactions can be. While there is definitely some possibility for emergent gameplay, I found this mostly means finding creative ways to break down doors, and sometimes clever ways of warding off the creature. Doors are your main obstacle in The Bunker, and while some can be smashed open (or blown up, shot, etc.) others will require you to find keys or combinations to the locks that impede your way forward. Most of these keys and combinations can be found through careful exploration, but also by reading the various notes left around. This is how the story is told, and gives you an idea of what happened in the bunker leading up to its current state. There’s always a sense of dread in The Bunker. There’s the constant time pressure of the generator and its fuel consumption, and the pressure of item management: inventory space is limited, so you have to decide what’s important, or what gets left behind in your stash. There’s only one “safe” room in The Bunker, and one save point, meaning you’ll have to explore outward from there. The further out you go, the more intense the pressures can be. And of course, there’s the constant dread of knowing the monster is actively hunting you and may be lurking just around the corner. The creature itself never quite invoked the same childhood induced trauma levels of fear that the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation caused me—but it comes pretty damn close. While most games developed by Frictional Games have you helpless and unable to fight, you can actually fight back against the monster in The Bunker—but anything you do to it will just slow it down. While the creature is repelled by the light, you aren’t safe just because you’re in a bright room: once he sees you, unless you can fight back you’re dead. While the monster isn’t the only enemy you’ll face in The Bunker— it will be a constant threat through your entire playthrough. Even after you’ve played through The Bunker the first time, new playthroughs can have their own challenges. Certain elements in The Bunker are randomized. The codes you find in your playthrough are randomly generated, and even sometimes randomly placed. Resources are randomly generated and placed in different locations on each new playthrough. Even traps are randomized by placement and type. There is also Steam Workshop support, which opens up the possibility of being able to play user made content—and I can’t wait to see what the community comes up with. If you find that The Bunker is too difficult, there’s an “easy” mode that allows you to explore with a little less pressure from the monster. Conversely there’s a “hard” mode for those who want an increased challenge. Amnesia: The Bunker is a fantastic game. It’s easily the most terrifying game I’ve played since Alien: Isolation. It instills a sense of dread and its intensity ramps up until the very end. If you’re a fan of horror Amnesia: The Bunker is one of the best and scariest games out there.  Amnesia: The Bunker is available June 6 for PC via Steam and on the Epic Games Store.     A Steam key was given to us for this review

I’m a sucker for games that have the player character exploring abandoned sci-fi facilities and derelict spacecraft. I love to piece together a mystery, and Return to Grace promised a mystery wrapped in a 60’s sci-fi aesthetic. Return to Grace is a first person narrative heavy adventure game with a few minor puzzles. In it you play as Adie, an archeologist looking for an AI that ushered in a golden age for humanity, but disappeared, only to plunge humanity into a new dark age. As Adie you’ve found the spire—the facility that housed Grace. As you explore deeper into the spire you will find the answers to what was beyond Grace’s disappearance. Adie is accompanied by several AI voices that are piped in through Adie’s suit. These different personalities are probably the highlight of the game, and they drive the story and serve as a way to give context to the environments that Adie finds herself in. Each of these AIs are driven by different personalities. Return to Grace can probably be best described as a “walking simulator” but it does have a few—very simple—puzzles. Most of the game is about linear exploration and lots of dialogue. While this might sound boring to some, I was definitely intrigued until the very end—but there is no payoff whatsoever, and a bunch of questions that are left unanswered. I can’t really say that Return to Grace is a bad game—it has some contemplative moments and good voice acting—but I’m not sure it even accomplished what the developers were hoping for. When I got to the end and the answers to the mysteries of Grace’s disappearance, it all was so anticlimactic I almost couldn’t believe it when the credits started to roll. There is so much potential and built-up backstory that is never satisfactorily answered in Return to Grace. In fact, in retrospect, it’s hard to even fathom what the ultimate goal of this experience was. It doesn’t come to any philosophical epiphany, the main character doesn’t really grow—and as the player, I was left with just as many questions as answers. There are some snazzy visuals, and a great mid-century modern styled sci-fi aesthetic—but it fails to stick the landing, nor does it have many compelling gameplay moments. Return to Grace is available today A Steam key was provided to us for this review

