Author: Sam Machkovech

Recently, game-streaming site Twitch has been in the news on a few occasions when its users have been seen being confronted by police. This has typically happened due to a "swatting" attack—meaning, when a false police report has been filed so that perpetrators can watch an unnecessary confrontation over a streamer's webcam feed.

But what about when the reverse happens—when a terrible, illegal-seeming action is captured on a Twitch user's live stream, and police action isn't immediately forthcoming?

The question arose on Tuesday as disturbing audio began circulating across the Internet, which was attributed to a Twitch account that has since been "closed... due to terms of service violations." The audio is about as vile as you can imagine, with sexual insults being shouted by a man while a woman screams for help; apparently, the audio recording was left running on Twitch after its video had been turned off. Videos circulating online include the username "joedaddy505" and show a Twitch chat room attached to the audio's live feed that include details that match up with the discernible audio.

(credit: EA/Lucasarts)

Electronic Arts' full control of the Star Wars gaming universe began in 2013, and at that time, EA confirmed that three of its major studios would be pumping out games based on the series' past and future. Now, thanks to a Wednesday announcement, we can add another major developer to that list: Respawn Entertainment, the ex-Infinity Ward studio that is currently best known for the Titanfall shooter series.

Though the news didn't include a release window, game title, or gameplay footage, it did confirm the reason why Respawn has been hiring a slew of programmers and animators for a new "third-person action-adventure" series for nearly two years—meaning, a project other than a new Titanfall sequel. Around the same time in 2014, Respawn hired game director Stig Asmussen, who made a name for himself directing God of War 3.

What should we expect, then? Boba Fett with chain swords? Titanfall-styled battles with super-soldiers who operate bipedal AT-ATs AT-STs? Neither Asmussen, EA, nor Respawn are saying much at this point, beyond describing the game to come as "a whole new adventure to the galaxy" and repeating the call that Respawn is still hiring for the project. Still, with nearly two years under the "small" team's belt, we'd be shocked not to at least see teaser footage at this year's E3, if not more details on another title: the long-teased adventure game helmed by former Uncharted chief Amy Hennig.

We'll have to wait until the demo's complete to see how these Blackroom weapons will work in John Romero's next video game. (credit: John Romero)

John Romero announced his return to video game development on Monday in the form of a Kickstarter project, but he and another ex-id Software veteran, Adrian Carmack, apparently agreed with Ars' initial assessment of their crowdfunding campaign. The duo has now put its money request on hold, declaring that they will return once they can put a playable demo into the hands of their fans.

"The team is at work on a demo which demonstrates the kind of gameplay, look, and innovative, cool features that make Blackroom truly unique," Romero announced in a "backer-only" update post. "Simply put, this will take more time than the Kickstarter has left, so we’ve decided to suspend the campaign and launch a new one when the gameplay demo is ready."

Blackroom's Monday announcement came with little more than big promises of a return to "classic" first-person shooter gameplay, a few snippets of concept art, and the confirmation of a single additional staffer in the form of a "metal composer." Instead of putting any money where his mouth is, Romero instead teased fans with a pair of remade levels (1, 2) from the original version of Doom—as in, downloadable WAD files you could inject into the original executable. Those throwback levels were admittedly very good, but they failed to illustrate new mechanics or systems to expect in a new game.

Muraki Kanae

The 3D hologram pop star known as Hatsune Miku wags her hand at a Seattle crowd while singing about how men should bring her "pudding made from special eggs." (That's what Google Translate says, at any rate.)

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SEATTLE—"Do you think ten-year-old you would believe that a concert like this could ever exist?"

My buddy asked me this after we'd spent two hours laughing at the weirdest concert we'd ever attended: Hatsune Miku Expo 2016. The concert's distinguishing feature was a massive, see-through screen in front of a rock band, on which singing, 10-foot-tall anime princesses were projected. Forget Britney, Miley, or Taylor: no pop star fits the "larger than life" bill quite like a hologram singer who packs stadiums and can change costumes with a single hard-drive swap. The snark possibilities were rich.

