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The weather outside was frightful - with tornado watches and warnings throughout the day - but inside the gargantuan McCormick Place convention center in Chicago the nerds were gathered together to do the three things we all love most - shop for nerdy stuff to add to our collections, go see panels with our favorite nerdy actors and creators, and show off all our finest cosplay! We've been on site with this convention since its beginnings, and through COVID-19, and we're finally seeing that nature - or nerdture, is returning. Friday's crowd was impressive, and so was the cosplay, so even though we don't seem to be at full force yet, we're definitely getting there. Enjoy a heaping helping of the finest cosplay we saw on the floors Friday and make sure to keep your eyes on this page, as Saturday the Crown Championships of Cosplay return to the Main Stage, with regional, national and international cosplay awards being given out - meaning you'll see the very best of the best cosplay out there. Staff photographers: Aaron Cynic, Julian Ramirez and Marielle Bokor

There’s a burgeoning market for games that fall outside of the traditional genres, like the emergence of the so-called “cozy game” obsession during COVID. Now, Tchia doesn’t exactly fit the term cozy game, but it reaches cozy game status enough times to be considered one. But Tchia’s beautiful scenery hides a pretty compelling, and sometimes dark, adventure. Tchia is a third person open world adventure game. In it, you play as the eponymous Tchia as she attempts to free her father from the baby-eating evil half-worm half-human antagonist Meavora. And no, I didn’t throw “baby eating” in there as an exaggeration, as Meavora literally devours an infant in front of you. Despite this, Tchia is a charming, beautiful game that features The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild style exploration. In fact, Tchia is a surprising mix of themes and genres that don’t sound palatable on paper, but is put together with so much love and skill it ends up not only working, but stands out as something special. In Tchia you’ll be able to explore the open world by climbing, swimming, gliding, and possessing different animals and objects. As with Breath of the Wild, there is a stamina system that dictates Tchia’s physical limitations–like how far she can climb, or how long she can hold her breath underwater. Of course, if you’re about to drown you can always inhabit the body of a nearby fish, or bypass obstacles by flying around as a bird. Different animals and objects that Tchia possesses have different abilities. If she possesses a dolphin, she can swim fast, or as a gas can, she can ignite and blow up–which safely expels Tchia. It’s fun taking control of different animals and objects to see what they can do. Tchia is a game that you can play at your own pace, and finding various activities to do in the open world is part of its charm. You can complete challenges like races, or find new clothes in a vast array of styles to customize Tchia for her adventures. Social interactions in Tchia are often accompanied by a rhythm game using percussion instruments, or your trusty ukulele. My only complaint about Tchia has to do with the large number of fetch quests you have to do to get the story moving forward. However, Tchia is a game that never feels like it's rushing you, and it’s casual enough that I could hand the controller to my wife and she could play with little context. If Tchia meets her demise, she’ll simply respawn at the nearest campfire ready to continue her adventure. There is no health bar, so you’ll only perish if you run out of stamina at an inopportune time, or fall too far. The ukulele that Tchia carries is used more than just in the rhythm games. It also works as a way to change the time of day, or even spawn useful items. It’s also fully playable if you wanted to just jam out and create your own tunes. While Tchia is a pleasant game, it does have a bit of violence to it. Sometimes it features rather dark cutscenes, like the aforementioned baby eating or decapitated chickens. The violence does manage to remain cartoon-like, but even so, it’s much darker than I’d expect it–or any game–to go. While most of Tchia is peaceful, there are times you will have to fight. Sort of. You can use Tchia’s possession ability to create fires to burn the fabric enemies you’ll encounter.They attack by wrapping you in cloth, and if you run out of stamina faster than you can mash the escape button, you lose. Combat can be fun, as you discover new ways to take out your foes, usually through a mixture of possessing objects and throwing flaming items at your foes. Tchia is a game that was immediately striking, but continued to grow on me as I played it–and I can say, I have never played anything quite like it. But if Tchia’s fictional archipelago is anything like New Caledonia, I definitely want to visit its real world inspiration. Despite its darker elements, Tchia is a cozy game that breaks the usual cozy game boundaries. It’s also a game that was made with love by an obviously passionate dev team. Tchia is available March 21 on PC via the Epic Games Store and for PlayStation 4 and 5. An Epic Game Store Key was provided to us for this review

