This week, two new products from Dyson, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the best deal in games, highlights from the Xbox Games Showcase, Sony’s next State of Play is on Thursday, and a review of Superhot: Mind Control Delete. But first, you should install the COVID Alert app on your smartphone if you can.

COVID Alert is a Canadian app to track the coronavirus pandemic

An “exposure notification app” developed by the Canadian Digital Service to help with tracking and tracing covid-19 is now available to download on your smartphone.

• Android
• iOS

COVID Alert, the free #COVID19 exposure notification app, is now available for people in Canada to start using!

Download it from either:

Apple App store: https://t.co/2ZiVenQO4n
Google Play store: https://t.co/RgLKVGQZyn pic.twitter.com/1wX2eF3DSQ

— Canadian Digital Service (CDS) (@CDS_GC) July 31, 2020

The app is based on the work done by Apple and Google to get critical Bluetooth features working in iOS and Android operating systems.

While Ontario’s health service is sending out one-time keys to people running the app who have tested positive for covid-19, other provinces are not yet doing so (B.C. is expected to be deploying soon).

Alberta developed and released its own app.

In a post describing the development process, CDS staff make it clear that the app also leveraged work that’s been done by other countries, and that there have been independent security and privacy reviews to ensure that Canadians can be confident their privacy is being preserved should they choose to install the app.

Lawyer and tech policy commentator Michael Geist has installed the app, saying that it is “notable for what it doesn’t do as for what it does.” Geist goes on to write that, “While the app passes legal muster, its introduction reinforces the problems with social inequities that COVID-19 has laid clear.”

That is, people with older phones are unable to install the app. COVID Alert requires iOS 13.5 or later or Android 6.0 and up.

This is also a concern of Christopher Parsons with the Citizen Lab. He’s got COVID Alert on his smartphone, but in a Twitter thread he calls out other things he thinks warrant attention, mostly in the realm of government policy and citizen equality, not the app itself.

A thread on my thoughts about the Canadian Covid-19 app

— Christopher Parsons (@caparsons) August 3, 2020

Dyson announces new humidifying fan, bigger cordless vac for Canadians

While Dyson has a reputation for disrupting and innovating on products that we all know – look at what the company’s recently done with hair dryers and curlers – one of the things that makes Dyson more interesting is how their engineers are constantly looking to improve on existing products.

Case in point are two new products releasing in Canada next week (August 11).

The Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool ($1,000) expands on the powerful fan, already improved by a HEPA filter in the last major update, by adding humidifying functionality.

This isn’t something that is especially useful in the Lower Mainland where I live now, but it sure is a feature that would have come in handy when I lived in Calgary, which was often drier than a desert.

The new humidifying fan has a UV-C light to kill bacteria before it brings moisture to your air, and it’s built to clean and descale itself.

Another new feature in the Pure Humidify+Cool is how the device oscillates. Tubes inside the frame move, which means the entire unit doesn’t need to.

As if that wasn’t cool enough (ha!), the new Dyson V11 vacuum cleaner is called the Outsize ($1,100) and it was designed with North American homes in mind.

Negative feedback from customers in North America who were using Dyson vacuums tended to be about battery power. It turns out that in North America, the average household size is about double what it is in Europe.

The solution is the Outsize, which has a larger cleaning head (25% bigger), a larger collecting bin (150% bigger), and two batteries that can be swapped out on the fly, in all giving you up to 120 minutes of runtime.

The Outsize is also equipped with the “Dynamic Load Sensing” feature that was introduced with the first V11 model, so the machine will automatically sense what the floor surface is and adjusts the suction power accordingly.

Despite the larger size, the Outsize is only about 1 pound heavier than the standard V11.

And only available in North America. Pity.

Microsoft goes all in with subscription model with improved Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

In the days leading up to Microsoft’s last Xbox Games Showcase, Phil Spencer wrote about how he and the Xbox team are delivering value to gamers.