As we walked out of the concert, however, snark gave way to giddy delight. We had finally seen Miku in the "flesh." Its creators and backing band rarely play in Miku's homeland of Japan, let alone elsewhere, forcing the curious to watch one of a scant few YouTube videos to see what the heck this show is all about. North Americans have nine more opportunities this year, including this coming Saturday in San Francisco, thanks to a continent-spanning tour. I caught the tour's opening night in Seattle last Saturday, fully prepared to chide it.

Gramercy Pictures

Wait, who's steering this spaceship?

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While video games have been mined as fodder for films many, many times over the past few decades, only a few widely distributed films have gone the all-CGI route. Perhaps that's because 2001's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within left such a bad taste in filmgoers' mouths, but visually, things have changed in 15 years—both for all-CGI films and for video games.

Current game systems are pumping out film-caliber visuals these days, a fact that the team behind Ratchet and Clank surely must have considered before developing the first feature-length film under the PlayStation Originals brand. You may have expected that effort to lead with a more popular Sony series, like a film about God of War or Uncharted, but Ratchet and Clank does have an edge on those: a bubbly, cartoony style that better suits full-length CGI treatment, as opposed to taking a possible dive down the uncanny valley with those other games' human characters. In good news, Gramercy Pictures avoids such pitfalls with a movie that looks like its game (and there's an affiliated game that looks like the movie).

As with any gaming-related film, however, I went into the film's preview screening wondering who exactly Ratchet and Clank is targeted at. Gamers? Families? CGI junkies? After the 94-minute runtime, however, I still didn't have an answer.

Forza 6 Apex's weather effects weren't shown in motion beyond a mere trailer tease, so we're curious whether rain detail will impact 4K performance. (credit: Microsoft/Turn 10)

After its late-February tease, Microsoft Studios and Turn 10 are finally ready to unleash the Forza Motorsport racing series on PCs—and as we reported at the game's reveal event, it's coming in an unusual way. Forza Motorsport 6 Apex will launch exclusively on Windows 10 PCs on Thursday, May 5, in the form of a free "open beta" downloadable from the Windows Store. Based on our early Apex impressions, PC players are essentially getting a limited trial version of last year's Xbox One racer as opposed to a particularly new experience.

Having seen Forza 6 Apex in the flesh, we know the game will be a huge conversation starter for PC gamers for many reasons. For one, if high-end PC owners can replicate the 4K-resolution, 60-frames-per-second performance that we saw on Turn 10's monstrous test rig, they'll be in for the most incredible public demo of DirectX 12 technology yet released. Forza 6 Apex's real-time demo looked incredible, as that silky-smooth refresh rate faced zero stutters while rendering giant textures and gorgeous lighting effects.

Nighttime racing in 4K.

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On the other hand, it remains to be seen exactly how well Apex will scale on weaker PCs; Turn 10 currently recommends at least a 3.7Ghz i3 processor and 2GB of VRAM. Also, since the game is tied to the beleaguered Universal Windows Platform (UWP), users may once more face issues like the inability to disable v-sync and a forced borderless, full-screen mode.

Nintendo didn't make a formal statement about the Legend of Zelda's latest delay; instead, the company tucked that news into a game release-date list. (credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo's annual fiscal-year earnings release went live on Wednesday via an announcement from its Japanese arm, and with that release came a very modestly tucked bit of giant news: the firmest launch-window announcement yet for the company's next, still-unnamed game system.

"For our dedicated video game platform business, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept," the report said in its "outlook" section. "NX will be launched in March 2017 globally." The earnings release did not offer any explanation or clarification about what that "brand-new concept" will be, in spite of recent, patent-related hints about twists such as a new controller.

In even more surprising news, expectations that Nintendo would unveil the NX in time for June's Electronic Entertainment Expo were dashed by a statement from acting Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima, who confirmed in a Wednesday investor phone call (as reported by The Wall Street Journal's Tokyo bureau correspondent Takashi Mochizuki, that the system will not appear at this year's E3. Nintendo will instead focus its E3 attention "on the new Zelda," Mochizuki reports.