GLaDOS is perhaps the most famous rogue AI in video games, but long before I played Portal I was facing off against an antagonist an AI that absolutely terrifies me in a way that GLaDOS doesn’t: Shodan. While there is some humor in GLaDOS’s horror, Shodan is a terrifying megalomaniaca AIl that revels in genetic experiments and creating cyborg monstrosities while demanding her subjects worship her as a god. System Shock is a first person adventure game that has been painstakingly recreated by brilliant retro resurrectors Night Dive Studios. In it, you play as a who is hacker forced to fight their way through Citadel station after the station’s AI went rogue. In fact, you’re the reason Shodan’s leash is unhooked. It’s your job to undo this damage as you find yourself trapped on a Citadel Station that is controlled by Shodan, with its cramped corridors filled with mutants, cyborgs, and robots bent on destroying or enslaving you. Body horror abounds in high definition. Before the denizens of Citadel Station were depicted in highly pixelated gore, you can see the fruit of Shodan’s carnage in a whole new way. Despite System Shock’s graphical overhaul, Night Dive Studios left a bit of pixelated retro feel in their art. If you get really close to an object the textures are pixelated in a way that feels like a deliberate art choice by the developers. It helps maintain that retro feel. But you also have all of the modern graphical bells and whistles you’d expect. While the graphics changed significantly, there has been obvious care put into System Shock’s gameplay. It feels like a modern game, but it’s surprisingly faithful to it’s the original’s design. And that means this is a true retro adventure. There is absolutely no hand-holding, so you have to pay attention to dialogue and the environment to find your next task. There are no waypoints. You can reference dialogue snippets that you find as you explore Citadel Station and discover audio logs left from the deceased crew. There are also little to no explanation on the game’s mechanics—if you’re not familiar with this type of game, the learning curve might be frustrating. Especially because there’s a real possibility you can play yourself into a corner. If you don’t save often enough, or lose track of an important game item, you can lose chunks of time. I found myself going back to my old habit of saving frequently, and creating a new save file each time I saved so I could go back and undo anything that might get me stuck. System Shock comes from an age of corridor shooters, and feels only one step removed from a grid-based role-playing game. What I mean by that is: most of the game takes placed in cramped environments. You could argue that this is appropriate for a space station, but it does make System Shock feel labyrthine and claustrophobic—but more in a hard to navigate way than in a scary way. In fact, despite the Shodan’s threats and the prodigious amounts of gore, System Shock isn’t a very scary game. It does achieve a cyberpunk sci-fi atmosphere, but the hacker you play as feels very capable of handling the threats that Shodan produces. Once I got a lightsaber (sorry, laser rapier) and boots that let me run super-fast and nearly fly, I felt like Shodan should be afraid of me. System Shock is definitely one of the most authentically cyberpunk games I’ve played in a long time. Even the original game’s infamous cyberspace hacking segments are created in bright neon colors that invoke the feeling of flying through the ‘net and compromising systems in a way that 90’s popular media promised us. While System Shock contains some frustrating elements for the uninitiated, fans of the original will absolutely love this remake. It’s even more accessible to modern audiences, if they possess a little patience to weather the 90’s video game design. This is my favorite game of its type since 2017’s Prey, and an absolutely worthy remake to a 90’s sci-fi video game classic. System Shock is available today on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review

Kill It With Fire is a first person comedy game that was released back in 2020 for all platforms. In it, you are part of the Kill It With Fire exterminators, tasked with killing an infestation in a house, only to find it worse than you can have ever possibly imagined. Using a plethora of silly and outlandish weapons, you can destroy hordes and hordes of spiders, but now in 2023 we get this experience in VR! Now you can be fully immersed in arachnophobic nightmare or revenge fantasy. Unfortunately for me, it’s the former. I am not deathly afraid of spiders, but on average am not a huge fan of their presence so hearing the skittering sounds in the background doesn't play well to me. Which speaks a lot to what VR can add to a game like this. As per the original version, you get access to a plethora of hilariously inappropriate weapons while exploring varied environments to assassinate multiple different types of spiders. The weapons can be as simple as a shoe, or a rocket launcher. They really do escalate in a hilarious way. Each level has multiple parts, gated off by spider kills, so you have to kill more and more to progress. To assist in that is your trusty spider detector, which has a radar and beeps when spiders are nearby. You aren't just limited to weapons either, as anything in the environment can also act as a certified spider smasher. There’s a level of freestyle to the killing mechanics and the levels provide enough varied spaces to compliment your full armory. From gas stations to office buildings, your adventure in spider murder