Month: May 2017

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Sergey Balakhnichev)

Five Democratic senators today asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to find out who was behind attacks on the Federal Communications Commission's public commenting system. The FCC website failed on May 8 just as many people were trying to submit comments on the commission's plan to gut net neutrality rules.

"The public comment period associated with the FCC’s rulemaking authority is a critical part of the regulatory process and the primary way for the American people to make their voices heard," senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a letter to FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe. "The reported cyberattack on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System is extremely troubling given that it threatens to stifle the public’s ability to weigh in on these issues."

"We ask that the FBI prioritize this matter and investigate the source of this attack," the senators also wrote. "This particular attack may have denied the American people the opportunity to contribute to what is supposed to be a fair and transparent process, which in turn may call into question the integrity of the FCC‘s rulemaking proceedings."

Attacks are rendered in 3D, just like in Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fates.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia played out like two very different games for me. I'm not just referring to the game's plot, which mostly split my time between two different armies on opposite battlefronts. While I can appreciate the game as a meticulous and beautiful remake of the Japanese Famicom original, Fire Emblem Gaiden, I just couldn’t get into the monotonous, flat, turn-based strategy gameplay from a modern perspective.

Echoes incorporates most of what I love to see in video game remakes. The art has been painstakingly redrawn from the ground up, much to the game’s benefit. Maps that used to be static, mostly green blobs are now isometric spaces that convey a lot more character and personality to the different kinds of terrain across the continent of Valentia. Fully 3D battle animations are also taken straight out of Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fates.

What really stands out, though, is the best-in-class character art. These are the primary shots of the members of your army, all with their own backstories and personalities in typical Fire Emblem fashion. The stills show a bit less anime inspiration than in Awakening and Fates—adopting an ever-so-slightly more "classical" design. It seems like a small difference, but it sets the tone for the rest of the game, harkening back to a slightly more sober tone of Gaiden than the melodramatic relationships of modern Fire Emblem games.

Sworn to the sword

Echoes is the story of two long-lost friends, Alm and Celica, leading forces embroiled in a war between gods and nations, with politics and ideology at the forefront. The series' signature pseudo-dating sim elements—where soldiers befriend and romance each other by fighting in proximity—are still present, but sidelined by the overarching intrigue that drives the main plot. Few characters can develop relationships with each other, and, when they do, there's hardly any downtime between battles where they can converse. All optional talking is instead done on the battlefield itself.

Enlarge / Amazon Kids Fire Edition tablet computers in 2015. (credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

After years of court battles with the US Federal Trade Commission, Amazon has agreed to pay up to $70 million to parents whose kids made in-app purchases without permission.

The refunds began yesterday. Affected customers should be receiving an e-mail from Amazon. You can also check if you're owed a refund by clicking this Amazon link for "in-app refunds."

The FTC sued Amazon in 2014, saying the company had insufficient safeguards preventing kids from making purchases, some of which ranged into the hundreds of dollars. When Amazon first launched its Kindle Fire OS, the default settings had parental controls turned off, while in-app purchases were allowed. Kids could charge their parents up to $99.99 for a single in-app purchase, often without needing a password, according to the FTC.

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With a wry smile and referential wit, Tokyo 42—a sci-fi, isometric action game from indie developer Smac and publisher Mode 7—borrows generously from seminal genre staples like Bladerunner.

Almost everything about Tokyo 42—from its vibrant minimalist look, synth soundtrack, whodunit story, elusive voiceless characters, and futuristic setting—is a homage to sci-fi greats. Yet it also makes its own mark with a visually colourful, and tonally sinister near-future dystopia that is wholly unique.

What appears to be a simple shooter with a devious love for killing turns out to be a loose open world game. The problem is that, unlike games like Hotline Miami, which funnels you through its tight, precise levels with a breakneck sense of pace, Tokyo 42 lets you off the leash. You’re free to wander the world, and free to take in the sights. Because of the quality of the setting, it works. But when it comes to actually playing the game, Tokyo 42 stumbles.

Culture shock

But that city, oh it’s brilliant. Dubbed "Micro Tokyo," the world of Tokyo 42 feels ultra crafted and purposefully deliberate, with a swathe of little secrets discover, even down to subtle references that don’t give you any meaningful new tools in the game, but embellish what is a labour of love about the sci-fi genre. It's a shame that you're unable to zoom in on the little details, though, instead resigned to squint at the minutiae clearly packed in tightly on screen, but its block colour skyscrapers, sprite-filled streets, and obscure and humorous landmarks all add an extra bit of flavour to the world. It very much captures that Grand Theft Auto sense of world building, albeit on an indie scale.

Enlarge (credit: Ian Kennedy)

A German appeals court on Wednesday rejected the pleas from a dead girl's parents who wanted access to the 15-year-old's Facebook account. The social networking site fought the parents, claiming that opening the account would breach the privacy of the girl's contacts.

The parents want access to the account to help determine whether the girl, who was struck by a subway train in Berlin, had committed suicide. The family wants to review her chat messages and other account information in a bid to see if she was bullied, the BBC reported Wednesday

A lower court in Berlin had sided with the parents, ruling that the information "can be inherited regardless of their content." Facebook appealed the decision. The appellate court ruled that Facebook had entered into a contract with the girl, not the family, and that the contact cannot be inherited.

The practice of hacking standard Super Mario World cartridges on stock Super Nintendo hardware has come a long way in a short time. Three years ago, it required a robot entering thousands of button presses per second to insert arbitrary code on top of the game. By last year, streamer SethBling was proving that this kind of code insertion was possible for a human acting with pixel-perfect precision.

Now, SethBling and others in the SMW hacking community have taken things a step further, permanently writing a full hex editor and gameplay mods onto a stock Super Mario World cartridge using nothing but standard controller inputs.

SethBling's ten-minute video explaining the entire "jailbreaking" process is a must-watch for anyone interested in the particulars of perpetually altering a 25-year-old game without any special hardware. In short, the jailbreak builds on an exploit discovered by Cooper Harrsyn that lets players write data directly to the small, 256-byte save files that are permanently stored on the Super Mario World cartridge.