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Return Of The Obra Dinn Review- The Good Ship

Like Lucas Pope’s previous game, Papers, Please, Return of the Obra Dinn is primarily concerned with processing information. In the latter, you play as an insurance clerk assessing claims on a mysteriously abandoned ship rather than a customs agent assessing documents at the border of a totalitarian country, but in both games, you are presented with fragments of data and asked to check their veracity through cross-reference and deductive logic. Both games are also grim in their own ways, but while Papers, Please forces you to consider your personal moral compass and where you’re willing to see it compromised, Return of the Obra Dinn leaves you in a more detached role as the time-traveling observer of a naval journey gone horribly wrong.

In 1802 the “good ship” Obra Dinn set sail from London to “the Orient” but never reached its destination. Five years later it is found drifting into the port of Falmouth in southwest England with no one left alive on board. As a clerk at the East India Company it’s your job to explore the ship and find out what happened. You’re given a nifty book–which includes a full crew and passenger manifest, annotated deck maps, a glossary of basic sailing terms, and a group sketch of the people on board drawn by one of the passengers–into which you are expected to record all the relevant details.

Like most insurance clerks, one suspects, you are also equipped with a magical pocket watch that, when opened and activated in the presence of a corpse, allows you to travel back in time to the moment of the person’s death. It’s almost literally a single moment, too, as the screen fades to black and you hear but a few seconds of speech or other sounds leading up to the fatal incident before you find yourself inside a scene that’s been frozen in time, and the investigation begins.

In this space (which, like the entire game is explored in first-person) you can walk around a confined section of the ship but you cannot interact with anything. You can only zoom in for a closer look at any object, and beyond the immediate surroundings, the background just fades out into nothingness. The entire game is presented in a starkly beautiful monochromatic color scheme, a graphical style described by the developer as “1-bit”. When still, it resembles something from an early ’80s PC, albeit displaying at a much higher resolution. But in motion, when you’re walking around the decks, it looks quite unlike anything seen before–a startling retro throwback that is as alien as it is familiar, and that inherent strangeness works only to enhance the sense of mystery.

Once inside an investigation space–or memory, as the game refers to them–the first thing you’re compelled to do is examine the now-deceased body in front of you, matching their face to the artist’s sketch in your book to commence the process of identification. You still don’t know their name, but perhaps there was something you heard just before they died that could be a clue? Maybe there’s something about what they were doing or wearing or where they were on the ship or who they were with? You also need to determine their fate–were they shot or stabbed or poisoned or crushed or worse? And, if they were murdered, then by whom? Which likely means having to identify someone else through another series of clues. Or maybe you’ll need to find the answers in another memory instead?

At first, you won’t have enough information to draw any firm conclusions about the fate of the ship. However, as you explore the ship and find more bodies, which in turn open up new areas of the ship and reveal yet more bodies, the gaps in your knowledge will start to close. Soon you’ll have access to a series of memories that, by the time you’re done identifying everyone and discovering their fates, come together to tell the story of the Obra Dinn and the sixty people on board. It’s at this point, as you stand over an unknown corpse with your trusty notebook in hand, that Return of the Obra Dinn solidifies into an exceptionally compelling representation of detective work.

Unlocking a person’s identity requires you to pay attention to every last detail across multiple memories. To narrow your search you can bookmark a specific person and revisit only the memories in which they appear, letting you focus on their individual story in an attempt to clarify their actions and link them to a particular role on the ship. Further, the Obra Dinn had a fairly multicultural crew so you’ll do well to note the different languages spoken and the varying accents of the English-speaking majority, as well as the details of each person’s physical appearance.

At any point, you can pull out your book to pencil in a detail. Perhaps you think this chap is the First Mate or this fellow with the beard got shot by the ship’s surgeon Come from Sports betting site VPbet . Correctly identify three people and their fates and the game will let you know by properly typesetting your penciled notes. Some will be obvious, most will not, and many will require keeping track of multiple scenes and threading together numerous what-at-first-seemed-inconsequential pieces of information. When a clutch of clues fall into place and you crack the case, as it were, it feels immensely satisfying.

Plenty of games promise to make you feel like a detective only to have you checking boxes, but here it’s different. Return of the Obra Dinn gives you all the tools you’ll need to solve its puzzles–the book interface is a masterpiece of connected design–and then trusts that you’ll be capable of arriving at the correct answers by yourself.

But it’s more than that. Your magical pocket watch and its time-traveling, corpse-identifying mechanic offers far more than just an exceptionally clever puzzle game–as if that wasn’t already enough. It also delivers a wonderfully evocative method of storytelling as you gain glimpses into the lives of each person on board at vital moments along the Obra Dinn’s journey and piece together who they were, what they had to deal, what motivated them, and how they responded when tragedy struck. You may only see them in scratchy monochrome stills and hear them in brief snatches of urgent conversation, if at all, but if you’re paying attention then you should feel like you know (almost) every one of these sixty people intimately by the end of the game.