takes you all over that small town. Each level feeds into the next, in a way that makes sense for the story. Did I say story? Yes, there is a throughline to Kill It With Fire’s levels that tells a cohesive and hilarious narrative and the nature of the spider infestation. While I wouldn’t want to ruin all the wacky places the story takes you, I will say, it’s consistent with the tone of the game overall and that’s all you can ask for. The gating feels fair and easily doable, so the levels flow easy. The art design is a simplified cell shading look that really limits the details to the need to know objects, which isn’t a negative but this game isn’t winning any awards for graphical texture detail. Upgrades and battery packs can be found throughout the environment, which provide perks for the level as well as modifiers later on. As far as VR is concerned, Kill It With Fire adapts so-so. On your right wrist is the spider tracker, and on your left is where you deposit items you find like ammo or upgrades. Grabbing and using items feels relatively seamless with a few hitches but nothing game breaking. Grip is with one trigger, while the second trigger can magnetize items to you directly. Dual wielding weapons feels like an amazing fever dream. Aiming your shots is gladly forgiving, though throwing grenades has a lot to be desired. The real pain point is in the movement. You move with your left stick, while the right stick is snap movement. Both work fluidly but do not work with the motion functions of your brain. Free movement also works but all movement induced a heavy seasickness in me. I could only play two levels at a time before stopping due to the overwhelming queasy feeling. While this is a single knock against the game, it fully hindered my ability to play. I eventually finished the game, but it took a lot of time and patience. Also make sure you have a wide area of play, as I was taking large swings of my arms, frantically trying to kill spiders that I definitely punched a few walls. Kill It With Fire VR is a fantastic idea for a VR mode… on paper. A first person shooter with a creepy crawler spider theme? Fantastic! A shooter that provides a ridiculously large inventory of weapons? Perfect! The problem lies in the movement. We haven’t gotten a firm grasp of full movement with VR games and Kill It With Fire VR is no different. It’s as nausea inducing as it is hilarious as the concept, which honestly runs short a few levels before the end. Kill It With Fire into VR well mechanically, but maybe pop a dramamine before plugging in that headset.

Netflix is beginning to officially crack down on password sharing in the United States. On Tuesday, the company began sending emails to users reading that an account is “for you and the people you live with - your household.” “A Netflix account is for use by one household,” the streaming giant wrote in a blog post announcing the change. “Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are — at home, on the go, on holiday — and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices.” Twitter screencap The crackdown on password sharing - a practice the company once vehemently encouraged - has been a long time coming. Netflix announced its plans to limit the practice in 2022, saying at the time it had been working for a year to “enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely, while also paying a bit more.” The company then rolled out paid password sharing on the international market. Netflix said they initially experienced cancellations, but ultimately saw users come back. "As with Latin America, we see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce the news, which impacts near term member growth," the company said in a letter to shareholders, according to NPR. But as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add 'extra member' accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue." Netflix, which boasts it has around 235 million subscribers worldwide, says that some 100 million accounts share passwords. Now, if a subscriber wants to continue allowing someone to use their password, they’ll have to pay an extra $7.99 a month. Paid subscribers can add up to two people they don’t live with to their accounts. Screencap via Netflix Netflix has said that password sharing has impacted its “ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.” In 2022, the company reported a loss of subscribers for the first time in 10 years, though those numbers bounced back in the first quarter of 2023. The company meanwhile reported revenue of $8.2 billion in the first quarter of 2023, up from $7.9 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