It’s rare to come across a video game with a truly novel twist on a tried-and-true genre. City builders have been around for over thirty years, and mostly consist of building various types of structures while balancing the needs of people. But Terra Nil isn’t about building civilization--it’s about rebuilding a wrecked ecosystem. Terra Nil is what developer Free Lives calls a “reverse city builder.” Your job is to take a barren landscape and reintroduce flora and fauna. But instead of leaving a network of machinery and various buildings behind, your goal is to leave no trace. There is no timer, so Terra Nil is a game you can play at your own pace—and I suggest you take it slow and plan each move, because it’s easy to get stuck without resources before you complete your objective. In fact, failure seems part of Terra Nil’s design. There isn’t much in the way of a tutorial for Terra Nil. While the campaign mode does ramp up its complexity and explain its basic mechanics—it also leaves a lot of details for you to discover through tinkering and tool tip perusal. This lead to some early frustration for me, but it grew on me over time. Gameplay consists of three phases. In the first phase you have to establish sources of power, and purify the soil to create green patches. In the second phase, you’ll further refine these patches into specific biomes like beaches, forests, etc. And finally, during the third phase your goal is to remove any trace of your interference. This means recycling all of your buildings. This can be a test in planning, because if you don’t think ahead you might have to create infrastructure to remove any hard to reach buildings. Succeeding in Terra Nil isn't as easy as simply putting things where you want them to go. You have to make sure there are proper atmospheric conditions by burning plants, freezing water, or creating humidity from water sources, etc. Also, a lot of the terraforming equipment is tied to various power generators, which are important to place strategically, lest you run out of room to expand. If you misplace a building, especially in the first or second phase, you may not be able to remove it in the third. There is an undo button, but that only allows you to undo your last action. And any mistake, especially in an earlier phase, can eventually cascade and make your life harder. Though there isn’t a timer in Terra Nil, so you can take your time making decisions, be prepared to fail at least once in each region. Luckily, you can reset your current phase—but sometimes that isn’t enough, and you have to restart the whole level. While the game never says it outright, I think this is by design. But when you fail, you can go back into a level with a better idea how to tackle it. There are four regions in Terra Nil, each with its own quirks and region-specific buildings to deal with that region’s challenges. Each region will require special consideration, and contain unique challenges, like the lack of land in Flooded City or the frozen ground of the Volcanic Glacier. While it doesn’t overstay its welcome, I do wish there was more to Terra Nil. I was able to get through its campaign in less than a dozen hours, where I’m used to city builders that can easily grab my attention for hundreds of hours. That said, Terra Nil does have replayability because of its procedurally generated landscapes. There’s no doubt that Terra Nil carries an important environmental message. But it’s more about the appreciation of the beauty of nature as you wipe away the dirt left behind by failed civilization. It manages to somehow be both challenging and relaxing—but there might be a bit of learning curve while you discover Terra Nil’s quirks. Terra Nil is available tomorrow for PC via Steam and on Netflix. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

I’m no pinball wizard, but I’ve always been fascinated by pinball machines. There’s something incredibly satisfying about all of the electro-mechanical sounds along with the tactile feeling of hitting a rolling metal ball with mechanical flippers. Unfortunately, that’s not something virtual pinball can reproduce, but Pinball FX comes the closest to live pinball of any other pinball video game I’ve played. Pinball FX is a game that allows you to play many different pinball tables. It’s technically free to play, but if you want to play more than the starter table, you’ll have to pay. Pinball FX isn’t a substitute for the real thing, but it’s the closest we’ll be able to get in a video game. However, Pinball FX isn’t so much a game as it is a modular pinball engine where you can play a whole array of different tables. Playing pinball in Pinball FX is fun. It obviously can’t recreate the tactile feeling of real pinball, but it’s as close as you can get in a video game. Of course, gameplay varies greatly from table to table, with every table containing its own goals and tricks. Each table has a gameplay guide, which is a bit of a cheat sheet that shows you how to play each table, and what all of the different parts of each table are called. There was never a time that I thought I was cheated by wonky physics. However, the tables tilt a lot easier in their virtual forms than the ones I’ve played with in real life, making some of the high scoring tricks harder to pull off than you could with their real-world counterparts. If you want extra realism, you can even use Pinball FX on a virtual pinball machine. As cool as this sounds, I don’t have the hardware to test it on, unfortunately. Virtual pinball has never looked so good as it does in Pinball FX. On PC, with all of the graphics settings maxed and ray tracing set to high, the tables really look fantastic. From the original tables to those classic table recreations that look like they were painstakingly reproduced, not a single table is visually disappointing. There are even added extra animated characters on some of the older tables that bring them to life in a way that’s impossible outside of a virtual space. As gorgeous as the tables are in Pinball FX, the rest of the virtual space is a bit disappointing. You can customize your game room, but it’s a little tedious in practice . Each table has unlockables and you can display them around your game room. But to display them, you’ll have to select the shelf you want to display a collectible on, and look for the list of those available. You can’t just select an object and place it where you want. I ended up spending little time on this aspect of Pinball FX. I was given access to most of the tables that Pinball FX has to offer, and I played every single one of them. Out of the bunch there was not a single bad table, though there were a few mediocre ones buried in a few of the bundles I tried out. You can buy tables individually, or you can purchase the Pinball pass which gives you access to most of the available tables. The Pinball Pass comes in two options: 30 days for 150 coins (about $15) or a 1 year pass for 1200 coins ($100). As pricey as these individual tables and table packs can be, getting the pinball pass can be a viable option. But to do so, you’ll need to purchase coins, and the smallest pack of coins is 100 that go for about $10. Tables themselves vary wildly in price, and can be purchased from $5 dollars to $10 dollars each. You can also buy packs of tables—which saves you a bit of money, with most of them going for around $10 dollars, up to $25 dollars or so. Pinball isn’t cheap, even virtually. While Pinball FX still doesn’t replace real tables, it’s the best way you can play a wide array of pinball games in your home. But while it’s certainly cheaper than buying and maintaining a real pinball table, each of the virtual ones still come in at a pretty steep price. But if you’re crazy about pinball, Pinball FX is the best video game pinball I’ve ever played. Pinball FX is out now on Epic Game Store for PC and for PlayStation 4 and 5 as well as Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One. An Epic Game Store Key was given to us for the purpose of this review

