Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is now available on Android and iOS globally, following a 2019 release on consoles and PC.
The collection includes HD versions of the first three games from the popular Capcom legal drama series: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright™: Ace Attorney – Justice for All and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations. The trilogy costs $28.99 CAD on Google Play and $34.99 on the App Store.
The trilogy follows rookie attorney Phoenix Wright as he investigates various murders featuring a colourful cast of characters. Players will then have to use the evidence they’ve gathered to successfully determine the culprits in court.
The most recent release in the Ace Attorney series, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, was released last year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.
It’s not necessarily uncommon for adventure games to follow characters as they reflect on their lives, but Annapurna Interactive’s Hindsight seems to be approaching the concept in some clever and effective ways.
Primarily developed by creator Joel McDonald (Prune) and narrative designer and writer Emma Kidwell (Half), Hindsight tells follows a woman named Mary as she’s clearing out her childhood home. Along the way, she drudges up memories of her mother, who has since passed away.
“How do we make the most of the time we have on Earth?” says McDonald of the game’s premise during a hands-off media preview. By going through her old home, Mary will have to come to terms with her complicated feelings about her past. “How did I lose touch with what was important?” Mary asks herself during the demo. Over the course of Hindsight‘s three-to-four-hour story, you’ll figure out just that.
Right away, it’s easy to see how Hindsight could compare to emotional narrative-driven adventure games like Gone Homeand What Remains of Edith Finch. But the storytelling techniques that McDonald and Kidwell use appear unique and well-executed. During each of the game’s chapters, you’ll see snippets of Mary’s life play out, and in order to progress, you’ll need to find “apertures.” These objects, which can be part of the characters or environment, will directly lead into the next scene through stylish, cinematic transitions.
According to McDonald, this idea came from taking the concept of mementos, which transport us back in time, and making that literal. As an example, one scene shows a child Mary excitedly asking her mother to spray her with a hose on a warm and sunny day. After her mother enthusiastically obliges, you, the player, must pan the camera around until you can line up another image of Mary through the ensuing water droplets. This segues into a dark and moody scene in which Mary is splashing in a puddle alone in the rain. In another instance, you have to re-arrange broken pieces of a mirror so you can zoom through it into the next segment.
It’s a smart way of creating light “puzzle” mechanics of sorts to engage the player while allowing for smooth jumps between often visually or tonally juxtaposed scenes. McDonald says the goal behind bouncing between these different periods of Mary’s life was to create “that feeling of being in a particular place in time.”
“And just sitting with it,” adds Kidwell, noting that players can their time to just absorb individual moments before moving on. “Because there are going to be a lot of heavy themes that we deal with.” Indeed, without any sort of combat or enemy threat, you’re free to just soak everything in, and it looks to create an appropriately wistful vibe when coupled with the game’s minimalist, painterly aesthetic. Adding to that is the fact that McDonald and Kidwell say Hindsight‘s story draws a lot from their own lives, which should add some authenticity to the subject matter.
On top of Mary dealing with her grief, there’s a larger external narrative at play regarding her job as an accomplished chef. At the start of Hindsight, she’s about to open her own restaurant, so returning home is a way to close one chapter as she’s about to open another. We see this play out during the demo when a phone call in the present day snaps her back to reality as she’s reminiscing. It’s currently unclear how much of a role this side of the story will play, but Kidwell says it serves as “an external force to push the player and remind them why they’re there,” and from that perspective, it seems to be working well.
At the end of each chapter, you’ll also get the chance to keep one object in Mary’s suitcase in what Kidwell says was inspired by an Itch.io game called Packing Up the Rest of Your Stuff on the Last Day at Your Old Apartment. While Hindsight‘s narrative beats won’t change depending on what you pick, McDonald and Kidwell say it’s a chance for the player to reflect on the journey as they go along.
“You as the player choose what you want to value — what matters in your own life or what would matter to Mary,” says McDonald. “Player expression was really important to us,” adds Kidwell. “It acknowledges the player’s journey that they’re having with us.”
In the end, I’ve come away quite intrigued by Hindsight. It’s looking to be a tightly crafted and emotional story told through an engaging presentation style. I’m eager to play it for myself when the game releases sometime later this year on Nintendo Switch, PC and iOS.