You’d be forgiven if you thought the cola wars were the stuff of Billy Joel anthems and not a current affair. By now it’s pretty clear the two titans will continue on in endless battle with legions of fans on either side just about as rabid about it in some cases as painted up football fans on Super Bowl Sunday. Past the days of petty lawsuits trying to buy each other out and weird attempts at sabotage, we’re in a sort of cold war. You’re a Coke or you’re a Pepsi if you’re in the game at all, but you’ve got a backup player because with the way franchises handle cola sales, you’re gonna eventually show up at a Pepsi place as a Coke fan and vice versa. Enter the lemon lime soda. It’s sort of the Luigi of beverages. Pretty powerful, refreshing, and honestly, a delight, but always upstaged by its red-suspenders wearing brother cola. Sibling rivalry aside, lemon-lime sodas are a Miss Congeniality of sorts in the soda world. Inoffensive, crisp, refreshing and light. Perfectly effervescent it feels sort of healthy compared to cola, but still indulgent enough to be fun. The OG lemon lime soda has been around for over 90 years now, kicking off its longrunning runner up status as “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda'' which is almost as bad a marketing move as describing a flavor of Coke as the flavor of “transformation” which turns out to be a lot like a Werther’s Original meets suntan lotion situation that frankly, we were not okay with. Eventually though, after its original formula stopped containing lithium and it was sold for your enjoyment and not your medicinal benefit, it got a brand new image, the label 7-UP and the privilege of being the first. It’s controversial, but 7-UP remains this author’s favorite - it’s got more bubble, more cut, and less cloying sweetness than its more popular cousins Sprite and Sierra Mist, though less notoriety. Speaking of Sierra Mist - well, sometimes the sibling rivalry results in a killing off from within, and that’s exactly what happened to this longtime Pepsi companion. It’s not the first time, with Pepsi also trying to kill off Sierra Mist back in 2016, when it rebranded it to Mist Twist, and perhaps not as impactful as the runaway success of Sprite, but if you weren’t already aware, you’ve drunk your last drop of the arguably underappreciated font of those misty mountains. Starry is something new, entirely - or that’s what Pepsi would love for us to believe. It hits different, it declares on its homepage. A ‘crisp, clear burst of lemon lime flavor.’ ‘Good vibes, great taste’ it declares elsewhere on the about page. Hell, it even pokes fun at the drama on its own Tiktok page. It’s hip, it’s new, and whether you like it or not, if you want lemon lime deliciousness with your Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, it’s here to stay. Personally we find it much better in cans and bottles than in fountains in nearby restaurants, but it’s hard to tell if it’s Starry’s fault or the fault of a few questionable machines and mixes. This isn’t the first fallen soldier for Pepsi in recent times, either. Does anyone remember Slice? As much as I now recall being a fan of this fruity blast from the past, it took some digging to even remember that that was Sierra Mist’s predecessor, and Teem before that. The sad truth is, nothing’s gonna stop the gears of war from turning, and that means even if we miss it, we have to accept that Sierra Mist is now forever in the firmament as a brilliant memory we can no longer grasp, and Starry is here to stay.

I've been playing a lot of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide lately. Despite its flaws, it has great combat. One of my favorite weapons in Darktide is the boltgun—and right around the time I was discovering how satisfying it is to blow heretics into little chunks, the announcement trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun came to my attention. Its intersection of boomer shooter meets Warhammer 40,000 was intriguing enough, but the fact that it was all about the boltgun made it a must-play for me. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (Boltgun) is a first person retro shooter—or “boomer shooter” if you prefer. In it, you play as a Space Marine tasked with purging Chaos and its heretical followers. You really don’t need much more impetus to take out your chainsword and fight the corrupted forces of chaos. As a retro style first person shooter, Boltgun is about fighting hordes of enemies with a huge arsenal of weapons. Combat in Boltgun feels great, and weapons in Boltgun have some serious power. I would argue it’s too much at once, but anything less wouldn’t deliver on the Boltgun promise. I was gibbing enemies from the moment I picked up the eponymous weapon. But it’s not just about the Boltgun – each weapon feels powerful to use. From the meltagun to the heavy bolter, there was not a single disappointing firearm, with each feeling like it had its place in the arsenal. And,if you run out of ammo, or just want to get up close and personal, you always have your trusty chainsword. Boltgun also features a pretty good variety of enemy types — from those that will stay back and take shots at a distance, to enemies that will intentionally try to get in your face. Some of the larger enemies felt like bullet sponges, but there were never too many of these — and they helped keep the pace of fights interesting. Boltgun is at its best when you’re in the thick of combat. I appreciate the occasional lull to break up the action, but I often found myself getting lost in Boltgun’s levels. Unfortunately, the level design in Boltgun isn’t always good. Some of the levels can be frustrating to navigate because of the sameness of the textures and corridors, which is especially frustrating with the lack of any sort of map. And while looking for color coded keys to open like-colored doors is a staple of retro shooters, this was leaned on too heavily in Boltgun. Despite Boltgun’s occasionally frustrating level design, there are visual set pieces and vistas that really sell the Warhammer 40,000 experience, and make Boltgun a pretty game. There are some settings that you can tweak to make Boltgun even more visually appealing, though, including a retro slider that allows you to adjust just how retro and/or