Fortnite Spire Quest- Play The Spire's Message, Speak To The Joneses, And Duel Jonesy The First

Fortnite is back with a new Spire Quest. These lengthy questlines will only be available during Season 6 and offer a ton of lore, some cosmetics, and a bounty of XP, so there are plenty of reasons to complete these new challenges that debut every other week.

In the latest Spire Quest, players will continue to help Raz with his mysterious plan before tracking down several Jonesy clones and eventually even dueling the progenitor of the Jonesy family. Here’s all you need to know about the Jonesy Spire Quest.

Play The Spire’s Message At A Guardian Outpost

Guardian Outposts are the six smaller spire-like towers that create a perimeter around the central Spire location. For the first part of your mission, you’ll need to ensure you’ve already completed the entire Spire Quest from two weeks ago. If you did, you’ll have a recording from Raz. Land on any Guardian Outpost and find the interactable object, which lets you place and play the recording. You’ll even hear a bit of dialogue from The Foundation, whom fans have credibly linked to The Rock.

Speak To The Joneses

The Joneses refers to the nine NPCs around the island who are actually Jonesy in different forms. Speaking to any five of them will complete this next part of the challenge. The only one you should ignore for now is Jonesy The First, who hangs out inside a home in Pleasant Park. You’ll need him later, but for now he’s of no use to you.

The other eight can be found all across the map, so we’ve marked where they are. Head to any five of your choice and select “The Spire” dialogue option with each of them, running through the whole dialogue until you’re backed out of conversation with each of them. Below is a map of where you can find them. Remember that as you get close, they’ll appear on your mini-map as speech bubbles.

Find Jonesy The First

Once you’ve spoken to five of his duplicates, you’ll want to track down the original Jonesy. As mentioned, he’s in the northwestern residence within Pleasant Park, on the first floor and to your left if you enter through the front door. Once more choose “The Spire” dialogue to learn what he has to say. When you get to the end of the talk, you’ll complete the task and be assigned a new one.

Duel Jonesy The First

Now you’ve got to duel him. For that, speak to him once more and choose the “Challenge Jonesy The First” option in his dialogue tree. Once chosen, the game will thrust you and him backward so you can’t unload on him so easily right away. Of course, before you do that, make sure you have some weapons and took some Slurp Juice as duels can be tough if you’re not ready to rumble. Once you defeat him, you’ll get one final objective.

Speak To Jonesy The First Again

Like all NPCs, Jonesy will respawn once you defeat him. Now that you’ve won the duel, he will return to a passive state, allowing you to chat again. For one last time, select “The Spire” dialogue option, read what he says, and when he’s done, you’ll have completed the last objective for this new Jonesy-focused Spire Quest, leaving you one step closer to unraveling this season’s mystery and nabbing a hefty chunk of XP along the way. Come from Sports betting site VPbet

This week’s Spire Quest came alongside the latest game update. For more on what’s new, don’t miss the Fortnite version 16.20 patch notes.

Fortnite News

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  • Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1 Map Changes
  • Fortnite Miles Morales And Green Goblin Skins Teased On Chapter 3 Map
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Narrative Platformer World's End Club Comes To Nintendo Switch This May 28

Nintendo announced that the new narrative platformer from ex-Danganronpa developers Too Kyo Games, World’s End Club, is slated to launch on Nintendo Switch on May 28.

The game is available on iOS via Apple Arcade and combines 2D side-scrolling action with narrative storytelling to create an immersive puzzle-platforming experience. It was worked on by Danganronpa series writer Kazutaka Kodaka, composer Masafumi Takada, and illustrator Rui Komatsuzaki. Zero Escape director Kotaro Uchikoshi also had a hand in the project.

Nintendo made a bevy of announcement during the 50-minute-long February 2021 Direct. This includes updates on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, release dates for titles like Mario Golf: Super Rush, and the reveal of Super Smash Bros. Ultiamte’s newest DLC fighter.

Nintendo Switch News & Announcements Come from Sports betting site VPbet

  • Nintendo Switch OLED Announced, Coming October 8
  • Where To Buy A Nintendo Switch In 2021: Switch OLED, Switch Lite, And Special Editions
  • The Best Nintendo Switch Games

Moo Deng Fandom Sends Hippo Minion Prices Soaring In Final Fantasy XIV

In case you’ve somehow missed it, the internet’s new obsession is Moo Deng, an adorable pygmy hippo calf from the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. After taking over social media, Moo Deng fandom has now hit MMO Final Fantasy 14, where in-game prices for the game’s hippo calf minion are hitting new extremes.

As picked up by GamesRadar, X user Cerulean posted a screenshot of a market-board search for the hippo calf, showing that prices for the minion had jumped from 17,400 gil in early September to almost 300,000 gil by the end of the month. Come from Sports betting site VPbet

Square Enix have even gotten in on the fun, posting a gif of the hippo calf in a scene reminiscent of the Khao Kheow Zoo’s viral videos of Moo Deng.

