This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about North Shore Rescue’s choose your own adventure video, Google and Samsung partnering for smartwatch software, Google Earth’s new Timelapse feature, and the three expansions of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries.
This week, Google and Samsung are partnering on software for smartwatches, Google Earth takes us back in time, and MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries expands out in the world. But first, North Shore Rescue’s Survive Your Own Adventure.
North Shore Rescue’s “Survive Your Own Adventure” video demonstrates the dangers of not preparing
While we’ve been having spring- and summer-like weather here in Vancouver in the past few weeks, there’s still plenty of snow in the mountains.
North Shore Rescue has always advocated for people planning and preparing to be in the back country or even on the most basic of hikes. Because you never know what’s going to happen.
The organization has produced a choose your own adventure video called, Survive Your Own Adventure that shows you from a first-person perspective the consequences of decisions you make while hiking the North Shore of metro Vancouver.
While the specific storylines shown in the video take place in the trails of the North Shore, the lessons you can learn are universal.
North Shore Rescue insists that you:
Trip plan
Train
Take the essentials: No matter how simple your hike may be, pack these 10 things
Google and Samsung partner up for wearable tech
At the Google I/O conference last week, one of the interesting announcements was about a new partnership between Google and Samsung on software for connected watches.
The two companies are merging Wear OS (Google) and Tizen (Samsung) to create a unified Android platform for smartwatches.
The new operating system will also incorporate some fitness tracking features from Fitbit (Google acquired the fitness tracking device company earlier this year).
This could be the best of both worlds: Google gets the connected watch it hasn’t been able to build itself, and Samsung’s Galaxy Watch plays better with Android devices that aren’t made by Samsung.
Future Samsung Galaxy Watches will run the new software, as will some Fitbit devices.
You can watch the entire keynote from Google I/O 2021 below.
Google Earth can now take you back in time
Google Earth, which provides us with access to a three-dimensional view of our planet by collecting and layering satellite images and GIS data, has been updated.
Timelapse was created from 24 million satellite photos from the past 37 years, and adds a dimension to the 3-D experience by showing us how the surface of our planet has changed over time.
This is an incredible tool for students and teachers, researchers, and anyone else who has an interest in seeing patterns in how the Earth has been changing, both because of us and in spite of us.
Check out this video showing changes to the planet’s oceans since 1984, including changes to the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, a tidewater glacier which flows into Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska.
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries expansion releasing, game launching on Xbox consoles
The game, developed in Vancouver by Piranha Games, was first released for Windows computers in 2019 as an exclusive to the Epic Games Store, and is launching on other storefronts including Steam and GOG.
It’s also being released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S and is part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
If that wasn’t enough, a new expansion, Heroes of the Inner Sphere, is being added to the experience.
In the MechWarrior games, you pilot BattleMechs, heavily armed and armoured bipedal weapon systems. The video game franchise spun out of a tabletop role-playing game, with the first video game releasing in 1989 for MS-DOS and the Apple Macintosh.
Mercenaries is a single player narrative game, with you seeing through the cockpit window of your mech (or in third person, if you prefer). You need to manage your machine as much as you need to smash and crash things, repairing and replacing damaged parts, selecting the proper load out for the mission at hand.
“Heroes of the Inner Sphere” adds new quests and missions to the game and introduces new mechs, with updates to equipment and weapons.
This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about the small number of people who are willing to be tracked on their iPhone, how you can protect your computer from Russian hackers, twenty years of Xbox, and the wonderful return to Mass Effect with the Legendary Edition of the trilogy.
This week, protecting your computer against Russian hackers, 20 years of Xbox, and Mass Effect Legendary Edition. But first, how many iPhone users have agreed to be tracked by apps like Facebook?
Between 6 and 15 percent of iPhone users have opted in for data tracking
Since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency on mobile devices with iOS 14.5, between 85 and 94 percent of users have indicated they don’t want to be tracked and have selected “Ask app not to track” when prompted.
The numbers come from Flurry, a Verizon company in the business of mobile analytics.
Those using iPads and iPhones running iOS 14.5 will now be asked specifically to opt-in to app tracking. Users can set these permissions globally or per individual app.
Installing a Russian keyboard configuration on your computer may help protect you from some malware attacks
The hacker attack on the Colonial Pipeline that caused chaos – and a spike in gas prices – in early May was perpetrated by Darkside, according to the FBI.
