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Sure, you can watch Star Wars. Or you can be a Jedi yourself. Also, if you think word games are fun, have you played Scrabble?

Celebrate Star Wars Day by playing a game

Star Wars is more than a bunch of movies. Over the years, dozens of video games have been set in Lucas’ universe and many of them are well worth your time.

Most recently is Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which you can play on your favourite console. There’s also Lego Star Wars: Castaways, which is on Apple Arcade to play on your Apple devices.

But don’t overlook some of these others, which include first- and third-person adventures, RPGs, and vehicular combat.

Knights of the Old Republic is being remade, but while you wait for the update to this narrative role-playing classic, you can still play the original game, developed by Edmonton’s BioWare, on your Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S for only $5.

There’s also the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), The Old Republic, which has more than ten years of storytelling to play through.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) puts you in the shoes of a young Jedi Padawan who had to go incognito after the Emperor’s Jedi Purge. Developed by Respawn and published by Electronic Arts, a sequel is underway. EA also has a first-person shooter and a strategy game in development.

Star Wars: Squadrons (developed by Motive and published by EA) puts you in the pilot seat of a handful of Star Wars spaceships and may be best experienced in virtual reality.

Star Wars games to look forward to include an open-world game from Massive and Ubisoft and Star Wars Eclipse, from Quantic Dream, which promises “an intricately branching action-adventure game that can be experienced in many ways, and puts the destinies of multiple playable characters in your hands.”

Play Scrabble through your browser

If you’re spending part of every day doing the various word puzzle challenges – Wordle, Quordle, Lewdle are a few of them – then you should think about setting aside some time for the biggest word game of them all: Scrabble.

April was Scrabble Month, apparently, and now you can play Scrabble through any browser against people from around the world or against a computer opponent. It’s free to play, but expect some pay features to be rolled out in the future. There is a plan to add tournaments to the options.

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Everything you post online is information that can be used to hack you; some fun things to get your mom for Mother’s Day.

Jeffrey Katzenberg is a guinea pig for hacking demonstration

Rachel Tobac is an ethical hacker, someone who is hired to demonstrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses in systems. She’s also the head of Social Proof Security, a company that provides training to organizations that may be most at risk to being compromised.

In March, social engineer Tobac and her co-conspirator Evan Tobac participated in a demonstration of how easy it can be for a skilled hacker to get into Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s computer.

The video is more than a little obvious a promotional endeavour, in this case for digital security provider, Aura, but the techniques that the Tobacs used are valid. They are also scary.

Best tech gifts for mom this year

Wearables

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This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about the upcoming Return to Monkey Island, the new Star Wars game coming from Skydance, Canadian PS Plus pricing, the xScreen system that makes your Xbox portable, what to do if you’re going to ditch Twitter, the Mastodon social network, and the demise of Insteon.

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Amy Hennig is making a Star Wars game and a Marvel game, a new screen attachment for Xbox S makes the console portable, and Playstation Canada has announced pricing for the new subscription plans.

Skydance signs deal with Lucasfilm Games for new Star Wars game

Amy Hennig is going to get to make her Star Wars game after all.

The noted writer and game designer led writing and development on the Uncharted games for Naughty Dog. She left in 2014 and joined EA’s Visceral Games to be creative director on a Star Wars project. A couple of years later, though, EA shuttered Visceral. That Star Wars game is now in development at Respawn.

Hennig, meanwhile, landed at Skydance – already involved in film and television production – where she was tasked with creating a game development business.

We learned last week that one of the things she’s doing with Skydance is developing a new narrative driven, action-adventure game featuring an original story in the Star Wars galaxy.

This is in addition to the work she’s doing on an action-adventure for Marvel, which is also “a completely original story and take on the Marvel Universe”.

xScreen opens up portable gaming with your Xbox

The xScreen is an absolute winner.

It’s a 11.6-inch screen that delivers 1080p resolution at 60 Hz that was designed to integrate with an Xbox Series S. And it makes your console effectively portable.

The xScreen costs $250 USD – it’s actually sold out right now because it’s so in demand – and while you still need access to power, it means you can take your Xbox gaming almost anywhere.

Even on an airplane, where most modern commercial airliners deliver up to 100 W of power to your seat (Upspec Gaming says the xScreen and Xbox Series S only need about 80 W).

For this to work, you will need to have an all digital Xbox Series S. These systems cost $380 CDN and come with a 512 GB solid-state drive which can be expanded with Seagate storage expansion cards.

Upspec also sells a case that can carry your system for $60 USD.

Upspec expects to have new stock of the xScreen available in June. Just in time for summer holiday travel.

Canadian pricing for new Playstation Plus subscriptions

Playstation’s new subscription plans come into effect on June 13, and now we know what the three different options will cost in Canada.

A subscription to one of the three plans is required if you want to play any online multiplayer games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, or FIFA. You’ll also get cloud storage for your saved games and access to special deals and sales.

Each month, the basic plan, PS Plus Essential, gives subscribers two PS4 games and one PS5 game.

PS Plus Extra adds access to downloadable PS4 and PS5 games from the Playstation library, and PS Plus Premium adds classic Playstation games and streaming from the cloud.

Canadian pricing ranges from $12 to $22 a month. Purchasing three months or a year in advance reduces the overall monthly cost.

PS Plus Essential

  • one month: $12
  • three months: $30
  • one year: $70

PS Plus Extra

  • one month: $18
  • three months: $50
  • one year: $115

PS Plus Premium

  • one month: $22
  • three months: $60
  • one year: $140

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