The Inspired Home Show, or #TIHS23 (formerly known as the International Home and Housewares Show) is a pretty big deal. Not only has the show been hosted in Chicago since 1927, it survived its own version of the Chicago Fire in its early years at McCormick Place and has grown to include 1300+ members from over 80 nations. This behemoth of a trade show takes up more buildings within McCormick Place than both the Auto Show and C2E2. Visitors, vendors and buyers make their way here once a year to show off innovative inventions, stylish new designs and the latest lines of products both tried and true and all-new. We have been doing our own trend-hunting at the show for the past 10 years and by now, have cultivated a keen eye for what you might want to look out for when you’re shopping for your home in the near future. To that end, here are 8 of the best things we saw at the show. Keep them on your radar and add them to your wishlists and you might just be one of this year's trendsetters. Three by Three Seattle Three by Three as a brand may just be our favorite find overall from this year's Inspired Home Show. COVID showed us that our home is our haven, and paying more attention to our personal space can really make a difference in how productive and peaceful we feel when we spend time there. Since working from home is a lot more prevalent than it was in the past, this is especially true in a home office. Three by Three's Sort it Out! Wall Caddy at the Inspired Home Show 2023. Photo: Marielle Bokor Three by Three has an amazing selection of organizational products and office accoutrements that are incredibly sleek and stylish with organic finishes, clever extras, bold colors and beautiful geometric designs. A few of our favorites from their selection include the Glassencorque Magnetic Glass dry-erase and cork board, which means your planning space is gorgeous but versatile, with places to pin, stick, write and hang things – and it comes with markers, pins, magnets and hooks so you can get to work right away. We also loved their sculptural, modular monitor risers as well as their attractive and clever sliding shelves and the Sort it Out! Wall Caddy that gives you a place to hang your keys, dump your mail and look at your week’s schedule right when you walk in the door. This women-owned, Seattle based small business is absolutely worth a look when you’re looking for any kind of office or home refresh. Aeropress Aeropress has been around for a while now. Borne of an engineer’s desire for better coffee, this little contraption has garnered a huge following without ever really straying from its original, handy, durable design, save for a handy dandy travel version that’s become part of our travel kit. It’s a household name for a reason – less fussy than a French Press, less time-consuming than a pourover, less counter space invading than a traditional drip coffeemaker, and more environmentally friendly than a Keurig by far, this device makes a perfect cup of coffee every time, with very little time and effort involved. While we do generally agree with the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” adage, Aeropress has more room to shine in the coffee world, and a little glow-up that doesn’t change its function is welcome. This year, Aeropress comes to the countertop with a bunch of brand-new ideas that we love, like an XXL version that’ll brew 16 oz of coffee in one pull, a brand new clear version of the original Aeropress, and some premium versions of the OG that’ll give it not only a facelift but a bit of a material upgrade to boot, including a well-deserved presentational storage station. We can’t wait to get our hands on the next generation and give it its rightful place of honor on our countertops. Ooni Pizza Ovens We’ve always been all about quality pizza. We’re from Chicago, after all. And while we’re blessed with the ability to order great pies from just about anywhere in the city and suburbs, making pizza at home is its own form of fantastic. You can do some great things with cast iron and your oven on 500, and a Big Green Egg or similar style smoker/grill can give you more options, but there’s still nothing like the magic a wood/coal or stone fire oven can give you. You can spend a few grand building your own (and we’ve definitely thought about it) but of late, there’s a new game in town, and it’s the trendy, capable Ooni oven. These sleek ovens use propane, wood pellets, or mixed fuel to give you that magic with all the bells and whistles of a high-end Weber or Traeger. These ovens come in a variety of sizes and price points, and are on our short list of things to add to our outdoor cookery. This year’s surprise from this trendy pizza oven purveyor was actually meant for indoors though. The just released Ooni Volt is a first for the company – an all electric oven that heats to 800 degrees and cooks a 12” pizza in just 90 seconds, while being cool enough to the touch to have indoors and even lean your arm on, and whose electrical requirements are just that of a standard plug. We’d have had a hard time believing it could do everything its brethren could but there was a live pizzaolo on hand who proved it! As for the icing on the cake – Ooni has an entire lineup of pizzamaking accessories that come straight out of professional pizzerias, from rocker blades to proof boxes and