Bungie continues to impress with new Destiny 2 expansion, Paidia is a new online community run by women, a new Angry Birds game comes to mobile.

The Witch Queen is an intense and impactful expansion of the Destiny 2 experience

The latest chapter in the epic Destiny story released yesterday (February 22). The Witch Queen is an expansion of Destiny 2, a first-person shooter that is playable on PS4, PS5, Stadia, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Bungie, the studio that conceived of and has so artfully managed the Destiny franchise, has kept Destiny 2 feeling like a new game for five years. They’ve done this by introducing new weapons and systems to manage and upgrade those weapons and the armour that protects your guardian.

In the Witch Queen, the Glaive is a first-person melee weapon, a first for the series. It can be wielded like a long handled axe, and can project a shield-like barrier, and it can fire Special ammunition.

We can also create and customize weapons with a new crafting system that allows us to craft new weapons and also make changes to weapons we acquire in other ways. Playing more increases your chances of finding new blueprints and customizations.

For me, the thing that makes Destiny 2 so interesting is that it’s a living, breathing world. Bungie narrative designers and the rest of the development team are constantly evolving the mythology that has been created, delivering on plot points that were seeded months ago, transforming characters that got a mere mention in early updates into dangerous, seething enemies.

The Witch Queen in question is Savathun, from the Hive, an alien species that are for me the creepiest of the bunch because they convey such a sense of undead. Through subterfuge and trickery, Savathun has managed to gain control over the Light, which is what gives guardians their power, including the ability to come back to life after death.

This, obviously, poses a problem for players, because when you defeat these enemies, they have a tendancy to come back. And it all takes place in a completely new environment, Savathun’s Throne World, a dark, swampy place.

With this new story, a new destination to explore, and a new raid (difficult challenges for groups of six players that promise valuable rewards at the end), The Witch Queen is further evidence of the commitment Bungie has to the world they created.

Paidia is a new online community run by women and committed to equality

Gaming relies on the communities that are created by gamers. But not all of these communities are comfortable or even safe spaces for all gamers, especially gamers who aren’t male.

Paidia aims to change that.

Here’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Jill Kenney.

“Paidia is a women-led company at the nexus of media, tech, and gaming. And what we’re building is an inclusive, online space to empower like-minded gamers to connect, learn, and play.”

In a phone conversation, Jill explained that the name comes from Greek mythology; Paidia, one of Aphrodite’s attendants, is the goddess of play and amusement. Paidia’s leadership are all women.

Membership in the Paidia community is $10 USD per month. Members get opportunities to play games together, to view videos and podcasts created by community members, and to participate in tournaments that are specifically designed with Paidia’s principles of being “supportive, inclusive, and kind”.

“This is a community that wants a brighter future in gaming and to be supportive, inclusive and kind,” said Jill. “Any sort of sexism, racism, queer phobia, ableism, or any other prejudices are not allowed. And every single person that comes in has to take that Paidia pledge that says they agree to that.”

New Angry Birds game hits mobile devices

There’s a new Angry Birds game to play on your smartphone.

Angry Birds Journey, available for Android and iOS, is a free-to-play casual game that has you using a slingshot to fling birds across the screen in an attempt to take out pigs and free other birds from captivity.

Games in the Angry Birds franchise have drifted since the first one from Rovio was released in 2009. There are racing games, role playing games, side-scrolling shooters, and even augmented and virtual reality games, all created in an attempt to keep the series fresh and appealing to mobile gamers.

Angry Birds Journey is a return to the roots of the series. You’ve got different birds with different super powers, and different pigs with different defences, and you’re trying to clear the levels with a limited number of birds.

There’s also a remake of the original Angry Birds game in the works.

A new social media app appealing to those on the right-wing has launched, but only in the U.S., and Mophie has a new, single charging solution for those traveling with multiple Apple devices.

Right-wing social app, Truth Social, only available in the U.S.

Newly launched this week is a new social app, Truth Social, which describes itself as “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”

If you were hoping to join the ranks of the “Truth Sayers,” you’ll need to have an App Store account in the U.S. But maybe that’s okay, because if the information provided in the website’s Help center is any indication, the people being targeted by Truth Social aren’t exactly experienced with web 2.0.

On useful tip is, “What’s a Truth?” Answer: “A Truth is a message posted to TRUTH Social. Share your thoughts, photos, videos, memes, or links. You’ll quickly get the hang of it!”

Former U.S. member of congress Devin Nunes, who stepped down from politics to become CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, is leading this initiative.

Whether Truth Social does any better than Parler or Gettr, both of which tried to appeal to Trump and Trump supporters, with middling success, remains to be seen.

The New York Post reported that Donald Trump posted a message to the platform.

But that message didn’t become popular until Donald Jr. shared a screenshot of it on . . . Twitter.

Get ready to travel again with new Mophie charging solution

The world is opening up, and if you’re going to be spending time away from home, whether you’re in a hotel or your sibling’s spare bedroom, you need a portable filling station solution.

Once again, Mophie’s got something for your travel kit.

The new 3-in-1 travel charger ($150 USD) is designed for people in the Apple ecosystem. It includes a MagSafe mat for wirelessly charging an iPhone at 15 W, the fastest available speed, a node for charging an Apple Watch, and a third area for wirelessly charging AirPods in their case.

Including the one cable you need and a wall adapter, all of this comes with a fabric case to contain it all.

This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about Playstation exclusive, Horizon Forbidden West, new games coming to the Nintendo Switch, the next-gen update of Cyberpunk 2077, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and the Samsung budget handsets, the Galaxy A03s and the Galaxy A13.

Aloy returns in the astonishing Horizon Forbidden West, new games coming to Nintendo’s Switch, and the next-gen update to Cyberpunk 2077 is here.

