Any modern company of any significant size around the world has a data science department, and a data engineer at one company might have the same responsibilities as a marketing scientist at another company. Data science jobs are not well-labeled, so make sure to cast a wide net.
American cybersecurity and intelligence agencies released a joint advisory this week on how to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyberattacks orchestrated by Russian state-sponsored hackers. This advisory comes amid renewed tension between the US and Russia over Ukraine and Kazakhstan. To that end, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and […]
Retro-futurism is one of my favourite things. Seeing what people thought the future would look like in now decades old science fiction is so revealing of the time in which is was created, conjuring visions of gleaming optimism or grimy despair for our future. Out in PC Early Access and Xbox Game Preview (and Game Pass!) today, The Anacrusis lands somewhere between; an idyllic swinging sixties style of futurism that’s showing signs of wear and ultimately falls apart as an alien menace suddenly emerges. What I’m trying to say is that The Anacrusis is Left 4 Dead by way of Space Channel 5. The game is set upon a huge starship on the edge of explored space that has suddenly found itself swamped by an extra-terrestrial threat. These are the face-hugging kind for the most part, completely incapacitating the ship’s population and turning them into mindless hosts, but a handful of survivors remain – Nessa, Guion, Liu and Lance. They’re a diverse bunch, which is always nice to see, and you quickly pick up from their incidental dialogue that they’re not that well equipped to take on an alien invasion by themselves. They’re going to try, though! The Anacrusis follows a lot of the standard co-op shooter traits ingrained in the subgenre’s well-worn formula. Each episode is broken down into stages that are bookended by safe rooms – in this case well-stocked airlocks. The whole ship has been overrun by aliens that act like a zombie infestation and you’ll have to battle your way through the pretty mindless throngs that are just milling around until you disturb them. That would be far too simple though, and a devious AI director works in the background to spice things up from time to time. This means throwing hordes of enemies at you as well as more than a few special aliens that go far beyond the “thing on a human body” design. There’s a few Left 4 Dead tropes with the big lad Brute, the long-distance Grabber, and the Gooper that will slow you down and fix you in place, but things get more interesting from there. The Spawner creates ball aliens that roll around and unfurl to shoot at you like some kind of Droideka, while the Flasher isn’t an alien that shows an inappropriate amount of skin, but rather one that fills its surrounding area with blindingly bright light that makes it difficult to make out what’s going on. Perhaps my favourite enemy in the game is the Egg (or “Babies” as we started calling them for some reason). Acting like the Witch from L4D, they don’t react until triggered, but when they do? Hoo-boy! You better be ready for a flood of impossible-to-deal-with spiked balls that roll toward you and fill your entire view of the world until you die. They’re so overpowered they can absolutely wreck a run. They’re the best. Good eggs. Dealing with all these enemies means using an arsenal of weapons that might be appropriately sci fi, but feel a bit bland to use. They all come from a brand of ‘pew-pew’ laser guns that just isn’t particularly interesting, even if they will send the regular enemies flying or take them out in a couple of quick shots. The Anacrusis almost makes up for this by having an array of fun grenades to throw into the hordes. The Stasis grenade slows anything that moves through its bubble, which is a godsend when dealing with Brutes, while the Vortex grenade sucks everything in toward a mini black hole and then spits them out again. There’s also special pick up weapons that can arc electricity through closely-packed throngs, place a defensive turret, and more. The highs and lows of the weapons are echoed through some of the level design. As cool as the kitschy 60s sci-fi vibe is, the opening stages of the first episode just feel like running down a series of similar feeling vibrantly coloured hallways. It takes a bit too long before you get to step out into something that really feels completely different – a huge artificial garden under a fake sky. After that point, it continues to riff on similar themes, though there’s more and more signs of how damaged the ship is becoming through the invasion. There are some fun set pieces thrown in that do help spice things up, like holding off waves of enemies in a blaring disco, the first episode’s climactic battle on the bridge of the starship, and some fun times with sluices – this game’s a shoe-in for the Best Sluices GOTY 2022 award – though some levels come in feeling like they’re a bit on the long side. Part of that is also down to the AI-driven difficulty. The Anacrusis falls into the same trap that Back 4 Blood did of throwing too many special enemies at you in combination for a sudden difficulty spike. The balance is currently a bit off for enemies like the Gooper, which is able to repeatedly stick a player in place just seconds after they have been freed, especially when a team is struggling to deal with a string of half a dozen specials. It’s also a bit much when the same enemy type spawns in multiples or in quick succession. They don’t really feel so special anymore at that point… As The Anacrusis heads into PC Early Access and Xbox Game Preview today, it’s clear that there’s some way to go before it can go toe to toe with Back 4 Blood, Vermintide and Left 4 Dead. Of course, the point of Early Access releases like this is for a developer to get players invested, get their community’s feedback and make adjustments while growing the content. There’s potential here, and I hope that Stray Bombay can grow The Anacrusis into a great example of the co-op shooter at its best.
The Blaston Reloaded update will introduce a variety of exciting new content. Resolution Games (Demeo, Acron: Attack of the Squirrels, Angry Birds VR) today announced several major updates coming soon to their VR dueler Blaston that will add new content to the game. This includes everything from a new seasonal game mode to graphic enhancements […]
It’s crucial to investigate the reasons why data science teams require context, consistency, and secure collaboration of their data to ensure data science success. Let's quickly examine each of these requirements so that we can better understand what data science success moving forward may look like.
