Month: April 2018

LOS ANGELES—Game publisher Square-Enix gave its new game Shadow of the Tomb Raider a public unveiling at an event last night, and I played the game for about an hour. If you liked the previous two games, you'll probably end up liking this one.

Shadow is the third game in the Tomb Raider reboot franchise, following 2013’s Tomb Raider and 2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. It doesn't have a strong connection to the recently released movie other than that the film was loosely based on the 2013 game. Square-Enix representatives said that this is the final game in a trilogy. (I doubt that means it's the last Tomb Raider game, though.)

In the hour I played, franchise heroine Lara Croft attended a Latin American fiesta, sneaked into a villain-infested dig site, stealth-assaulted a lot of bad guys, nearly drowned about half a dozen times, solved physics puzzles in an ancient tomb, and maybe caused the actual apocalypse.

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Amazon announced that the price of its Prime membership will rise for US customers on its earnings call Thursday. Starting May 11, 2018, new Prime customers in the US will pay $119 annually for their memberships and Prime Student customers will pay $59 annually. Existing Prime and Prime Student members will see their annual payments increase starting June 16, 2018.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky made the announcement on the call, citing more Prime features and increasing costs as the reasons for the price hike. The online retailer has added a lot of new features to Prime over the past few years, including unlimited Prime Video streaming, free two-hour delivery in select areas, ad-free Twitch viewing when you link your account, special deals for Whole Foods customers, and more.

This price increase comes four years after the last—Amazon raised the price of a Prime membership from $79 to $99 back in 2014. Those who pay for Prime monthly will continue to pay $12.99 per month, which comes out to about $156 per year. That price rose from $10.99 earlier this year as well.

Language is imprecise and fungible. One person's SUV is another person's crossover. One company's mid-size crossover is another company's full-size SUV. In other words, marketing materials and commercials don't tell the whole story when it comes to the most popular car segment in the US. I recently spent a week behind the wheel of a 2018 Mazda CX-9 Grand Touring AWD. Mazda calls it a three-row, mid-size, seven-passenger SUV. Volkswagen also calls the Atlas a three-row, mid-size, seven-passenger SUV. They're also priced within a few thousand dollars of each other. But they may as well inhabit different universes.

Last year, we looked at the CX-5, Mazda's most recently revamped SUV aimed up-market. The year before that vehicle debuted, Mazda took the same luxury-aspiring design philosophy and aimed the CX-9 at the mid-size SUV segment currently occupied by the likes of the Audi Q7 and Acura MDX. Unlike the Audi or Acura, you can get into a very nicely specced-out CX-9 for under $50,000. Is it a worthwhile alternative at that price?

Let's start with the looks. While not unattractive, nothing about the CX-9 jumps out. It's kind of thick-looking, with a gently sloping roofline and a cabin that tapers inward at the rear. Head-on, you can see Mazda's Kodo design language in action—the SUV gives the impression of a smart, metallic being that has just decided what kind of shenanigans it's about to get into. The familiar Mazda grill blends into the LED headlights to form the eyes of the face, while metal trim several inches below the grill accounts for the crafty smile. On the back side, Mazda uses a piece of metallic trim to join the taillights and another bit of trim just above the twin exhaust pipes. From the side, the CX-9 looks vaguely Q7-ish.