Horizon Forbidden West a stunning achievement

I’ve been playing Horizon Forbidden West for more than 20 hours already and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the world and story that the developers at Guerrilla Games have created.

This is Earth hundreds of years from now, after an apocalypse and a rebirth of species, and it is at once familiar and profoundly distinct.

Available for both PS4 and PS5, once again you take on the role of Aloy, a capable young woman who saved the world in the franchise’s first game, Horizon Zero Dawn. In this sequel, Aloy realizes that the threat hasn’t gone away.

In every way, Forbidden West is bolder and more expansive than Zero Dawn. The mechanical machine creatures that Aloy hunts are more varied and challenging, the areas to explore more vast, the missions and objectives more numerous and wide-ranging.

There’s so much more here – more weapons, more combat moves, more options to upgrade your Aloy – that it can feel overwhelming. The solution is to narrow your focus to one story thread at a time, whether they are part of the main narrative or not.

In fact, some of the most joyful moments come from the connections Aloy makes with characters that are completely unrelated to the main story. Each of these characters, their faces and bodies and back stories, are distinct and varied and completely fleshed out. The cultures that anchor the world might seem primitive, but are sophisticated and varied, created by blending and mixing and inventing

The core narrative picks up soon after the events of Zero Dawn, in which Aloy defeated a rogue artificial intelligence that was trying to reboot the planet. In Forbidden West, Aloy moves through what is an overt metaphor for our current climate emergency.

And while Zero Dawn was about Aloy, who had been ostracized from community as a young girl, realizing that she could manage on her own and might be the sole saviour of the human race, Forbidden West has Aloy come to terms with the fact that not only does she need help sometimes, keeping herself isolated is dangerous not just to her, but to everyone.

Playing on the PS5 this world is rendered with astonishing detail and beauty, and there are no loading screens to speak of. Just a glorious, fascinating world to explore, and for Aloy – and friends – to save.

Games coming to the Nintendo Switch

In an online event last week, Nintendo revealed a number of games coming to its popular Switch game system.

Among them are:

• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: a third-person action adventure from EA set after the Empire has massacred the Jedi
• No Man’s Sky: an endless space exploration game that started off as a PS4 exclusive
• Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection: collecting the three games in Ubisoft’s adventure series that were set during the Italian Renaissance
• Portal: Companion Collection: collecting Portal and Portal 2, the genre-busting platforming games from Valve

Nintendo also announced that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is getting another 48 race courses as DLC, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is coming in September, and Nintendo Switch Sports, which includes new sports like volleyball, is coming on April 29.

Long awaited update for Cyberpunk 2077 released

Yesterday, game developer and publisher CD Projekt Red released an update for the open world action role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2077.

The update brings “a host of changes and improvements across all versions of Cyberpunk 2077” including “performance and stability optimizations”.

The update to the game, which originally released in December of 2020, also includes versions of the game for next-generation consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Anyone who has a PS4 or Xbox One copy of the game gets a free upgrade, and anyone with a new console who is curious about the game can take advantage of a free trial which runs until March 15.

If you don’t finish the game in that time, you can buy a copy and continue playing from where you left off.

Samsung has three new flagship phones coming out next week, and two budget phones available now.

Hands on with Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra

My daughter, a 14-year-old savvy smartphone user, and I have been sharing a loaner Galaxy S22 Ultra for the past week.

She’s been using it as her primary phone, replacing for a time her Google Pixel 6 Pro. Her biggest complaint was that the extra layer of Samsung software on the Android operating system got in her way.

She did like the feel of the S22 Ultra, though, with its gently curved edges, and she almost swooned over the S Pen.

The stylus is a key reason that people will consider opting for this handset over the Galaxy S22 or Galaxy S22+. The Ultra is priced starting at $1,650, the same as last year’s model, albeit with reduced RAM.

You get much more in the package this year, but it’s still nearly $600 more than an S22 with the same RAM and storage.

Once you get used to using it, the S Pen can revolutionize how you use your smartphone. Not only can you use it when a fingertip just won’t – or can’t – do, you can also use it as a remote to operate as a slide advancer, a shutter release, and more. This latest iteration of the S Pen is far improved, too, reducing the latency from 9 milliseconds to 2.8 milliseconds, so the responsiveness when you’re writing on the screen is almost lag free.

But the stylus isn’t the only thing that justifies the Ultra’s price point. Samsung has packed the Ultra with five different lenses including a 12 MP ultra-wide, a 108 MP wide, two telephoto lenses (with 3x and 10x optical zoom), and a 40 MP front camera.

That extra telephoto lens really makes a difference when you’re taking pictures from a distance and you want the image to stay crisp and detailed.

But the improvements Samsung has made to the low light performance of the cameras is quite something. We were taking pictures outside at night with very little ambient light, and the snaps looked like they were taken during the day.

The camera software is a big reason for this, and it’s also how the portrait mode on the S22 Ultra is able to deliver such delightful background blurring without affecting the subject of the photo.

You can still get double the storage space on a S22 Ultra preorder; the deal lasts until February 24.

All the new Samsung S22 smartphones release on February 25.

Samsung’s budget smartphones are good Android alternatives

If spending more than a grand on a handset isn’t something you can or want to do, Samsung has two great options, both in a 6.5-inch chassis.

The Galaxy A03s ($170) has three camera lenses, a 2 MP depth lens, a 2 MP macro lens, and a 13 MP main lens. The 3 GB RAM is supplemented by a 32 GB storage, which can be expanded up to 1 TB with a micro SD card.

The Galaxy A13 ($330) has 5G functionality and also has a three lens camera system, bumping the main lens to 50 MP. It’s got 4 GB of RAM with 64 GB of storage. It can also be expanded with a micro SD up to 1 TB.

Both the A03s and A13 are available now.