Age of Mythology: Retold is still mostly a classic RTS, but the visual overhaul makes a big difference.
How the mighty are fallen. In a bygone era, Tiberium harvesters and chariot archer rushes were a mainstay on my monitors, and my keyboards bore careworn lines where the 'build archery range' shortcut keys lay. It was a time of plenty, but modern real-time strategy games are far rarer, and that means the stakes always feel high when one arrives. Particularly one that starts with Age of...
Enter Age of Mythology: Retold—not a 100% faithful translation of Ensemble’s 2002 original but, as the name indicates, a modern interpretation which walks the tightrope of updating the bits that feel clunky by today’s standards without killing the sense of nostalgia. It’s a particularly tricky kind of alchemy, and although there are some tonal mis-steps *cough* voice acting *cough* it largely succeeds in knowing when to stick and when to twist.
That’s despite a list of developers so long that it makes the average Call Of Duty seem like a mad auteur’s passion project. World's Edge, Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media, CaptureAge, and Virtuos Games have all lent their talents to this one, and maybe it’s unfair for me to be surprised that it feels so cohesive. This is modern game development after all, the pipeline that never sleeps.
Age of Mythology is more or less Age of Empires set in mythical eras, where powerful hero units and mythological beasts fight alongside conventional military archers and spearmen. Friendlier and slower-paced than Starcraft’s ruthlessly aggressive take on RTS, but built around the usual rock-paper-scissors game of unit strengths and weaknesses. Victory is wrought by finding the right army composition and using your limited resources—food, wood, gold and favor—to materialise it.
A UI and visual overhaul occupies the headline billing since it’s the most noticeable element, and it feels in touch with the original game without being overly married to it. The arrangement of your units, resources and build options is logical and clean. Hero units glimmer with a distinctive aura, and the ancient environs hit your eye with impressive detail. One of the many reasons I’ll never rank particularly highly online in this game is that I get distracted by the lovely oceans and spend seconds at a time just… watching them.
Onto more meaningful nuts-and-bolts changes: I’ve chalked up many Ls in RTS skirmishes past and present due to over-adventurous units taking mad hikes across the map, but with the new ‘attack move’ command in Retold comes a lifeline. Micromanagement’s still important for arranging your unit types so that they hit the battle in the right order, but ‘attack move’ tells everyonne to engage with all enemies they meet along the way to your waypoint. That meant no suicidal dashes towards buildings for my campaign armies while ignoring the infantry units pelting them in close proximity. Outside of combat units can still be caught going for an unsanctioned wander off into nothingness, but Retold feels like a big upgrade on the original’s often baffling pathfinding where it matters most.
The best thing about combat in this game is finding the sweet spot between human and mythical units, and knowing when to send super-tough heroes into battle with them. It took me a few skirmishes to find that mix for Nords, whose reworking now involves more ranged units but still play very differently to their enemies (pro tip: their military units also handle building construction).
With apologies to all historical shipwrights, I found great success in naval combat by spamming ships to distract my enemies and keep the pressure off my base. That meant destroying their docks was an important step towards resigning them to the history books. With all ship types available from the Classical age, the aquatic version of rock-paper-scissors is just as tactical as the terra firma equivalent that you’re managing with your archers and infantry.
God powers are no longer one-shot, game-changing cataclysms, but now operate on cooldown timers and can be deployed more than once per round. I can’t decide whether that feels more or less strategic—the gravity of deciding when to use a powerful one-shot in the original game is offset by the depth of timing one just right in Retold so that you’ll get it at a useful moment later. The powers break down into AoE damage-dealing abilities, with some enjoyable twists like Aphrodite’s curse, which turns enemy units into pigs, and resource buffs.
God powers aren’t exclusively about raining death down on your foes with satisfying AoE icons, though. Take wonders, for example. Where before you could construct certain wonders that would win you a round if you defended them for long enough, now they simply provide you with constant passive buffs that hasten your victory. That feels like a less stressful route to the win, but not necessarily a simpler one since you still need to carefully consider how to spend those resources.
The sell here, after sitting with all of Retold's changes to a 22-year-old game, is that the slower pace and the combination of historic and mythological units makes for a relaxing, therapeutic RTS session. The Greeks, Egyptians, Norse and Atlanteans play differently enough to take some pleasure from mastery of each, and although it’s an odd business decision that the Chinese—added as DLC after the original’s release—haven't been bundled in, they are at least being added in Retold’s first DLC.
There have been concerns over the character portraits in Retold, and speculation that the devs used AI to generate them—an accusation that the devs squarely denied, stating clearly that they’re drawn by human artists. The problem to my eye isn’t who drew them, it’s that they lack charm. People get understandably attached to characterful touches in classic games when so much of the presentation was of limited fidelity, so the bar’s high when you’re updating them. It’s a minor misstep that they lack some personality, nothing more.
The same’s probably true of the voice acting. It’s probably just a minor issue. Probably. After all, cutscenes are not the game. They’re the bits that bookend it. But the performances are a rogue’s gallery of slightly off accents, and that does detract from the drama and immersion. I found myself feeling harsher towards this one point as I got deeper through the campaigns, but we should all probably remember that bad cutscene performances are basically mandatory in real-time strategy. The great Tim Curry taught us that.