pixelated you want your game to look. Even with the retro visuals turned down all the way, Boltgun still looks retro—just as if you were playing it on a really good computer in the mid to late 90s. While I enjoyed my playthrough of Boltgun, I was waiting for the game to show me something new or even just something different. Other retro styled shooters have done a great job keeping me engaged beyond simply shooting endless waves of enemies. That said, I really loved the combat, and it ticked a few retro shooter boxes for me. However, its level design is often boring, and occasionally frustrating. There’s a lot to like about Boltgun, but not enough to make me want another playthrough. If you want to slay heretics in the Emperor’s name and can look past a few minor flaws, you’ll probably enjoy Boltgun. Boltgun is available today on Xbox One and Xbox X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as for PC via Steam. A Steam key was provided to us for this review.

On Wednesday, Montana became the first state in the US to ban the app TikTok. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, in a statement. The bill, which would go into effect on January 2024, would prohibit downloads of the app in the state and would fine any “entity” - an app store or TikTok itself - $10,000 a day anytime someone “is offered the ability” to download the app. For the moment, the penalties would not apply to users, but that would mean that stores like Google and Apple would be liable for violations. According to a report from the Associated Press, TikTok says there are some 200,000 users in Montana, as well as 6,000 businesses that use the platform. In a statement from the company in March, TikTok touted that 150 million Americans across the nation use the app as of February 2023. The bill is expected to be challenged in court and if it were to hold up, would have wide reaching ramifications in the United States for technology, social media, and free speech. Gianforte, whose political rise became international news in 2017 when he body slammed a Guardian journalist on the eve of his election to Congress, along with a wide variety of American politicians have said that the desire to curtail or outright ban TikTok use is over alleged concerns over data mining and the app being a “propaganda tool for the Chinese government.” According to ABC, Keegan Medrano, policy director for the ACLU of Montana, said the Legislature “trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information and run their small business, in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment.” On Twitter, the ACLU said “This law tramples on our free speech rights under the guise of national security and lays the groundwork for excessive government control over the internet. Elected officials do not have the right to selectively censor entire social media apps based on their country of origin.” Tiktok has vehemently denied that it shares data with the Chinese government. In a March congressional hearing, CEO Shou Zi Chew said the company has been building a “firewall to seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access.” “The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel," Chew said, according to Reuters. While privacy and data collection should absolutely be concerns, TikTok is far from alone in the practice of harvesting user data and handling it improperly. Nearly every major social media and tech company not only employs the practice but has had issues with handling user data. Meta - which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp - agreed in December of 2022 to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit as a result of revelations in 2018 that a third party, a data analytics firm called Cambridge Analytica employed by the Trump campaign, “may have” improperly accessed the personal information of some 87 million users. Meta was also fined $400 million by an EU privacy regulator in January for illegally forcing users to accept personalized ads. In November of 2022, Snapchat settled a lawsuit for $35 million in Illinois alleging the company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. In 2019, Google and YouTube paid a record $170 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General alleging YouTube illegally collected the personal information of children without parental consent. Twitter is also facing a wide-ranging investigation by the FTC into its privacy practices. While the federal government and at least 34 states ban the app on official phones - employees of governments and agencies are barred from using the app on their work phones - a blanket ban across an entire state could be extremely hard to enforce. Even if the app were unavailable for download directly from an app store or geofencing technology were employed to enforce the ban, they can be bypassed by using VPN services. Immediately enforceable or not, the ban sets up a drastic and dangerous precedent for government overreach into how and what Americans use to access social media and communicate in general. Gianforte also announced Wednesday that the use of all social media applications which “provide information and data to foreign adversaries” would be banned on any government issued device. Those apps include other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, as well as WeChat, headquartered in China, and Telegram, which was founded by a pair of Russian entrepreneurs and is now headquartered in Dubai. Similar