Gmail has long included a storage use indicator on its web app, but those using the Gmail app on mobile couldn’t easily see how much storage they were using. At least, not until now.
Both the Android and iOS Gmail apps now feature a storage use indicator in the account switcher menu. Users can access the menu by tapping their profile icon in the top-right corner of the app. Those with multiple Gmail accounts will see a list of their accounts here, along with the storage used by the current account.
The storage indicator features a cloud logo with Google’s signature colours and lists a percentage of storage used out of your total storage. Tapping the storage indicator will take you to a breakdown of storage showing how much is used by Google Photos, Gmail, Drive, and more. You can also access options to buy more storage or clean up your storage.
Unfortunately, it seems the storage indicator only shows up for Google One subscribers. It kinda makes sense, given that One is Google’s cloud storage platform. But considering Gmail accounts come with 15GB of free storage, it’d be helpful if non-subscribers could see their used storage too. Arguably, it’d be more helpful, since they have less storage and likely need to manage it more often.
Finally, given that Google’s account switcher menu seems to operate the same across its apps, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the storage indicator made its way to other apps. It’d make sense too — being able to quickly check your account storage in apps like Photos or Drive would be a smart addition.
Twitter has made its closed caption toggle available on iOS and Android.
The feature, which has long been available on the web, allows users to turn on captions for its video player. Users can tap the “CC” button on videos with captions available to activate the feature.
The company started testing the feature in April with a small group of iOS users.
While available in the past, accessing captions wasn’t simple. A variety of factors went into play, including turning captions on through accessibility settings or ensuring that the sound on your device was turned off.
The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android!
Tap the “CC” button on videos with available captions to turn the captions off/on. https://t.co/GceKv68wvi
While the update certainly makes it easier to access captions, it’s important to remember video creators play an important role in delivering the feature, as they’re responsible for adding captions that will show up on Twitter’s mobile app.
When I was a kid, one of my favourite games was Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. An action-RPG featuring customizable parties of some of my favourite characters? That’s right up my alley.
Now, Vancouver-based Kabam is giving similar treatment to other Disney-owned characters in Disney Mirrorverse. And while it’s certainly not as in-depth or engaging as Ultimate Alliance, given that it’s a free-to-play mobile game, it’s certainly fun enough.
The premise is simple: when a supernatural force known as the Fractured threatens the multiverse, Mickey Mouse must use his magical powers to assemble heroes and villains alike (known here as “Guardians”) from the worlds of Disney and Pixar.
We’ve seen such a story concept many times before, and Mirrorverse unfortunately doesn’t really make the most of it. Occasionally, you’ll get a few basic text-based cutscenes in which characters interact, like Tangled’s Rapunzel getting annoyed with Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Jack’s obsession with treasure. It’s by no means exceptional writing, but it adds at least a little character to the proceedings. Overall, though, you don’t get much of this, and the lack of any voice acting for these characters only further makes them feel a bit lifeless in terms of characterization.
Thankfully, Kabam has quite clearly flexed its creative chops when it came to designing the war-ready aesthetic of each character. Using the multiverse conceit, the developer has dreamed up some truly unique and charming takes on iconic characters. For example, Monster’s, Inc.’s Sulley sports battle armour and a giant shield made out of a scare door. Snow White has a plant-covered “Thornhammer” that looks somewhat like Thor’s Stormbreaker from the Avengers movies. And Toy Story Woody looks downright dapper in a full sheriff’s getup that’s not unlike what Will Smith wore in Wild Wild West.
I wasn’t expecting Woody to ever look *cool,* but here we are.
Discovering the little quirks that Kabam has given each character is a real highlight of Mirrorverse, and it further encourages you to unlock them all. The diversity of properties represented is also quite solid. You’ve got heavy hitters like Toy Story (Buzz, Woody and Zurg), Frozen (Anna and Elsa), The Little Mermaid (Ariel and Ursula) and Aladdin (Aladdin, Genie and Jafar), and more offbeat picks like Wall-E’s Eve, Onward’s Ian Lightfoot and Inside Out’s Anger.
