Microsoft reportedly expects publishers to ask for millions and millions to put their games on Game Pass at launch.
31.08.2023 - 21:51 / polygon.com / Interactive
[ Ed. note: This ranked list is being continually updated as Netflix adds more interactive specials.]
2018’sBlack Mirror: Bandersnatch and 2019’s You vs. Wild marked a new phase for Netflix’s interactive shows, which started off with relatively simple interactive experiments for kids in 2017, designed to test the waters for actual Netflix games down the road. These Choose Your Own Adventure-style stories were some of Netflix’s more distinctive offerings for a short while, but fewer of them are being produced now as Netflix’s focus shifts toward more fully realized games, like the mini masterpiece Laya’s Horizon.
Still, Netflix continues to drop the occasional interactive story, and we’re continuing to rank each one based on how interactive it actually is. The service’s latest interactive special, Choose Love, finally dives into the seeking-romance genre that’s been such a hit for Netflix reality shows like Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On. This ranked list considers how much fun each Netflix interactive special is, what kind of stories they’re telling, and whether your choices actually have any effect on the overall story.
[Disclosure: Unwind Your Mindis a collaboration between Headspace and Vox Media Studios, a unit of Polygon’s parent company, Vox Media.]
This shouldn’t even really count as an interactive experience, but Netflix has labeled it as an Interactive, so we’re mentioning it. The only interactive part of this is picking which Headspace program you want: meditation, relaxation, or sleep. You can customize from there, but it’s just a glorified menu. Useful for what it’s meant for, but not so much for a story experience.
Similarly, Netflix files Trivia Quest under the interactive tag, but it isn’t an interactive story like the entries below. It’s based on a popular app calledTrivia Crack, and it’s basically a daily trivia game. The game gives the trivia questions a minimal storyline, as you need to answer correctly in order to free the little characters who have been captured by an evil sword. It’s more interactive than Headspace: Unwind Your Mind, but it’s still designed to be a trivia game first and foremost. There isn’t much wiggle room beyond whether you get answers right or wrong.
The trivia-based game Cat Burglar is actually really fun. There are so many different combinations of scenes that can play out. Viewers play as a cat stealing a priceless painting from a museum and outwitting a guard dog. There are six different segments — entering the museum, distracting the guard, the prehistory exhibit, the ancient artifacts exhibit, the medieval exhibit, and the painting theft itself, and each segment has multiple alternate scenarios. For instance, breaking into the
Microsoft reportedly expects publishers to ask for millions and millions to put their games on Game Pass at launch.
Controversy at Unity seems to be the story that never ends at the moment. Though today it appears that the owners of the popular game engine may be about to concede, at least a little, on the Unity Runtime Fee announcement that set the developer world on fire last week.
Pokemon has always inspired fan art, whether it be recreations of beloved creatures, or new dreamed-up critters and evolutions. The Pokemon Company is celebrating all the beautiful art fans create by bringing back the Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest. This year, the theme is “Magical Pokemon Moments.”
In Baldur’s Gate 3, we believe that the best roleplaying experiences are those that give you the freedom to embody whoever you want to be – whether that’s a Githyanki Fighter from the Astral Plane, a Tiefling Barbarian recently escaped from Hell, or even just a version of yourself.
The iPhone 15 series has finally been launched after months of anticipation, and it features promising upgrades over its predecessors such as Dynamic Island, USB Type-C, action button, titanium frame, and more. While four new iPhones have been introduced as part of the new iPhone 15 lineup, Apple has also discontinued iPhones such as the iPhone 14 Pro models, iPhone 13 Mini, and iPhone 12. On the other hand, several of its models have also received price drops, such as the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and the iPhone 13.
You may have heard about a little space game called Starfield, the gravitational pull from which risks swallowing all games discourse for months and possibly years to come. Perhaps that's no surprise for a game that's been in development and hyped for as long as any title that I can remember (well, ones that have shipped anyway) but it's easy to forget now the thing's in our hands that it was subject to multiple delays along the way.
Do you, like me, have an inescapable compulsion to thoroughly survey every barren rock, volcanic wasteland, and frozen desert that Starfield takes you to? Do you, like me, also have a tendency to hoard resources for the game's crafting and research systems? Then you, like me, have probably also experienced the agonising tedium of walking veeery slowly towards a point of interest because you're severely over-encumbered and worried about accidentally killing yourself by running and draining all your O2. But guess what? You don't have to.
A Marvel's Spider-Man 2 visual comparison has made the sequel feel worth the wait thanks to just how much better developer Insomniac has made New York look.
Apple is scheduled to host its Wonderlist event on September 12, where it will announce the new iPhone 15 lineup and Apple Watch Series 9. Apple keeps a tight schedule when it comes to the announcement and release of its products. However, it seems that the company could be working to release the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro early, as it will update its retail stores overnight after the event.
Starfield is officially out, and modders have been working hard creating helpful add-ons, from useful, quality-of-life mods such as revamping the inventory UI to unofficially adding support for DLSS. Others have added more cosmetic things like reskin in-game clothes. And then there are some people out there who keep modding Bethesda's Todd Howard into the game.
Before most players are even into Starfield, the classic Bethesda physics gags are going strong. Last week we got a peek at the space future of Hoarders and this week it's all coming up spuds.
Within about half a picosecond of the early release of Starfield, there was already a ruck of mods for Bethesda’s new IP. The numerous ways you can tinker with the space-faring RPG are only going to increase, but for now, how about one that lets director Todd Howard’s face literally shine a light on the situation?