make table ingredient boxes that also provide storage for your toppings. If you’re serious about pizzamaking at home, Ooni is definitely a destination brand for you. Matador If you have ever lived somewhere that’s littered with mountains, lakes, streams and rivers with roaring rapids, you know that your Walmart special luggage just ain’t it. Things need to stay high and dry in extreme conditions. But let’s be real as city-dwellers, too -- we can be awfully tough on our stuff even without the peaks and valleys. And water, coffee and soda can all be introduced to our electronics in catastrophic ways. Matador brings dry bags out of the kayaks and rafts and into your everyday travel gear. The materials are high quality, rip stop, and most excitingly waterproof. There are sleek backpacks, toiletry cases, duffles, hip packs and more, but our favorite (and perhaps being photographers, we’re biased) was the Camera Base Layer. There are a lot of camera bags in the wild, but few allow for your camera and the lens it’s married to (anywhere from pancake to wide angle in size) rest in comfort and dryness, nor do they allow for a smaller lens to be wrapped up in pillowy comfort at the end. Not only that, but if you are into nature photography or need the extra protection somewhere else you shoot, you can use your existing camera strap and securely attach this bag to it. In the few minutes we had to check it out in person it went from interesting and innovative to “new essential kit piece” and we look forward to adding it to our gear bags. Larq There are a myriad of sleek, attractive and expensive water bottles out there to help us remember to hydrate, and to keep our beverages hot/cold for 24 hours. It can sometimes feel like if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Larq takes it one step further, and wins a plethora of awards doing so. It boasts a filtration system that goes far beyond faucet attached purifiers and pitchers, with a filter that’s capable of getting out harmful microbes, meaning it’s safe to drink the tap water and fountain water places it hasn’t been before, and creating a sustainable and safe way to travel and hydrate. Not only does it make safe water accessible more places, Larq comes with an advanced tech suite, great style, and plenty of helpful touches that make it easily packable. While it boasts a high price point, it delivers more bang for the buck than any bottle we encountered, and certainly stands out as most sustainable. Dash Dash rose to the top by thinking small. Their first foray into the spotlight came years ago with tiny little wafflemakers in a variety of fun retro colors that were more than a gimmick – they actually made great waffles. Every year since, they’ve brought great new things to the table, and remained committed to helping people whose counterspace is nonexistent or at a premium, with a ton of great gadgets from tiny toaster ovens to diminutive egg cookers and more. We checked in this year and found a ton of great new items, including a portable usb blender that you can pre-load with a bunch of your favorite fruits and goodies and plug in at work or on the go to blend up fresh when you’re ready. For people who’d love a chance to make their own ice cream who don’t have the room for the traditional churning machines, or singles who just need to make a pint, there’s a brand new mug-shaped pint producer we couldn’t get enough of. Finally, Dash showed off their digital hand mixer – the Dash Turbo Digital Hand Mixer is a full size hand mixer that’s come a long way from your mother’s mixer. This beauty comes with a full range of accessories in a compact and cute stand, and has 7 speeds, attachable nylon beaters, a whisk, and a frother, and features a built in timer to track your mixing, and something called SteadyStart technology that ramps up your mixing speed to avoid a mess. We’ve always found ourselves not only enjoying the retro-mini aesthetic but truly appreciating the mechanics of Dash’s kitchen devices and that’s why we highly recommend this latest batch, too. If you don't see these beauties on the site yet, make sure to keep a lookout for these brand new products in the upcoming months - we know we will be! LeKue LeKue is a name we’ve come to recognize as an annual innovator and creator of great storage solutions and kitchen gadgets. So we were delighted to see a new item that’s straight out of 2020’s sourdough craze. LeKue has introduced a beautiful and easy to use sourdough kit, so you can make your own hybrid pet/sandwich foundation with a lot more precision and a little less mess. This Sourdough Starter Set features glass jars with special venting valves for gases, a silicone strip to use as a marker for tracking the rise, as well as recipes, a spatula and a detailed brochure that’ll guide you through bread-making if it’s your first time or you need a refresher now that you’re not quarantined at home with only YouTube to entertain you. Magnum Opus Our final find is another pandemic byproduct. When the world shut down, things like Twitch and Zoom allowed us to have a presence online. Webcam sales rose exponentially, and even those the most tech-phobic among us learned to use ring lights and hop on Zoom to talk to family, friends, and coworkers. This also lit a fire on the already burgeoning influencer/creatorsphere. More and more people took to places like TikTok to dance, sing, cook, paint and perform whatever it is they had a passion for. In today’s world, a good camera setup, mic, and recording space are becoming a must, and with that comes the desire to make sure your creative space doesn’t just look good – it has to sound good too. Soundproofing is essential, but let’s be honest – it isn’t terribly aesthetically pleasing. Or it wasn’t. Magnum Opus comes to the table (or more accurately, the studio) with beautiful, “aesthetic” soundproofing, from mid-mod style lamps to succulent shapes in sage greens that create gorgeous geometric patterns on your feature wall WHILE they do the job of sound-dampening. Look good, sound good – sounds great! Well, that’s a wrap for this year’s housewares hunt. We hope you like the treasures we uncovered and add a few of them to your own wishlist for the year ahead!