One of the things he mentioned was that Xbox Game Pass, the subscription service that provides unlimited access to hundreds of games, was merging with Project xCloud, which lets you play those games on Android smartphones and tablets.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has a subscription price of $17 a month, and includes games on Xbox and Windows, Android devices, and the ability to pick up your game wherever you left off.

It also includes Xbox Live Gold, which is a necessary subscription (for now) if you want to play multiplayer games, and which costs $12 a month.

When he took over as head of Xbox, Spencer told me that there was a desire within Microsoft to leverage digital ecosystems. We’ve seen the company shift to subscription models with its office productivity software, and it makes sense that they would want to move consumers to that model within the gaming space, too.

The cost of the Ultimate subscription is on the high end – Netflix is $17 for the 4K plan and Disney Plus is $9 – but to get unlimited gameplay across devices and to be able to pick up where you left off makes Xbox Game Pass Ultimate an ultimate deal.

Highlights from the Xbox Games Showcase

Here’s some of the most existing trailers that were shown during the Xbox Games Showcase.

Halo Infinite

The trailer.

The gameplay demo.

Fable

The light-hearted fantasy RPG is being rebooted by Playground Games.

Psychonauts 2

The long-awaited sequel features music by Jack Black.

Three games from Obsidian Entertainment

The studio, newly acquired by Microsoft Game Studios, has an expansion for The Outer Worlds called Peril on Gorgon.

Avowed is set in the fantasy universe of Pillars of Eternity, which Obsidian first developed in 2015

Grounded

This is an adventure game inspired by “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and has kids surviving their backyard.

The Medium

From the Bloober Team, this is a horror game that sometimes splits the screen, where the two screens show different dimensions.

Dragon Quest 11S: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Square Enix brings the JRPG Dragon Quest franchise to the Xbox for the first time with the Definitive Edition of DQ11S.

Sony to provide more information on games coming to Playstation consoles

In a new State of Play event on Thursday (August 6), Sony will be featuring games developed by third-party studios for PS4, PS VR, and PS5.

Sony was pointed that there will be no information on the PS5 console or any games being developed by internal studios.

The event runs live at 1 p.m. PT / 4 p.m. ET on Twitch and YouTube.

Superhot: Mind Control Delete introduces roguelike elements to unique first-person shooter experience

I totally missed out on Superhot when it was first released back in 2016 and 2017. Thankfully, Mind Control Delete, a sequel to the shooter game, has given me a chance to rectify my error.

At the heart of Superhot is a simple mechanic: Time moves when you move.

The world created by the Superhot Team is static and still, until you put your avatar in motion. Reach for an object – Superhot weaponizes everything, including darts, fish, knives, and firearms – and the red shapes that indicate enemies also move.

Step to one side to dodge a bullet, and that bullet starts moving towards you.

What this means is that you can have the frantic and frenetic first-person shooter experience at your own pace. It means you can plan your movements the way you might plan your movements in a game of chess.

Once you start moving, the game can progress quickly depending on how fast your character moves. Push that joystick a little too hard and you’ll find yourself in real time and sweating at the speed of it all.

If you already own Superhot, you get Mind Control Delete as a free expansion. The game is similar in its art direction. You move through an antiseptic world of white, obviously computer generated, being attacked by red humanoid figures. Objects you can interact with, which become weapons, are black.

There are four things that are notably new. First, levels are procedurally generated, so you’ll never be looking at the same map twice. Second, you can unlock different starting players that each have different abilities. Third, while playing through the levels you’ll get a chance to run hacks to give yourself buffs. Third, permanent death is a thing.

You’re going to need those hacks, especially in the later levels when the number of enemies coming at you becomes overwhelming. Especially because the enemies become smarter and more challenging opponents, with protected parts and the ability to dodge your bullets.

The new features bring a level of intensity and competition to Superhot that will have you sweating even though you can always stop time, if you could only stop moving.