Month: January 2016

Prepare to go mad.

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

"Oh, bugger, we're out of madness."

This is the sanitized version of an oft-heard new phrase in our house. Variations include "I've gone mad" and "you need more madness in your deck!" All of these are often combined with the phrase "we've lost."

(credit: Ecig Click)

For any smoker in the UK looking to kick the habit, your favourite medical professional may soon prescribe you an e-cigarette. According to Reuters, British American Tobacco’s e-Voke recently became the first vaping device to be given a drug licence in the UK, meaning it's officially recognised by the state-funded National Health Service as a "quit smoking medicine."

"We want to ensure licensed nicotine containing products—including e-cigarettes—which make medicinal claims are available and meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and efficacy to help reduce the harms from smoking," the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement on Monday.

Reuters writes that the e-Voke licence was issued "towards the end of last year" and that British American Tobacco is "currently evaluating plans to commercialise" their product. It's still unclear as to whether vaping really is safer than cigarettes, but a report issued by Public Health England last year suggests that it could be 95 percent less harmful than the real thing. More importantly, e-cigarettes could represent the first step in a smoker's journey to quitting. Professor Ann McNeill, who helped author the report, described it as a potential "gamechanger" in public health.

Meet the Arcimoto SRK, the most surprisingly fun EV we've driven in ages. Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

LAS VEGAS—Electric vehicles were a big thing at CES this year. Even before the show officially kicked off, Faraday Future introduced the world to its FF Zero 1 concept car, and Chevrolet let journalists (including us) get behind the wheel of its new Bolt EV. But the single most fun EV we encountered was also the cheapest and most pared back (by quite some margin)—the Arcimoto SRK.

Bethesda Softworks

Cacodemon time!

9 more images in gallery

Until we get our hands on a video game's preview build, we know better than to fully trust a screenshot gallery, but if the final version of this year's Doom reboot—formerly known as Doom 4—looks anywhere near as good as its latest screenshot tease suggests, then we're in for quite the demonically charged visual treat.

Game Informer scored the latest exclusive look at the upcoming first-person shooter's solo campaign, and its feature calls out an apparent back-to-Doom's-roots system of gameplay, including color key cards and a lack of gun reloading or "sprint" button. New features include a "weapon wheel" that slows time down, a la Fallout 4's VATS system, to let players pick weapons—though longtime series weapons the BFG and the chainsaw each get a dedicated button (a d-pad arrow and the X button, respectively) as a sort of "panic" option; also, the game's weapons will now be bolstered by way of hidden, collectible "mods," including shotgun attachments that turn the weapon into a chargeable, buckshot-powered grenade launcher.

The preview seemed pretty scant on details, including vague hints about an "upgrade" system that will let players pick perks like running speed and weapon-swapping speed, and it didn't come with any new video reveals. In very good news, the screenshots above include a lot more color and a lot less of the unbecoming, overly brown filter from the game's E3 2015 reveal, and they include stunning now-gen interpretations of series baddies like the cacodemon. Game Informer promises more Doom information throughout the month of January at its dedicated portal page. Hopefully, that will include a solid release date, which we still don't have beyond a vague "2016" window.

(credit: Electronic Arts)

Electronic Arts is making good on its year-old promise that it would fight to protect its stated First Amendment right to produce one of the world's most popular video games, Madden NFL,  while using the likenesses of pro players without their permission.

The video game maker has now rushed from the virtual gridiron to the US Supreme Court, where EA claims it is being punished for producing a game that looks too real. Electronic Arts is asking the justices to review a federal appellate court decision from last year that found EA cannot claim that the use of the players' images were "incidental" and covered by the First Amendment.

"We hold EA's use of the former players' likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA's main commercial purpose—to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote (PDF) for the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The same San Francisco-based federal appeals court in 2013 sided with NCAA college football players in their lawsuit against EA, a ruling that resulted in a $40 million settlement.

In a rather odd move, community hub Reddit has published a book of what it believes to be its best Ask Me Anything subreddit snippets. For the princely sum of $34.99 in the US only (or $4.99, £3.28 for an e-book version in the UK) you too can be the proud owner of a collection of soundbites from Reddit oddities and famous celebrities immortalised in physical form.

Split into categories that include "Inspiring," "Ingenious," and "Fascinating," the book includes contributions from the likes of Idris Elba, Sir David Attenborough, and Denzel Washington, the latter of which spills the beans on "Why he doesn't want movie star friends," and what his favourite pizza topping is (it's plain old tomato and mozzarella, in case you were wondering).

Some of the wackier AMAs make an appearance too, including "The Man Who Died Twice," "My Ex Tried to Kill Me," and of course "Double Dick Dude." There's also neat artwork and introductions from redditors at the beginning of each AMA. Naturally, you can just read all the AMAs in the book online for free over at Reddit, although, given Reddit's AMA navigation isn't exactly simple, that they've been collated and edited down does make them easier to digest.