Month: March 2016

(credit: Fujifilm)

Still using an old Polaroid camera? Fujifilm has some bad news for you, as it has announced (in Japanese) that it will cease production of its FP-100C peel-apart film, which has kept many of the Polaroid cameras from the 1960s and '70s in operation today. The film is compatible with any instant camera that takes 3.25×4.25-inch photos, and Fujifilm's website describes it as ideal for ID and passport pictures.

However, its "fine grain and rich tonal gradation" weren't enough to save it from slumping sales. "Sales volume has declined significantly from year to year," Fujifilm stated. The company will end shipment of the FP-100C this spring, but according to some reports, there will still be film available for some time after that (likely while Fujifilm sells off the rest of its inventory).

This discontinuation may not spell doom for some Polaroid fans. The Impossible Project still makes film for Polaroid's SX-70 model, and it's less of a hassle to use since it foregoes the peel-apart technology of old-school film. But Fujifilm's decision isn't a shock. Fujifilm originally made black-and-white film at two speeds in addition to this color film back in the early days of instant photography. Since then, Fujifilm has killed off the two black and white options, and now the color film is on the chopping block.

This promotional image from the PS4's unveiling is now woefully out of date.

One of the PS4's most useful features—in-home remote streaming over a high-speed router—will finally be widely available without the need for proprietary Sony hardware soon. Sony announced on Tuesday that PS4 System Update version 3.5 will bring Remote Play to Windows and Macintosh computers. While the system update will launch in beta tomorrow, the streaming feature won't be available until a full release expected later in the month.

Until now, Remote Play has only been available on Sony's own PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV hardware. With the portable Vita all but dead in a tough mobile marketplace and the PlayStation TV in the process of being discontinued, Sony now seems willing to expand this useful feature to a much wider set of general computing devices.

Last year, Microsoft introduced the ability to stream Xbox One games from an in-home network to any Windows 10 computer, a feature that we found surprisingly robust in tests. Sony's new Remote Play expansion goes a bit further than Microsoft's in also allowing Mac owners to get in on the streaming.

Minecraft is one of those things that is best described as a cultural phenomenon. Since it was first launched, the sandbox game has infiltrated virtually every available platform, spawned spin-offs, even been appropriated for use in an educational capacity. But it was only very recently that Mojang updated the game’s rather rudimentary combat system.

With version 1.9, players will no longer be able to protect themselves with a fusillade of clicks, but instead will need to consider cooldown delays. According to Kotaku, the faster you swing, the less damage you’ll inflict. Additionally, the update introduces shields, dual-wielding, and new weapon effects. Axes are now capable of “crushing” blows, while swords now have the capacity to deal “sweep” attacks. There are also new arrow types, new block varieties, a new critter, and an assortment of other changes. The challenge-starved can even re-summon the powerful Ender boss now, in order to reenact their battles over and over again. Check out the changelog for a full list of tweaks.

This is the first official update to significantly alter Minecraft’s combat system. (There are numerous fan mods that have done the same.) Previous versions were more concerned about introducing changes to the world and expanding the sandbox elements of the game.

People can’t seem to get enough punishment. That’s what the 10-million-plus sales of the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne say, anyway.

But as Dark Souls III's April 12 release date nears (or March 24 if you're lucky enough to live in Japan), questions remain. As much as fans may consider each of the Souls games to be unique crystalline ornaments of tense action role-playing, all four are roundly similar. And as Ars found out at Gamescom last year, Dark Souls III is going much the same way. That's not necessarily a bad thing, of course—after all, these are fine games with a large and enthusiastic fan base—but I wonder if there's something, anything, in Dark Souls III that might attract those who haven't already got a taste for developer FromSoftware's work.

Even before I get into the game—the first four hours of which I played—the creaky facial models, the obscure expositional cut-scenes, and the '90s-grade UI are strikingly familiar. As too are the visuals, which bear the murky style of the earlier Dark Souls games, albeit with some of the visual sheen and sharpness seen in Bloodborne. What seals the deal, though, is the 30 minutes I spend trying to kill the first boss, during which I feel the familiar despair-tinged stress bubble of a good Dark Souls fight fill to bursting before the inevitable happens and the game, in blood red writing, says "You Died."

After 340 days in space Scott Kelly is ready to come home and jump in his pool. (credit: NASA)

Tonight, after 340 days in space, seasoned astronaut Scott Kelly will fly home from orbit inside a Soyuz spacecraft.

By all accounts, Kelly has had a sterling turn of work aboard the station during the last 11-plus months, with his health holding steady and his meeting of virtually every milestone NASA has placed before him. Now he will come home for more extensive medical tests to help NASA determine the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body.

According to the flight schedule, Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov will undock from the International Space Station tonight at about 8pm ET. After maneuvering away from the space station, they will be in position to begin their de-orbit burn about 2 hours and 30 minutes later.

Once you've bent time, you can unload a bunch of bullets into a time void, which will all launch into a foe as soon as the time-bend vanishes.

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SAN FRANCISCO—Nearly 15 years ago, Remedy Entertainment released the hard-boiled action classic Max Payne to PC gamers, a game that received endless kudos for both its stress on story and its bullet-time action twists. After that, however, Remedy didn't do so much. Max Payne 2 came and went two years later, followed by a grueling wait for Alan Wake, whose take on horror was remarkably narrative-heavy (and, consequently, not so active).

The studio's next franchise, Quantum Break, has been hidden remarkably well since its 2013 reveal as an Xbox One game—meaning, it hasn't had an iota of its gameplay spoiled up until today, a mere five weeks ahead of its retail launch. Microsoft and Remedy made up for this information-starving by granting a pool of critics unfettered access to the game's first three hours at a San Francisco press event last week, which was enough time to make clear that this is definitely another Remedy-like game. Quantum Break focuses heavily on narrative while giving players some very noticeable, time-shifting twists to work with during battle scenes.

But while the game's hero has some flashy, cool-looking powers to play with, Quantum Break's stress on narrative elements already stood out as the bigger deal in this action-adventure game—mostly for worse.