Retold is brave enough to play with the balance and the stat values of its source material, and that makes for some knotty, tactically fascinating skirmishes. Watching Hittites flanked by Minotaurs lay siege to the walls of Troy has been a genre highlight for me. It could have been braver about the stylistic bits, the way gods and heroes are characterised visually and in motion. But given real-time strategy’s tenuous spot in the current PC gaming pantheon, Retold is an important, if qualified, win.
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James Webb telescope
Taken from the the James Webb telescope. Always taking amazing pictures of the universe. #universe Read More...
She's a model
She’s a model
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#jenniferlopez
#alexandradaddario #AngelinaJolie #MeganFox #margotrobbie
#chrisevans #ChristianBale #AnneHathway #BrieLarson
#ScarlettJohansson #elizabetholsen #JenniferLopez
#JenniferAniston #JenniferLawrence #priyankachopra
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Bethesda Announces New Elder Scrolls Mobile Game Dubbed 'Spiritual Successor' To Fallout: Shelter
The Elder Scrolls fans looking for a little fun to help stay occupied until the next Skyrim platform somehow drops now have a new answer. Bethesda has just announced Elder Scrolls: Castles, a semi-idle simulator mobile game that the team directly referenced as a “spiritual successor” to its prior mobile game, Fallout: Shelter.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles does share a lot of similar traits to its “spiritual predecessor,” Fallout: Shelter, with some changes. What remains are a lot of the core gameplay system, such as unique/varying NPC “subjects,” the “room” system, and even external quests your subjects can take to level up and gather materials.
It’s definitely a lot more light-hearted and casual in presentation than just about any other Elder Scrolls franchise title in both aesthetic and gameplay style. There are more aesthetic choices that can be made, though some do seem to affect how gameplay shakes out. Players can also change the layout of the castle, which makes decision-making a little less urgent.
It seems Castles leans a lot more into certain storytelling decisions similar to the Reigns mobile series of games (or just about any decision-making game). Different choices will have different costs and outcomes, but like any choice-making game, it’ll be vital to the future of your castle.
The rogue-lite combat system also seems a bit more intensive this time around, though in a way that looks like it’ll make it more approachable and engaging on a regular basis. The actual combat has a more fleshed-out UI, and players can pick up level-ups and the like that’ll help more immediately.
The release date is sooner than it looks, being set for September 10 through Google Play and the App Store. There's also some nifty art on the official website.
SOURCE: mmorpg.com
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Netanyahu defiant as protesters demanding a ceasefire-for-hostages deal bring Israel to a halt
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to Israel’s streets in fresh fury on Monday over the government’s failure to secure a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Hamas. Demonstrations could be seen in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Caesarea and other sites across the country, fueled by the killing in Gaza of six hostages, whose bodies were retrieved by Israeli soldiers this weekend.
Several gatherings targeted the homes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with protesters lighting fires and chanting: “You are the leader - you are guilty!” near one of Netanyahu’s private residences in Caesarea. In Tel Aviv, protesters outside the US Embassy chanted “Shame!” late into the evening, video showed.
Netanyahu has been accused of stalling efforts for a deal by some hostage families and their supporters. More than 100 hostages, including 35 believed to be dead, are still being held in Gaza – the vast majority of them taken during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, when some 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken captive
The scenes outside the Israeli leader’s homes culminated a day of anger that brought much of the country to a halt, following a call by the country’s largest labor union, known as Histadrut, to shut down the “entire” economy. Flights in and out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport were also stopped for two hours.
But in a press conference Monday evening, the Israeli leader struck a note of defiance, batting away criticisms – including from US President Joe Biden – that he is not doing enough to secure a deal. He asked for “forgiveness” from the families of the six hostages for failing to bring them back alive, but insisted it should be Hamas that “has to make the concessions.”
He also vowed to retaliate and extract a “heavy price” from the militant group that controls Gaza, for the killing of the six hostages, whose autopsies showed they were shot at short range on Thursday or Friday morning.
Hamas meanwhile escalated its own threats on Monday, with a public warning that more hostages held in Gaza would return “inside coffins” if Israel attempts to free them militarily.
A statement released by the militant group said that its fighters guarding prisoners held in the Palestinian enclave had received “new instructions” on how to deal with hostages if Israeli forces get close, and released an illustrated poster apparently showing hostages threatened with a gun.
Monday saw the largest general strike to have taken place in Israel since March 2023, when there was a similar mass walkout over Netanyahu’s controversial attempts to overhaul the country’s judiciary.
According to union Histadrut, hundreds of thousands of Israelis joined the protests Monday, just a day after half a million took to the streets on Sunday for what protest organizers said was one of the biggest nationwide protests since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Hamas. Israeli police said they had seven demonstrators in Tel Aviv for “violating public order and disrupting traffic.”
‘Netanyahu has made it impossible’
Netanyahu’s defiant stance following the discovery of the six hostage bodies has thrown further doubt on the negotiations for a ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
Even before the killing of the six hostages, the talks had become bogged down, with one key disagreement centering on control of a border area known as the Philadelphi corridor.