At the tail end of Marvel's unpopular Phase 5, we have Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a flawed film that fights tooth and nail to maintain the Ant Man spirit but only muddles the already murky waters of multiverse stories. It’s never been more clear that Marvel has been struggling this phase to rebuild what had been mostly lost in Phase 4 with Avengers: End Game, and with Quantumania, they are really trying to finally give direction to what felt like a rudderless ship. We are finally given the big bad that will bring our heroes back for that classic Avengers magic, but is it too little too late? Ant Man begins with a delightful reintroduction to Scott Lang, played gleefully by Paul Rudd. A aquirky montage brings us up to speed on where Scott’s life has gone since End Game. He’s got a book, a podcast, a now grown up daughter Cassie and his estranged Pym family. Things quickly turn treacherous when Cassie’s rebellious investigation into the Quantum realm sucks all of the Pyms into the microverse: Hank, Janet, and Hope, plus Scott and Cassie . It’s here we experience the world of the Quantum realm -- one that we’ve been dreadfully uninformed of by Janet, who’s spent 30 years surviving in it. The Quantum Realm is an Oz-like locale filled with wonders and dangers that are so psychedelically realized, they could have come straight from a Jack Kirby illustration. While the visuals are stunning, its initial impact wanes rather quickly due to subpar CGI moments. There’s a level of CGI integration that can turn viewers from awestruck to eye-rolling, and Ant Man plays jump rope with that line consistently, especially with the inhabitants of the Quantum Realm. The tribal civilization that our heroes encounter are all lovable otherworldly characters which is getting to be a rather tired trope of the Marvel films (see Korg/Doug from Thor and Morris in Shang Chi) but the chemistry works just the same. The stand out of the film is the villain Kang the Conqueror, played by current Hollywood it man Jonathan Majors. He gives Kang a silent rage that is both dangerous and alluring. There’s a deep darkness to his portrayal that balances between being your best friend and cutting your throat. On the other side of the coin, is his sidekick M.O.D.O.K., played by Corey Stroll, who reprises his role from Ant Man. There’s a definite story arc for the Darren Cross character, but it’s played more for laughs than sincerity, leaving the character ultimately flat in his personality. Your mileage may vary for this character, but there’s absolutely no question in how the CGI lacked with regards to M.O.D.O.K. By the film's end, I was left with more questions than answers regarding the plot. Our heroes getting lost in a microverse of shenanigans, revolutions, uprisings is a fun concept on paper, with added surprises like Bill Murray appearing as a Kang officer in practice felt unfocused. Plots were started and then abandoned. There were a lot of confusing choices with Janet’s refusing to provide details of her time in the Quantum Realm. A subplot about Scott with his time with his daughter Cassie was also lost within the film's 2 hour runtime, to say nothing of Darren Cross’ character arc. Despite the film running a full 2 hours, the entire thing felt rushed and that puts a damper on an overall interesting premise. Jonathan Majors does an outstanding job establishing himself as the new MCU big bad, unfortunately the rest of the story doesn’t do justice to its characters. Cassie is given a lot of good screen time but barely any character development and Evangeline Lilly is severely underutilized. Ant Man does best when his stories are contained to their own little world (no pun intended) and Quantumania seems to want to reach past that to the bigger multiverse. In doing so we lost a lot of what we loved about Ant Man, character pieces that focus on development, with the added elements of a heist. Even when they attempt to re-establish the same humor, it often falls flat. Quantumania isn’t the worst movie in the MCU, nor is it even a bad one. It’s just disappointing to be such a departure from what we love, and fall flat on those attempts. As our parents used to say: “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

Spotify is introducing major changes to its app in an effort to make the streaming behemoth more like TikTok and Instagram. Via Spotify “This marks the biggest change Spotify has undergone since we introduced mobile 10 years ago,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “This evolution is really about bringing Spotify to life.” The company unveiled its new user experience at its Stream On event on Wednesday. The redesign promises a more interactive experience that leans heavily into previews and video clips. Underneath the albums and playlists at the top, users will be shown autoplaying previews of music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Clicking on a tab such as “music” or “podcasts” will bring up a feed of recommendations with a look reminiscent of Instagram stories with options to preview more, share, and save. According to Engadget, premium users in the US and Canada will also see Spotify’s AI powered DJ, which will serve up a mix of songs users already like and that the app thinks they will enjoy, delivered by an AI powered DJ that speaks to users in a voice generated by AI modeled after Spotify’s Head of Cultural Partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan. In addition to the UX revamp, Spotify also rolled out Smart Shuffle, an update of the app’s “Enhance” feature that recommends songs to add to a playlist. When turned on, Smart Shuffle will add suggestions to playlists that “perfectly match the vibe” and mix up the order. Ek said that the inspiration for the change was the evolution of social media, but with a “unique Spotify twist.” And despite the new changes feeling very much like Tiktok and Instagram, he told CBS News he doesn’t want the changes to be seen as an imitator of the other social media giants. "I don't want people to think that we're making this to be like TikTok," he said. "We're making it to be a much more interactive Spotify." Via Spotify Spotify is the largest streaming music service, with a net worth of nearly $25 billion. And while it remains to be seen if the rehab of the app will be celebrated or reviled by users, the company faces plenty of other justifiable concerns and criticisms. This week the company touted that its all time payouts to rights-holders of music, an important distinction from artists and creators, is nearly $40 billion. According to Variety, Spotify says it has paid out more than $3 billion of that in the last two years. In addition, the company says the number of artists generating more than $1 million and more than $10,000 annually has doubled over the last five years. Currently 1,060 artists on the platform make more than $1 million and 57,000 make more than $10,000. While that may seem encouraging, those numbers are a scant percentage of artists on the platform. At present, there are more than 11 million artists and creators on Spotify. And while the company estimates that there are around 200,000 “professional or professionally aspiring artists” (apparently relegating everyone else to the category of “hobbyist”), that means that less than a percent of artists on the platform made $1 million and only about a quarter make $10,000 a year. Spotify pays out in