Month: December 2021

Enlarge (credit: Vivaldi)

Vivaldi is one of our favorite web browsers, and the company (of the same name) behind it recently announced another major release. Vivaldi 5.0 is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and, perhaps most notably given the changes in this release, Android.

Version 5 of Vivaldi has some new features for the desktop, but much of what's new and intriguing in this release is focused on mobile. In Vivaldi's case, this means the Android version of the browser. (There is no iOS version of Vivaldi.) Android tablets get special attention in this release, with several features aimed at improving the web browsing experience on larger screens—something even Google hasn't managed to do with its own mobile browser.

In fact, the idea that an app would be optimized for performance on Android tablets is almost unheard of these days. That unfortunate reality is central to our major complaint about the Android-powered iPad alternatives, where the software experience is universally subpar. I should note that Google is currently revamping the overall Android tablet experience by adding some improvements for larger screens that will roll into the next version of the mobile operating system. An early beta release is available now.

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Any new battle royale title needs a hook: after all, we all know the formula, and Halo Infinite's popularity suggests that people may be tired of it. With that in mind, here's the hook of Iron Galaxy's new title, Rumbleverse: wrestling, and no guns.

The game was conceived back in October 2017, explains Adam Boyes, co-CEO of Iron Galaxy. "We were brainstorming, talking about different types of competitive games and Royale games, and our co-CEO, Chelsey Glasgow, was like, 'We should do wrestling,'" he says. "And then the whole brainstorming session became what it would it feel like if you could chokeslam someone off of a 40-story building."

(credit: Epic Games)

The demonstration kicks off with a character creation screen. Iron Galaxy emphasizes that customization is critical in the game, with a huge suite of body types, faces, costumes, and accessories available for players to create their own monstrous or beautiful identity.