Netanyahu says control of the 14-kilometer (8.7-mile) strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt is needed to prevent Hamas from resuming arms smuggling through tunnels underneath it. However, the deployment of Israeli troops along the corridor has been a major point of contention between Israel and Hamas in the ceasefire talks, with Hamas saying Israeli troops must withdraw from the border zone.
“Hamas doesn’t want us to be there and that’s why I insist on being there,” the Israeli leader said on Monday.
During a cabinet meeting over the weekend, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had lambasted the Israeli government for what he said was prioritizing control of the corridor over a deal to free hostages, calling it a “moral disgrace.”
The relative of one of the hostages who was shot dead in southern Gaza also blamed Netanyahu and his stance on the corridor for their deaths. Gil Dickmann, the cousin of Carmel Gat, told CNN that the Israeli government “cold-bloodedly” crossed a “red line” by prioritizing the corridor over the lives of the hostages.
“We know that Hamas has agreed to a deal at some point, and Israel was the one putting on more and more terms and actually postponing the deal,” Dickmann said on Monday. “Right now, we know the decisions that our Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it impossible for Carmel and other hostages to return and put their lives in great danger, and that’s what killed them.”
But on Monday, even as he acknowledged dissent within his cabinet, Netanyahu doubled down.
“We’re not going to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor,” Netanyahu told a press conference on Monday evening. “The axis of evil needs the Philadelphi corridor. We need to have it under our control,” he said.
Disagreements over the corridor are only one of the splits within the cabinet over the conduct of the war that have become increasingly public and rancorous in recent months, reflecting deep divisions at the top of Israel’s government.
Just on Monday, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he was using his power to prevent a “reckless deal” and ensure “that there will be no negotiations at all.”
He was speaking to members of Gvura, a right-wing organization representing the families of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza.
But American officials described new urgency in reaching a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said while meeting the families of Americans held hostage that “the next few days will be critical” in the push to free those still held by Hamas.
Alongside the strikes, the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the six hostages found dead, was held in Jerusalem on Monday. Speaking at the ceremony, Jon Goldberg-Polin said he hoped his son’s death would be “the fuel that will bring home the remaining 101 hostages.”
“Hersh, we failed you. We all failed you. You would not have failed you. You would have pushed harder for justice,” he said. “You would have worked to understand the other, to bridge differences.”
“The 23 years of life that we had with you were a blessing. We now will work to make your legacy a similar blessing,” Goldberg-Polin said. “You were a really great guy. I love you.”
Strike hits public services, schools
As well as an impact on flights, some Israeli municipalities said they joined the strike, including Tel Aviv and Haifa, according to a list from the Histadrut outlining who joined the action as well as statements from some of the cities.
The list also includes government ministries that impact a wide range of public services, the document shows, including parts of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Interior Ministry, and others. CNN has reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office for comment.
Hospitals and healthcare facilities worked on a weekend schedule and on an emergency basis, according to the statement.
The country’s teachers’ union said it would not join the strike, according to a statement from the union, though support staff at schools did.
However, Israel’s biggest universities joined the strike, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.
#news #world #breakingnews
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Detroit woman suing police, claiming faulty facial recognition technology led to unjust arrest
Faulty use of facial recognition technology led to the unjust arrest of a Detroit woman, she said in a federal lawsuit, alleging that police failed to ask basic questions that could've cleared her on the spot.
LaDonna Crutchfield, 37, was at home with her children on Jan. 23, 2024, when police took her away in handcuffs and accused her of being their prime suspect in an attempted murder, according to a complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
LaDonna Crutchfield.via Law Offices of Ivan L. Land
Crutchfield "was identified as a suspect by an unknown facial recognition database," the lawsuit said.
#Detroit #Woman #Police
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Which state(s) could Kamala and Walz *realistically* try to win that she and Biden did not win in 2020 (flip from red to blue)?
#USElections
I was looking at the 2020 presidential election results the other day on Wikipedia, and based on the states that were won by a narrow margin by either candidate, most were won by Biden.
However, Trump won North Carolina by 1.35% (74,483 votes), which seems to be the most likely state Kamala and Walz could flip.
Although Florida was won by Trump by 3.36% (371,686 votes), it’s likely to remain red especially based on the 2022 governor election results.
I’m not sure how much effort the Harris campaign would/will put into Maine’s 2nd congressional district 7.44%, 27,996 votes).
By this point things are looking like more of a longshot. Trump won Ohio by 8.03% (475,669 votes).
Trump won Iowa by 8.20% (138,611 votes).
Based on this alone, it seems like only North Carolina could be where the Harris campaign could expand from 2020, but of course that would be in addition to holding the close states they won that election (Arizona, Georgia…).
Any thoughts on how the Harris campaign will proceed? Would the Harris campaign be better off with focusing all their efforts on maintaining what she and Biden won in 2020? Or would it depend how polls are trending in the next few/several weeks?
Edited to add: I completely missed mentioning Texas, my mistake. Trump had won by 5.58% (631,221 votes). Maybe if there’s a strong enough push this could be flipped?
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