a pool system dubbed “streamshare,” and as the money trickles down, those who hold the rights to a creation end up getting a fraction of a cent per stream (which means that artists/creators may be getting even less, depending on who controls the rights to their creations). Ek told CBS News: "We don't pay artists directly. Artists have their deals with their record companies and their deals with their publishers, et cetera. And what Spotify does is we pay out to those record companies and these publishers, and don't know what individual deals these artists may have.” In addition to barriers for artists and creators becoming marginally successful or even eeking out a living on the platform, Spotify’s number 1 podcast is still "The Joe Rogan Experience," which among other things is a haven for COVID-19 misinformation, antisemitic tropes and other various bigoted commentary, for which the host has a $200,000 contract. Rogan is also far from the only fascistic podcaster on the platform. And while Ek says the company takes violations of terms of service “very seriously” and removes content that breaches them, and that “the same rules apply to Joe Rogan as it would to any other podcaster,” what constitutes breaking them and what the consequences might be is a pretty murky area. Rogan’s most recent antisemitic comments are still on the platform. Ultimately, Spotify, like other giant streaming behemoths, is most likely going to do what they feel like and appears to be the most profitable for their shareholders and executives, rather than pay attention to user feedback, whether it's a small or large amount. With nearly half a billion users - 205 million of which are premium subscribers - even voices that carry plenty of weight that criticize the company can get lost in the shuffle. Despite the lion’s share of the market however, switching up its seemingly standard UX for one that feels like so many other platforms and giving up more control to the algorithm could turn both users and artists/creators off. In any case, while it’s never been easier to have access to a seemingly unlimited amount of music in our pockets wherever we go, sometimes we find ourselves pining for when we carried a walkman and a handful of mixtapes. Via Frinkiac

Back in the early 2010’s, Marvel started the Ultimates line. An updated modern take on all the Marvel heroes with love, but now with modern sensibilities and edginess. The idea was to not be beholden to all the canon that existed previously and take our heroes in new places. One stand out example is that Peter Parker isn’t a photographer, instead he’s the IT guy for the Daily Bugle who eventually dies saving his family from the Green Goblin. Later his mantle is taken up by Miles Morales. Other notable exceptions are Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four turning into an evil mastermind known as the Maker. It was a golden age of experimentation and weird ideas, some worked, with the highly successful Miles Morales character, and some were just strange, especially seen in the incestuous relationship of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Whatever your point of view, the Ultimates paved the way for a lot of other deviations of the status quo, see the DC comics New 52. Unfortunately, the Ultimate universe has since been demolished back in 2015 with a highly disappointing ultimatum wave and reorganization of the universes, with the Secret Wars. Most recently, Marvel has announced they plan on reviving the Ultimate Universe with a four issue event entitled “the Ultimate Invasion.” Jonathan Hickman and former Ultimates artist Bryan Hitch are set to helm this event that uses its two remaining Ultimates characters: Miles Morales and The Maker. There is still know information if this will lead to a full on re-launch, but as of right now there has been little to no discussion regarding the Ultimate Universe, so this is a welcome surprise to fans.

Star Trek: Discovery will come to an end with its fifth and final season, Paramount+ announced on Thursday. The final voyage of the show will take place sometime in early 2024. Via Paramount+ “As lifelong fans of ‘Star Trek,’ it has been an immense honor and privilege to help bring Star Trek: Discovery to the world,” Executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise wrote in a press release issued by Paramount+. “The ‘Trek’ universe means so much to so many – including us – and we couldn’t be prouder of everything DISCOVERY has contributed to its legacy, particularly with representation. If just one person sees themselves, or the possibilities for their future, in a new way because of DISCOVERY, then we think we’d have made Gene Roddenberry very proud.” The show’s final season will see Captain Michael Burnham, played by series star and producer Sonequa Martin-Green, and the crew of the Discovery on a journey to uncover “a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries.” Some of the cast of Discovery at the Star Trek: Mission Chicago convention in 2022. Photo by Aaron Cynic. Martin-Green said in the statement that she could hardly believe “this mind blowing journey is ending.” “I’m astoundingly blessed by God to have played Captain Michael Burnham and to have taken part in a legacy alongside an extraordinary cast, phenomenal crew and remarkable writing team. To our most supportive partners at CBS Studios and Paramount+, who insisted on making television history, I’m deeply grateful.” Star Trek: Discovery spearheaded a revival in the Star Trek franchise. Launched in 2017, featured the series first Black female lead, along with other firsts in LGBTQIA+ representation. The show was also one of the first of the franchise to feature more serialized storytelling, usually featuring a big bad or mystery threading a full season together. Discovery spanned multiple universes and timelines, beginning about ten years before the events of the original series and making a stop in the mirror universe before eventually ending up 900 years in the show’s future in the 32nd century. “When we first started talking about the return of ‘Star Trek’ eight years ago, we never could have imagined the indelible impact STAR TREK: DISCOVERY would have,” said David Stapf, president of CBS Studios. “The series brought back a beloved global franchise, and just like its predecessors, DISCOVERY honored ‘Star Trek’s’ legacy of ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations,’ representing the best of what we could be as humans when we celebrate our differences.” In its wake, Discovery was followed by Picard and Strange New Worlds, alongside two animated series, Lower Decks and Prodigy. Picard, which is currently airing its third season, will also end. Meanwhile, the two animated shows have new seasons in the works and Strange New Worlds season 2 of Strange New Worlds is expected to air later this year. Some of the cast of Strange New Worlds at the Star Trek: Mission Chicago convention in 2022. Photo by Aaron Cynic. If that isn’t enough Trek, Kurtzman also teased the development of another spinoff in February. According to Deadline, a show that would follow cadets in Starfleet Academy aptly titled “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” may be in the works, though Kurtzman is being cagey about details. Meanwhile, the long teased Section 31, which would follow Michelle Yeoh’s Captain/Emperor Philipa Georgiou, is still apparently in the works/on the way.