"All your friends are out of the game, Wolf! Don't make me shoot you down!" Thus begins A Fox In Space, the best fan-made Nintendo cartoon I've probably ever seen. (credit: Matthew Gafford / A Fox In Space)

After watching the first 12-minute episode of A Fox In Space, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was somehow an official Nintendo project. Maybe some hip promotions person at the big N thought an Adult Swim-caliber, '70s animation throwback series starring characters from the Star Fox games would make for some good PR—especially with a new Star Fox Wii U game hitting store shelves.

As it turns out, the above video wasn't made by Nintendo, or Adult Swim, or any established animation house, really. A Fox In Space is largely credited to a self-taught artist named Matthew Gafford, and in addition to serving as the cartoon's sole animator, he was also its scriptwriter, editor, director, soundtrack co-writer, and lead voice actor for most of the characters.

The result is a high-quality tale whose dark-comedy atmosphere and animation styles recall the best of Heavy Metal and Don Bluth. Episode one finds the series' rival faction, Star Wolf, exploiting a rare moment of Fox McCloud emotional weakness, and its opening Arwing battle montage gives way to a lower-key kidnapping plot. The voice acting is shockingly on-target for the aesthetic—and I'm particularly stunned by the animator pulling off such quality, different-sounding voices for Fox and Wolf—while the slow-but-simmering pacing still leaves room for a lot of impressive animation and beautiful scenery design. (Plus, I'm partial to the cartoon's gags about silly series elements like Fox's legs.)

If you're hoping for a gameplay reveal from John Romero's newest game announcement, too bad. Instead, here's some concept art. Hey, look, a barrel. (credit: Night Work Games)

How deep—and selective—does your first-person-shooter nostalgia run? John Romero and Adrian Carmack, who cut their teeth on Doom and Quake before burning their reputations to the ground with Daikatana, are curious to find out. The ex-id Software staffers launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new video game on Monday with little more than fond memories and concept art as selling points.

Don't do anything illegal, and don't forget your physical hashtag-filled sign, kids!

In a four-minute video, Romero told fans that new game Blackroom "hearkens back to classic shooter gameplay," but the Kickstarter campaign doesn't currently back those promises up with hard details. Sci-fi concept art is shown as Romero describes a hologram-obsessed plot and tells us to expect "circle-strafing enemies and, of course, rocket jumping." But as of press time, the campaign isn't forthcoming with anything that looks like gameplay, let alone any enemy, level, or weapon descriptions. (The closest we really get is a recent Romero-built remake of a Doom level, and it's admittedly a damned good take on e1m8.)

We also have no idea who is going to build the game alongside Romero and Carmack—remember, that's Adrian Carmack, id's former art director, not John Carmack, id's original lead programmer. Romero is listed as the game's only programmer thus far. Instead, fans are assured that the project already has a "metal composer" in the form of George Lynch, who has played in bands such as Dokken. More staffers will presumably be hired to help build a "10-hour" single-player campaign and a multiplayer mode that consists of six Romero-made maps plus whatever the community creates, since the game will be "fully moddable" and support custom maps and dedicated servers.

Chromecast Audio! Identical size to the standard 2015 Chromecast. Those vinyl-like grooves are purely intentional. (This one also requires power via a USB mini cable.) (credit: Sam Machkovech)

I received my Google Chromecast Audio for review at the end of September, and I buried my impressions of it in an article about the Chromecast's 2015 refresh. Not a ton to say, really: it provides Chromecast-like functionality... but only for audio. Chromecast Audio. Got it.

However, Google didn't really tell critics about the Chromecast Audio's most interesting feature, possibly because it wasn't yet ready or tested. Roughly a month after its October launch, Google rolled out a "group" synced-audio update. The update wirelessly daisy-chains an unlimited number of Chromecast Audio dongles so that their audio is synced across an entire house. For $35 a pop, you can turn an old speaker with a 3.5mm audio jack into an audio repeater.

It's too late for super-fresh impressions, but my month of Chromecast Audio has proven so fruitful, I wanted to share my experience and offer recommendations so that you too can rock a party-ready house like mine.