Darkside is a Russian-based entity, and Brian Krebs asserts that the code of the malware used by Darkside and similar groups has built in safety for some groups.
“Digital extortion gangs like DarkSide take great care to make their entire platforms geopolitical, because their malware is engineered to work only in certain parts of the world,” writes Krebs in an article on the topic.
So if the malware finds a computer that has a Russian keyboard configuration, which might suggest that the computer user is Russian, the malware will “fail to install”.
If you’re a mac OS user, you can add keyboard input sources through “System Preferences”:
Selecting “Keyboard”
Select “Input Sources”
Select the “+” symbol
Add the desired language
Celebrating twenty years of Xbox
In 2001, Microsoft decided to enter the video game industry with a console it called the Xbox. The killer app for that new hardware was a game developed by Bungie called Halo.
There’ve been a few consoles since then: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. And plenty of games.
Xbox is celebrating all this year with 20 years of Xbox, and you can join in by registering for the Xbox FanFest, which will include giveaways, access to exclusive Xbox gear, and digital events.
It all culminates on November 15, which is the anniversary date of when that first Xbox was released to gamers everywhere.
Maybe we’ll even be playing a new Halo by then.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition brings Bioware’s unbeatable storytelling to a new generation of gamers
Last week, Electronic Arts released Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which collects the BioWare trilogy that changed what we though was possible in a role-playing action adventure.
The first game was an Xbox 360 exclusive released in 2007, and was followed by Mass Effect 2 in 2010, and Mass Effect 3 in 2012, the latter two of which were timed exclusives for the Xbox 360.
It’s been such a delight to return to this world and this story. Edmonton’s BioWare, which has a distinguished history of creating epic narratives filled with rich characters you care about, created something special in Mass Effect that they haven’t really been able to duplicate since.
It’s a space opera about a human hero, Commander Shepard, who saves the species living in the Milky Way from a terrible threat. Along the way, the characters deal with things like xenophobia, macro economics, social and political upheaval, and awe.
And through all of it, the decisions that players make have an impact on the story that is revealed. You determine the morality of your Shepard, either as a charming paragon or an intimidating renegade.
This was one of the technical feats of Mass Effect, being able to put together a game that had many narrative branches, and which carried from one game to the next. If you make a decision that leads to the death of a character in Mass Effect, that character is not available to you in Mass Effect 2. If I made a different choice, that character would be available to me.
Many of these decisions are made through conversation, and I’d forgotten just how compelling these games were. When I started playing Mass Effect again, the first time since 2007, I spent three hours having conversations with characters without realizing that much time had passed.
Granted, I’m the kind of person who wants to know every last plot detail, and I will hunt those narrative beats down. But still.
Another thing that BioWare gave us with Mass Effect was the opportunity to choose the gender of our protagonist. We all play as Commander Shepard, but yours can look different than mine. And with superlative acting by Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer – they had to provide dialogue for all possibilities of Shepard, paragon and renegade – it’s a delight to put words in the mouth of Shepard.
This collection, which also packages up the expansions and other downloadable content that was released for the three games, is not a remake, but a remaster. The game looks better no matter what system you’re playing on (it was developed for PS4, Windows, and Xbox One but is playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S through backward compatibility).
Check out this trailer that shows off the graphical improvements.
Because we’re playing on hardware that is a couple of generations better than what we had, the load screens – which were interminable back in 2007 – are almost non existent. You can transition from one area to another without any delay at all.
What needs to be remembered, though, is that these games are between nine and 14 years old, and with the technological advances in that time much has changed. The action adventure role-playing games of today are much different than 2007’s Mass Effect. And BioWare has always been more about narrative, character, and player choice than shooter mechanics.
So temper your expectations accordingly. The navigation and combat mechanics, especially in Mass Effect, are slow and clunky compared to what you may be used to. Revel in what the Mass Effect trilogy can give you, instead of wasting time worrying about what it doesn’t.
I recommend you enter the world of Mass Effect ready to be patient, and lose yourself in these characters and their story. It’s worth it.
This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about the new Echo Show devices from Amazon, Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 2 earbuds, and Resident Evil Village (RE8).
The Mind Control Division is the intelligence arm of Blaine Kyllo's Solo Corps Creative Incorporated. This department conducts investigations and experiments into media and technology culture.