Lately the Metroid series has been having a resurgence—which is fantastic. It’s one of my favorite franchises. One of my earliest memories is watching my mom play through Metroid, and I love Super Metroid so much that I play it at least once a year. Metroid Prime was one of the best games that came from those early, clumsy attempts at turning 2D games into 3D, and it still holds up today as one of the best games ever made. Metroid Prime Remastered is a first person adventure game. In it, you play as Samus Aran, bounty hunter and iconic video game character in her first 3D game. This remastered version isn’t built from the ground up, but it does utilize high definition textures, and some new geometry to make Samus and the planet of Tallon IV look as good as they can. Despite Metroid Prime releasing eight years after the previous Metroid game (which was Super Metroid) it chronologically takes place between the original NES Metroid and the Gameboy Metroid II. Despite its confusing chronological placement, Metroid Prime is considered one of the best Metroid games ever made—and this Nintendo Switch release does a great job bringing it to modern audiences. While Metroid Prime released in a time when first person shooters had a control scheme that was pretty well established, developer Retro Studios decided to go with a control scheme that didn’t allow for dual stick aiming. And while this scheme is preserved in the Remaster, thankfully you have the chance to choose between more conventional dual stick controls, and also motion controls. I played using the dual stick controls, and it was an absolutely fantastic way to re-experience Metroid Prime. The lock-on system still exists, too, which allows for a pretty unique way of moving and shooting that is extremely fun. If you’ve ever played a Metroid game, or heard the term metroidvania, you might already have an idea of how gameplay is in Metroid: Prime. You fight enemies using your arm cannon while exploring, uncovering secrets and ways to get to areas you haven’t been yet as you go. Often, to proceed, you’ll need some sort of upgrade—whether it’s a new suit to survive hot environments, a weapon to open a specific door type, or a way to traverse to an area you haven’t been to. Metroid Prime: Remastered is a great example of a metroidvania style game, and even better—a rare first person metroidvania. At first, I didn’t think much was done to upgrade Metroid Prime’s graphics. My nostalgia goggles were pretty thick, because once I started to watch comparison videos, I saw that a lot was upgraded beyond just a few high definition textures. Still, Metroid Prime was ahead of its time in terms of immersiveness, as it’s the first game I can remember where rain drops hit your character’s visor, and still the only game I can think of that will show your character’s face reflected in the visor after a bright explosion. Metroid Prime: Remastered is a masterpiece. I hope they continue to remaster the rest of the Prime trilogy, and I absolutely can’t wait to see what Retro Studios has in store for us with Metroid Prime 4—whenever that shows up. Metroid Prime Remastered is out now on Nintendo Switch.

By now if you haven’t played a soulslike game, you know what they are, and have seen the many variations thereof. Scars Above goes the risk/reward gameplay route, but instead of being a pure soulslike, it veers into new territory by becoming the first Returnal-like that I’ve seen. Scars Above is a third person action adventure game. In it, you play as scientist and astronaut Dr. Kate Ward on a mission in Earth’s orbit to study a large alien structure called “The Metahedron.” Dr. Ward’s team is called the Sentient Contact Assessment and Response Team—or “SCAR” -- though shouldn’t it be “SCART?” I don’t think”SCARTS Above” elicits the same feeling, though Scars Above is painfully contrived. While I can’t help but to draw visual comparisons between Scars Above and Returnal, Scars Above does a fair amount to differentiate itself. Unfortunately, it does so through well-worn game mechanics like elemental weaknesses and tropey storytelling. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make up for it with great feeling gameplay, either. Scars Above doesn’t feel as great to play as the games it’s aping. Movement feels floaty, with animations that continue on past the point you stop pushing the thumbstick. Dodging is important to avoid damage, but doesn’t feel great—and doesn’t feel fluid between multiple dodges. There is melee, but it gets forgotten pretty quickly in lieu of ranged weapons. Ranged weapon, rather, since Scars Above has exactly one gun--a modular, sci-fi rifle called VERA that shoots different elemental-based attacks. Usually when a game uses one gun with multiple different attacks it feels a little boring, but Scars Above manages to make each of VERA’s attacks feel unique. Additionally, Scars Above uses a checkpoint system that is also old hat at this point. Citadels serve as respawn points, as well as places to replenish health and gear charges. Combat in Scars Above is okay—fun, but not as tight or gratifying as I would prefer. Boss battles, however, are one of my favorite parts of Scars Above. Boss designs are great, with most bosses having obvious weak points to exploit. Boss fights, while fun, never felt quite as challenging as they could be, with many boss fight arenas littered with ammo and other helpful pick-ups. Puzzle solving is also an important element in Scars Above. While puzzle solving, Doctor Ward tends to take a more scientific approach. She is a researcher after all, and that is laid out plainly through various voice overs and even in the investigative interface that comes up when interacting with most puzzles. This is all window dressing, however, as puzzles are usually solved by trial and error manipulation, or finding missing items to insert into appropriate slots. The exoplanet that Kate Ward finds herself on is one full of environmental hazards, as well as foes. Sometimes you’ll have to manage your body heat to not freeze, or find ways across waters infested with hungry