TLDR Life
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp to sunset its online server today
November 28, 2024
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will sunset its online live server as it rebrands into a complete paid game on your mobile platforms.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will cease its online server today to make way for the (paid) complete version of the game today. The game will no longer be playable on Nov. 28, 2024 3:00 PM (UTC) which is 9:00 AM, central time.

Two things:

1. The paid version will be at discount price ($9.99) until Jan. 30, 2025.
2. You can migrate your save game into the complete edition.

I haven't delved into the Pocket Camp much because I was much more invested on the mainline entries. Which would have been Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Plus I wasn't too keen on the microtransactions. But farewells are bittersweet with players posting their first day and last day in their camp. With about 7 years of content, I'm getting this game on my devices for sure. The discounted price is really a no-brainer. The only thing that would be missed is the online play, where you visit your friend's camp.

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Steam Autumn Sale 2024 is live
November 27, 2024
Steam Autumn Sale 2024 (or Steam Fall Sale 2024) is live and will run until December 4. Steam


(Image by Steam)

Steam's Autumn Sale for 2024 is live and will run until December 4. Now's the time to get some games at discount for December break. Or to add onto your ever growing backlog.

It's ironic to say but if you currently don't have funds for this sale period, the Steam Winter Sale is not too far away (December 19, 2024 to January 2, 2025). I DO hope that you have are well this year.

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Turkulon returns to New World: Aeternum
November 18, 2024
Beloved Turkulon, the giant turkey boss, debuts (or returns) to New World: Aeternum in time for Thanksgiving.

Turkulon, the giant turkey boss, will spawn on Wednesday as a world boss in time for New World's Thanksgiving event. Turkululu, Turk Turk Turk, Turkinator, X Turk, however you call it, Turkulon is one of the beloved bosses in New World since 2022. Turkulon shoots eye-beams, drops egg bombs, and pecks a mighty AOE damage. Some notable loot include a turkey leg warhammer, a feast trophy to boost duration of food buffs, and a disgruntled fowl pet.

Maybe Turkulon can drop the New World roadmap while it's live.

As I'm still having an identity crisis in Throne and Liberty-- that is, I still don't know what I will do in the game-- I'm back playing in Aeternum (for a while). There are two artifacts this season and I think I can reach level 100 on January for the fisherman campsite skin. New World: Aeternum will be down tonight, November 18, to prep for the Turkulon event. My other favorite event will follow which is the Winter Convergence Festival.

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GOOD NEWS! Steam adds built-in Screen Recording!
November 09, 2024
Steam adds a built-in Game Recording feature that can run in the background or activates after hitting a hotkey.

Steam implements its bult-in screen record feature to capture those insane or clutch moments in your game. This will give Steam Deck its own screen capture ability but will include the PC as well. It makes PC gaming simpler. It's a win to make things easier instead of frisking for other third party screen capture software.

Go to Steam -> Settings -> Game Recording to find all of this fun stuff. What will make it easier is you can start the recording through a hotkey. Or set it to record in the background. You can also change the folder where to save your videos locally.

Nintendo Switch can take screenshots and record 30 second gameplay videos. Xbox can also do the same but you can record longer videos. Playstation also had the same feature when they added the share button. Although having this on the PC will do wonders since the video file can be exported as mp4 format. Which can be edited further. And there is no set limit to the length of recording you can manually capture.

Other software to screen record would be Xbox Live bar, the GeForce experience app, or a paid screen recording software. There were workarounds but these weren't obvious initially. It's worth mentioning that Windows 11 has its own screen recording function.

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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is now available to pre-order
October 28, 2024
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will no longer accept subscriptions after its maintenance today to prepare for a repackaging into Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will no longer be a free-to-play (with subscription service) mobile game. Instead it will become a standalone full single-player mobile game. Its live online service model will cease on November 28, 2024. It will become a complete paid app afterward which is a good way to end things off to this 7 year old mobile game.

There had been numerous content added to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that it's ironic that it has about 7 years worth of added content compared to the main entry of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. New Horizons 2.0 was released on September 2021. But it would be an utter shame to have all of Pocket Camp content cease to exist, right? So Nintendo will make it a paid game instead for the mobile platforms -- which is honestly a good move despite a last ditch effort for some revenue. A welcome move, even. With absence of network play of course.