legislation with broad language that could be interpreted in many ways that could impact the access Americans have through social media is also making its way through congress. A bipartisan bill dubbed the RESTRICT (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology) Act, introduced in March, would give the Secretary of Commerce and the President the power to restrict access to social media and other technology from “foreign adversaries.” According to an analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the language RESTRICT Act could give the government broad and troubling investigative powers, potentially punish VPN users, be applied to a broad swath of technology, and give more power to the executive branch while removing “many of the commonsense restrictions that exist under the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA).” The EFF says that if Congress is concerned about foreign adversaries or other nations collecting data, “it should focus on comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation that will have a real impact, and protect our data no matter what platform it’s on—TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else that profits from our private information” “Foreign adversaries won't be able to get our data from social media companies if the social media companies aren't allowed to collect, retain, and sell it in the first place,” writes the organization.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never beaten Myst. “Yeah, but haven’t you reviewed it?” You might ask. And to that I’d have to say: wow, thanks for following my work! That’s amazing. Developer Cyan’s seminal work was a cultural phenomenon when it was released back in the early days of CD-ROM video games–when full motion video and hi fidelity audio soundtracks were emerging novelties. Firmament is a first person adventure game with an emphasis on solving puzzles. To solve those puzzles you’re given a tool called an “Adjunct.” You'll use this Adjunct across three realms to manipulate various pieces of machinery on the behest of a voice that serves as a source of exposition and also as a guide as you work to discover the true nature of the Firmament This isn’t Cyan’s first rodeo when it comes to creating enigmatic worlds that beg for exploration, even if exploring them means solving puzzles. The three realms each seem to serve a specific function in a steampunk society that values work and obedience. You play as a character that has no memories, woken from a hibernation to serve as a Keeper to the Firmament–but you soon discover that there’s a mystery to be solved. While previous Cyan developed games have relied on moon logic and cryptic puzzles, the type of puzzles you’ll experience in Firmament never felt like they required leaps of logic. Everything made sense, and there were only a few times when I felt like I was missing the way forward. And while puzzle difficulty varies from person to person, I found Firmament to be right in that sweet spot where it wasn’t impossibly hard, but still challenging enough to stump me from time to time. To solve puzzles in Firmament you’re given a tool called the Adjunct, which shoots out a lead that allows you to manipulate an object once attached. The Adjunct acts in a sort of binary fashion: you can turn something on or off, move it left or right, etc. For some objects you can switch modes; so something you can turn left or right you can also move forward or backward, for instance. While this sounds simplistic, developer Cyan has created a series of clever ways to make the Adjunct feel like more than a way to turn switches on and off. Firmament has a wide variety of puzzle types. Some use logic, others use line of sight, etc. Puzzles aren’t always just standalone, as you’ll sometimes have to manipulate something at one end of a realm to create a way forward on the other end. As you explore more of the world of Firmament you’ll get upgrades to the Adjunct to allow you to get to places you weren’t able to before. There are three upgrades: torque, range and concatenate. Torque allows you to turn certain switches you previously couldn’t, Range extends the reach of the Adjunct, and Concatenate allows you to chain together switches, often to power something. Firmament is completely playable in VR, and it feels like it was designed to be. There are many times when you are gifted a beautiful vista just for figuring out a mundane puzzle. And the Adjunct was designed specifically to be used as a hand-mounted device–a simple twist left or right actuates the switches throughout Firmament. However, there are a lot of times where you ride elevators and vehicles, something that was not pleasant for someone who is easily motion sick, like myself. I ended up playing Firmament mostly with a good old fashioned monitor, thank you very much. I really enjoyed Firmament. Cyan has a specific brand of world building and puzzle solving that has captivated me ever since I was a little kid, and Firmament really sates a specific appetite. It feels like a game that was made by a developer that has had decades to hone their puzzle chops. It also has a story that compelled me to look for answers. And though the answer ended up being a little cliche, I really enjoyed the view. Firmament is available today on Steam for PC and Mac, and for most VR systems, with a PlayStation 4 and 5 and Playstation VR release planned for some time in the future. A Steam key was provided to us for this review