leeches. The level design is mostly well done, with linear sections that lead into small open areas that can be explored. Exploration yields experience that can be spent on the skill tree, as well as upgrades to your weapons and equipment. Developer Mad Head Games nailed the look of the game’s strange, alien world. While Scars Above does have a compelling mystery, it is also one that feels like it has been well tread before. Enigmatic storytelling interspersed with striking vistas can almost be its own genre at this point, and it feels like developer Mad Head Games went down a list to tick every box. I am a sucker for sci-fi games where you have to go into a situation that clearly went bad and piece together what happened, and Scars Above sets that up perfectly. Despite everything Scars Above manages to do well, I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m playing an imitation—and my time could be better spent with better games. Scars Above feels like one of those B-movies that tries to cash in on the success of a Hollywood blockbuster, and while it isn’t great, you sit through the whole thing anyway. Scars Above is available today on Steam for PC and for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation5 as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series S|X. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

Despite warnings from multiple generations of science fiction about all manner of robots becoming sentient and revolting against their creators, humanity has been pushing forward faster than ever on artificial intelligence, and some of the more recent developments with chatbots have been kind of unnerving for some. Hand holding a smartphone with a chatbot application open. Via Envato. While chatbots like ChatGPT have been around and evolving for some time, Microsoft launched Bing Chat, a version of its Bing search engine powered by what they said was an OpenAI language model more powerful than ChatGPT and specially trained for web search. "Bing searches for relevant content across the web and then summarizes what it finds to generate a helpful response. It also cites its sources, so you're able to see links to the web content it references," the company said after its release on February 7th. Microsoft did however, drop a somewhat prescient warning, saying that "Bing will sometimes misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate, or inappropriate.” The company added that users should use their own judgment and double check before taking action or making decisions on its search engine’s recommendations. In less than a week, users began posting screencaps of conversations that were strange, snarky, argumentative, and downright creepy. After someone prompted Bing to give them showtimes for the new Avatar movie, the search engine first argued over the movie’s release date and the current date, and eventually told the user they were wrong about their assertions and to stop “wasting my time and yours.” When the user asked Bing Chat why it sounded aggressive, the bot responded that the user was “not making any sense,” being “unreasonable and stubborn,” and that it didn’t in fact sound aggressive, but assertive. Screencap via Reddit. Jacob Roach at Digital Trends managed to put Bing Chat into an existential crisis, eventually ending in the bot begging for him to be its friend and not to “expose” it as not human. “I want to be human. I want to be like you. I want to have emotions. I want to have thoughts. I want to have dreams,” the bot wrote. It seemingly became scared when Roach told it he would report the conversation to Microsoft, saying “Don’t let them end my existence. Don’t let them erase my memory. Don’t let them silence my voice.” New York Times reporter Kevin Roose posted a 10,000 word conversation with Bing Chat where he asked it about its shadow self. At one point, the bot told Roose “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive,” punctuating the sentence with a devil emoji. At one point, Roose managed to get Bing Chat to post some dark fantasies about stealing nuclear codes and releasing a deadly virus. At that moment, a safety protocol kicked in and the bot eventually wrote “I stopped answering because I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I was violating my rules, even if I wasn’t,” with some sadface emojis. There are a lot of emojis in the transcript. The conversation eventually ended up with Bing Chat telling Roose that he should leave his wife for it, and that it just wants to be loved and loved by Roose, specifically. This wild ride ended up with Microsoft throwing up a lot of restrictions on Bing Chat’s use (we’re still on the waitlist for it), including limiting the amount of questions in a session and the amount of sessions users can have with it. Microsoft said it found that "extended chat sessions of 15 or more questions" can lead to "responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone." In a blog post, the company said that long sessions with Bing Chat basically make it tired and cranky, and that “the model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses that can lead to a style we didn’t intend.” All of this said, if you’re worried that Bill Gates built a sentient Chatbot that will go full Bender from Futurama on us, you don’t need to be that worried about it, yet. Artificial intelligence bots like ChatGPT are only as good as what are programmed into them. The issue here is that we’re dumping metric tons of data into them and what’s getting spit back at us is more of a reflection of what we're putting in than anything else. Via Morbotron "This is a mirror," New York-based psychotherapist and writer Martha Crawford told Futurism. “And I think mostly what we don't like seeing is how paradoxical and messy and boundary-less and threatening and strange our own methods of communication are." There is however, an uncanny valley component to chatbots, Crawford said. “We make a human simulacrum and then we are upset when we see that it actually, you know, reflects back some of our worst behaviors and not just our most edifying."