I'll buy Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. I've been a late adopter of the game in 2020 since I've been playing New Leaf around the time it released. I haven't subscribed though. But I welcome the game as a solid and full game for my mobile. Oh the irony again, the reason why I staved off from it is I'm not much of F2P mobile spin-offs for my Nintendo game. And now it has become a paid game instead. Full circle.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete pre-order is live. Early discounted price is at $9.99 with planned release on December 3, 2024. The discounted preorder price will apply until January 5, 2025. The app will then be set on its regular price of $19.99 on February 2025. Read more details on its official page.

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Back for Blood is slashed 90% off on a Steam Sale
October 24, 2024
The spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, Back 4 Blood is 90% off on Steam right now.

Back 4 Blood is on and it's 90% off on Steam right now. Back 4 Blood is (considered) the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, although it received mixed reviews. The 4-player coop game did not make a significant impact compared to the Left 4 Dead IP perhaps due to the competing identity crisis attributed to the game that it should be a Left 4 Dead game instead of being Back 4 Blood. However 90% off is a huge discount and B4B is still worth your collection with 90% off.

The largest downer would be that Turtle Rock Studios has announced that they will no longer release more content to Back 4 Blood. But frankly this all suggests a Back 4 Blood 2 to me. I'm also suspicious that Back 4 Blood will soon be free on Epic.

I still feel stupid buying World War Z at full price on Epic only for it to be free after a few days.

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Manitoba increased minimum wage in effect today
October 01, 2024
The minimum wage in Manitoba increases to $15.80 today, October 1, 2024.

The Provincial Government of Manitoba announces that the provincial minimum wage increase is in effect today from $15.30 to $15.80 as of October 1, 2024.

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PS5 Pro will be $959 CAD
September 26, 2024
PlayStation Canada confirms that Playstation 5 Pro will be priced at $959.99 CAD.

PlayStation 5 Pro will be priced at $959.99 CAD and pre-order is live today, September 26. PS5 Pro will be released on November 7, 2024. Note that the PS5 Pro will not possess a disc drive and will be digital on this release. A separate PlayStation 5 disc drive is available and will need to be purchased to play your physical discs. I bought mine at $699.99 on May 2022 (which was $783.99 with tax). I didn't even want the bundle version but this is when the PS5 supply was still short, so I went ahead and bought it from Best Buy while it was in stock.

Although $959.99 for a console without a disc drive? How much ACTUAL fps gain are we talking about? It is possible to build a 4k gaming PC under $1000, but would they compare with a PS5 Pro? Point is: we're going back to the olden days when consoles were expensive. PS4 Pro was released with $499 CAD retail. Sony, throw in the disc and MAYBE PS5 Pro would be worth it.

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New World confirms it will delete expired usernames
September 19, 2024
New World will proceed to delete expired usernames on October 15 if the username has been inactive for 6 months.

New World will delete expired usernames upon New World: Aeternum's release date on October 15. This means that any username that has not been active prior or after October 15 will be deleted and will be made available for new players to use. New World will NOT delete player characters, but only the usernames.

Any character with an old inactive username that's logging back into the game will have to rename their character first before being able to play. To avoid this, log into the game now, and keep logging in within 6 months to retain activity. But if your gaming has been reduced to just logging into the game, it's probably better to stop playing the game altogether.

On the flip-side: if you want a name change, don't log in for 6 months then come back afterward.

New World: Aeternum will release on current-gen consoles XBox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 this October 15.

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Shinji Mikami says no space for Dino Crisis remake because of Monster Hunter
September 05, 2024
Shinji Mikami says that a Dino Crisis remake has no space because Monster Hunter exists.

Shinji Mikami comments that there is no space for a Dino Crisis remake because of Monster Hunter according to an interview by Eurogamer. Shinji Mikami is known for the creation of Resident Evil and Dino Crisis when he worked as a director and producer for Capcom. However, fans are confused from his statement suggesting that Dino Crisis and Monster Hunter are mutually exclusive.

Monster Hunter is not a survival horror game. At best, players capture monsters that resemble like dinosaurs. Dino Crisis is a survival horror game, where players investigate and try to survive in a setting that has been infested by dinosaurs.

Interestingly, both Dino Crisis and Resident Evil had familiar similarities such as the fixed cameras, pre-rendered scenes, and obviously as survival horror games. Dino Crisis felt like Resident Evil with dinos. Yet each title earned millions of respective sales, granted that Resident Evil had more sales. If having similarities was an issue, Dino Crisis shouldn't have existed back then.

If we're hearing this right: the statement doesn't make sense. A Dino Crisis remake could not exist because Gran Turismo exists. It would make more sense if he said there's no space for a Dino Crisis remake because of the Resident Evil remakes. But that would drive a point for a Dino Crisis remake as the recent RE2, RE3, and RE4 remakes raked millions of sales. Clearly there's a market for survival horror remakes from the Playstation 1 era.