Minecraft Java Vs. Bedrock- Which Version Is Best For Playing Mojang's Game-

You can play Minecraft just about anywhere–PC, consoles, and mobile devices all run Mojang’s seemingly immortal game. But the truth is that despite being on a dozen platforms, there are really just two versions: Bedrock and Java. If you’re looking to get into Minecraft, you’ll see people talking about these two versions, but what is the difference–and which one is best?

Java vs. Bedrock: Why are there two versions?

When Minecraft just started to become popular in the early 2010s, there was just one platform and one version. Minecraft was built in Java and played on Windows and Linux. Bedrock, meanwhile, began its life as Minecraft Pocket Edition, a version meant to run well on mobile devices, but would eventually form the base for Bedrock Edition.

Bedrock Edition exists for a few reasons. One is that Java has tons of security vulnerabilities; a major vulnerability affected Minecraft’s Java edition as recently as December 2021, in which the Log4j vulnerability allowed users to execute code on a Minecraft server just by entering text into the game’s chatbox. If you’re putting your game onto every console in existence, you probably don’t want to accidentally make them all hackable–as much as console modders would love that.

Java is also not terribly well optimized for 3D games like Minecraft, and wouldn’t have run well on the first round of consoles it released on, which includes the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Bedrock is a complete rebuild of Minecraft that both takes care of that security issue and lets Microsoft better optimize the game for modern game console hardware.

Java vs. Bedrock: What’s the difference?

There are a number of differences between Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft, including little mechanical differences–Minecraft on Java has more combat moves, and some mobs and items have different variables–though Microsoft has made an effort in recent years to ensure that Minecraft’s Bedrock and Java Editions are getting closer and closer together, rather than further apart.

Which version you want will depend a little bit on your needs.

If you’re playing on a console or mobile device–an Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, or Android/iOS device, you’ll be playing Bedrock. If you’re one of the few and proud that plays on a Linux device, you’re going to be playing Java. So we’ll assume those players already know what they want and focus on the rest of us playing on Windows 10 and 11 PCs.

If you want to play with friends on other platforms, go with Bedrock and Realms.

So, all of your friends play Minecraft, but some of them play on PC, others play on Xbox, and some are even playing on their mobile devices. There are a couple of options for cross-play. With Minecraft Bedrock, you can hook up with them whenever you like for a single-session multiplayer game–you can join your friend’s game, but only while they’re also playing–stored on the host user’s device. If you use an official Minecraft Realm, though, you can have an always-online, always-accessible server provided by Microsoft for a small monthly fee. Anyone on Bedrock Edition that you invite–that includes players on Xbox One, Series S, and Series X, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Android, iOS, and Windows 10 and 11–can join a Realm and get building whenever they want.

As a side note, if you’re planning to build your own server or pay another provider with more flexible server options, you’ll need to stick with PC or take your chances with dicey hacks to get other versions working with servers, as only Windows devices support connecting to custom servers in Bedrock Edition.

If you want to go super deep with modding, play Java Edition.

You’re not one to just leave a game the way it was installed. You want to make it your own. That doesn’t mean just skins and texture packs, but total overhaul mods that introduce new game mechanics, shader packs, and more. If that sounds like you, you’ll want to play Java Edition.

If you have an older computer, play Bedrock Edition.

The older your computer is, the more leeway you’ll need to give it with games. Minecraft is anything but new, but Bedrock tends to run better on older systems due to Java’s generally poor optimization. Of course, Java will most likely run fine–but Bedrock Edition will give you a little more elbow room. Generally speaking, if you want the most stable performance, the general consensus in the Minecraft community seems to be that Bedrock offers a smoother, more stable experience over Java–regardless of whether your PC qualifies as a potato or cutting-edge technology.

If you want officially supported ray tracing, play Bedrock Edition.

If you want the most advanced graphical effects and prefer they be of the officially supported variety, Minecraft Bedrock Edition offers full integration with Nvidia’s ray tracing and upscaling features. Ray tracing allows you to enjoy all kinds of light effects that completely change the way the game looks, while Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling helps keep the game running smoothly by playing at a lower resolution and then using AI/deep learning to make the game look like it’s running at that native resolution. Minecraft Java Edition does offer shader packs and other mods that can change the way the game looks, but Bedrock is where the official support lies. At this time, you must be running an Nvidia RTX card of some kind–the newer the better.

If you want to see experimental versions first, play Java Edition.

While Bedrock Edition is the lead platform for Microsoft and Mojang, Java Edition is still under active development, and due most likely to it having a smaller player base (remember, PC only) that’s generally more tolerant of changes, Java will often get upcoming and experimental features first. If you want to see all that new stuff before it makes it to the official Bedrock branch of development, check out Java edition. Come from Sports betting site VPbet