January 12, 2022 12:59 PM Eastern Standard Time VANCOUVER, British Columbia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The union representing 14,000 flight attendants across Canada says the federal government needs to listen and act decisively to make cabin environments safe for workers and the flying public…
It has been a long time since the last brand-new mainline Mario Kart entry, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch seemingly acting as a stopgap measure until a true sequel is released. Based on a recent report, it appears Mario Kart 9 could be on the way, and in traditional series fashion, it will apparently come with a new "twist."
But just what will that twist be? The GameSpot staff thought long and hard about how Nintendo could change up the formula, ranging from radically altering the races themselves to bringing other Nintendo franchises into the fray. These are--plausible or not--the new twists we want to see in Mario Kart 9.
Aerial vehicles with branching paths
This. Just do this.
Mario Kart has been one of Nintendo's most successful franchises ever, but there was another Nintendo kart racing game that doesn't get enough love: Diddy Kong Racing. Its blend of "traditional" kart action with flying segments and branching paths created a hectic and less-predictable racer than its more popular cousin, and it opened up races to strategic considerations that aren't possible in a standard Mario Kart match. Nintendo has dabbled in this for Mario Kart with gliders and occasional forks in the road, but designing an entire game with this in mind would make for the freshest Mario Kart since Double Dash. Just imagine avoiding a blue shell by transforming your kart into a plane just as it homed in on you! -- Gabe Gurwin, SEO Editor
Just make it Nintendo Kart already
This is admittedly a bit of a cheat, because Nintendo has been slowly inching toward this eventuality for a while now. Most notably in Mario Kart 8, the series introduced DLC that brought in non-Mario characters like Link from the Legend of Zelda and Villager and Isabelle from Animal Crossing. At this point, Nintendo should just throw open the doors to the broader Nintendo universe. I want Ganondorf riding a kart that looks like his fiery black steed, Samus in a kart modeled after her iconic Hunter-class gunship, and Pikachu with sick-ass lightning bolts on the sides of his motorcycle. Opening it up to the broader Nintendo-verse would also give the company more leeway to fashion tracks based on different types of environments, and to mix up some of the usual Mario-themed items with ones borrowed from other games. And before you ask, no, they don't actually need to change the name. The name "Super Smash Bros." has been a Mario reference from the beginning and no one thinks twice when we see Captain Falcon throwing down. -- Steve Watts, Associate Editor
Mario Kart Maker
I'd love to see Mario Kart 9 essentially be Mario Kart Maker. Just as Nintendo embraced level creation with the Mario Maker games, I want to see it do the same with Mario Kart, allowing players to create and share their levels online. We've seen a hint of this with Mario Kart Live in the real world, but I want full-fledged building tools for a proper MK game. Given that new entries are spaced so far apart, it would be a major boon for the game's longevity to have access to an effectively limitless supply of new courses--which would surely include some wacky and unconventional spins on what we expect from a Mario Kart track. I want to race as Waluigi around a track shaped like Tim Robinson in a hot dog suit, and I know the internet won't let me down. -- Chris Pereira, Senior Editor
Mario Kart goes live service
Totally real logo
I can't even begin to imagine how many hours I have played Mario Kart 8, but as much as I love Nintendo's mascot racing game, I am eager to see what's coming next. And that's why the report of Mario Kart 9 being in development with a "new twist" had me so excited. I am personally hoping to see the next Mario Kart game adopt more live-service elements. I would love to see new courses added regularly, or perhaps a Mario Kart Tour approach whereby new courses are rotated in and out, with limited-time events to take part in. I enjoy learning the ins and outs of any given Mario Kart course--and there are always so many details to learn and secret paths to uncover--and having even more courses to play with is an exciting proposition in my eyes. I would also love to see additional live-service elements get baked into the next Mario Kart game, like new challenges to work toward or a battle pass-style system that helps me feel a stronger sense of progression and accomplishment. Nintendo rolled out numerous new characters and arenas for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and I'm excited to see how a similar live-service approach for the next Mario Kart game might shake things up in a new and interesting way. -- Eddie Makuch, Editor
Mario Kart Ultimate
If the madmen at Nintendo did it for Smash Bros., surely there's no reason it can't be done in Mario Kart as well, right? Keeping in line with Nintendo's current trend of making just about everything you could ever want available on Switch (and the game industry's trend of remastering and/or remaking things), I think there's a possibility that Mario Kart 9 could act as a sort of an extensive collection of Mario Kart's past, featuring updated levels from every game, all your favorite characters, and many of the series' beloved past gimmicks, such as Double Dash's team racing. It also wouldn't surprise me if we get a Racers Pass with this next game in an effort to regularly breathe life into it and keep players on the edge of their seats as they wildly speculate as to what character could be coming next. While Sora's feet might be about two sizes too large to stuff into a kart, the thought of racing around as Pikachu on 64's D.K. Jungle Parkway brings me almost as much joy as the thought of a Diddy Kong Racingreboot does, so I'll take it as a consolation prize. -- Jessica Howard, Editor
SEGA is beefing up its in-house Japanese operations with the establishment of a new Sapporo studio, to complement its existing slate of Tokyo teams. As the name obviously indicates, this group will work out of the northern Hokkaido prefecture, and will be responsible for “development, design, debugging, sales, and import and export of game hardware and software” as well as “planning, production, and sales of character products”. A bit of everything, then!
The team will be led by veteran Takaya Segawa, who joined SEGA in 1992 and has worked as the chief producer on Phantasy Star Online 2. It sounds like its initial remit will be to work on characters and environments for the publisher’s popular MMO, but in a statement the giant said that it will “use the know-how that SEGA has accumulated” to provide “the world with new and exciting experiences”.