There are a few things to note though. Shinji Mikami does not work for Capcom anymore. If we're talking about remaking Dino Crisis, it would be Dino Crisis 1 and 2. Not so much for any spin-offs. Dino Crisis is interesting enough that fans keep trying to rebuild their fan versions of the game. Perhaps Shinji Mikami making such a Dino Crisis remark started a conversation on the Internet which a potential impact for a remake. While I've been waiting for a Dino Crisis remake for a VERY long time.

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New Elder Scrolls game though on mobile and about Castles!
August 20, 2024
There's a new Elder Scrolls game but it's on mobile and about Castles.

Elder Scrolls: Castles is now available on select countries (including Canada) and will release globally on September 10. Castles is another Elder Scrolls mobile game with a twist of Fallout Shelter. Your main goal is to build your dynasty and your castle while keeping stability in your kingdom. Your kingdom runs on food and oil, while gold economy runs on fulfilling orders and quests.

Your subjects age per real-time day and thus you have to ensure naming heirs to your throne to maintain your population. Adulthood starts at 16 years where they can begin working on the kitchen, the oil press, the mill, and etcetera. The young ones simply walks and plays around your castle.

Unlike Fallout Shelter, your Castle scales upwards. You build rooms and stairs, place decors, and install facilities in those empty rooms to the point where no two castles can be the same. You can equip items and outfits to your subjects to improve their efficiency or when they go on quests. Your subjects going through quests prompts auto-battle encounters where you can cast skills and use potions.

It's not Elder Scrolls 6 and I was hoping that there was the ES6 announcement along with it. Similar to how Fallout Shelter was introduced after Fallout 4. Shelter foreshadowed providing shelter to those who want to be dwellers; in Fallout 4, your settlements provided shelter to settlers. Could this be a hint of castle building in ES 6? I would go for vanilla quaint hamlet living to castle building.

Elder Scrolls: Castles is a fun game. Graphic-wise it's different, but it's a solid single-player game for a mobile game. In-app purchases are present though optional. Castles is available on the Google Playstore and the App Store.

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New Terminator anime, Terminator Zero, to release on Netflix
July 31, 2024
Terminator Zero, a brand new Terminator anime series, will premiere August 29 on Netflix.

Terminator Zero is the new Terminator anime series on Netflix about Malcolm Lee developing the Kokoro AI in Japan supposedly to compete with Skynet, and a future soldier sent back in time to protect Malcolm and his three children from a mysterious assassin. All to prevent "Judgment Day", the bleak future war between man and machine. Terminator Zero will premiere August 29 on Netflix slated to run for eight episodes. How this story fits with alongside the lore (and Sarah Chronicles' Catherine Weaver's John/Turk's AI), we will know soon.

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Canada responds with avoid all travel to Venezuela due to post-election crisis
July 30, 2024
Canada puts up a travel advisory for Canadians to avoid all travel to Venezuela due to current post-election and political violence.

Canada updates its travel advisory for Venezuela due to the spontaneous demonstrations in the country after the presidential election results. According to the travel advisory: Canadians must avoid all travel to Venezuela due to the significant level of violent crime, the unstable political and economic situations and the decline in basic living conditions, including shortages of medication, gasoline and water.

The Embassy of Canada to Venezuela in Caracas has temporarily suspended its operations. Further response include sanctions and humanitarian efforts. Ongoing demonstrations and protests wracked the South American country after both candidates have been declared victorious post Presidential election. Flights involving Venezuela, Panama and the Dominican Republic have also been affected. Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia claims that he beat Nicolas Maduro. Nicolas Maduro would be sitting on his third term as President if elected.

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CrowdStrike struck Microsoft computers prompting global IT outage (and outrage)
July 19, 2024
A bad software update from CrowdStrike prompted blue screen errors to Windows computers which crippled airports, banks, and markets around the world.

Unlike the Y2K scare (that hasn't come to fruition), it isn't a bug but a glitched update that caused the crash.

CrowrdStrike rolled out a bad software update which prompted Windows computers to crash and restart in an endless loop. As a result, the glitched update has caused a global outage disrupting banks, flights, markets, and other services running Windows machines. CrowdStrike has made a statement addressing the issue identifying the error as not a cyber security incident but related to the Falcon Sensor and posted their workaround.

The outage has been estimated to affect millions of computers resulting to perhaps billions of people around the world. Mac and Linux systems are unaffected.

I'm glad I got paid today when my bank has also posted a service disruption.

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