The surprising badassery of each character extends to combat, which consists of real-time movement mixed in with tapping onscreen attack buttons. Each is broken down into one of three categories — Melee, Ranged and Tank. As a Ranged character, it was fun to see Merida — clad in Scottish warrior clothing — alternate between shooting flurries of arrows from afar and throwing magic axes. Likewise, Sulley running up to an enemy and using his shield-door to literally scream at enemies is also always enjoyable.
All told, the novelty of seeing these characters in action and mixing and matching them to create your ultimate party of three is quite entertaining. Unfortunately, it only goes so far before repetition starts to settle in heavily. Specifically, it’s the structure of levels that are the biggest shortcoming. Essentially, you clear one wave of enemies, your heroes automatically run to a second area, and then there’s a tougher enemy in a third and final arena. Rinse, lather and repeat for virtually every battle. While your characters do level up, that just improves their stats; there are no further RPG mechanics like unlocking skill trees or equipping new gear.
Even the game’s optional content, like Supply runs (used to farm XP motes to level up characters), Events (timed quests themed around certain characters, like Buzz and Tron vs. Zurg) or Dungeons (a series of floors to work through to earn artifacts) all amount to the same “two regular battles, one boss battle” getup. At the very least, it feels like the game needed some sort of hub area to walk around in and talk to your characters to shake things up just a little bit.
That said, if the game’s simple and repetitive combat can feel like a steady grind at times, that so far hasn’t been the case when it comes to unlocking characters. While you’re bombarded often with offers for discounted microtransactions or even main page idle screens with Guardians you haven’t unlocked, the game otherwise gives you new characters at a decent pace. Over the course of playing for maybe an hour, I had a roster of six characters, with many more still to unlock using ‘Crystals.’ These resources can be purchased using ‘Orbs,’ which you earn from completing missions but can also purchase using real money. It remains to be seen how balanced the distribution of rewards will be later in the game, but so far, I haven’t felt obligated to spend any cash.
In the end, Disney Mirrorverse doesn’t quite feel like it capitalizes on the potential of a Disney multiverse story, and its fairly simplistic combat frustratingly doesn’t change over time. That said, those who primarily play on mobile will no doubt have fun with this easy-to-pick-up-and-play nature, and everyone can admire the imaginative twists of beloved Disney and Pixar characters.
Disney Mirrorverse is now available on Android and iOS. Kabam is promising regular updates of new story content, characters, limited-time events and more.
According to Appmagic, Diablo Immortal earned about $24 million USD (around $31.22 million CAD) via in-app purchases, with three percent of that revenue coming from Canada. The popular mobile game was downloaded about 8.5 million times, according to GameDev Reports.
The majority of the revenue also comes from Apple’s App Store at $13 million USD, (about $16.9 million CAD) and $11 million USD (around $14.3 million) from Google Play.
Diablo Immortal is available for free on the App Store and Google Play. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in January through a deal valued at $68.7 billion USD (about $85.96 billion CAD).
Some users have reported experiencing issues with Instagram Stories on iOS where they’re forced to watch all of a contact’s stories more than once before they can view the new ones. I haven’t run into this problem myself, but there are several reports on Reddit regarding the issue.
However, the glitch should now be gone. Instagram released an update for the app in the iOS App Store that seems to have fixed the issue.
A Meta spokesperson told The Verge in an email that the company is “aware that some people are having trouble accessing Instagram Stories” and that it is “working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”
The fix comes alongside ‘version 239.1’ of Instagram’s iOS app.
Webex users can now keep their virtual meetings active in various settings and without interruptions.
The video conference tool by Cisco now has Move to Mobile, which allows people to move their Webex calls from desktop to iPhone to Apple CarPlay.
Cisco directly built the feature into Webex Meetings. A QR code is generated when using it through the desktop that transfers a meeting to the user’s iPhone when scanned. Connecting the device to CarPlay moves it to a vehicle.
Users can also view upcoming meetings and join them via audio through CarPlay, a feature only available through Webex. Once a user is at their final destination, the session can continue over the phone and further connected to a conference room if needed.
The feature is also available for Android users.
The news builds on promises the company has made regarding “next-gen office spaces.”
Cisco announced back in March it was working with car manufacturer Ford to run Webex in their new electric vehicles. It will feature a 15.5-inch screen, called SYNCA 4A, that uses HTML5 and will offer a connection to Webex online. An app will also become available on the device.
“The automotive industry is undergoing a massive digital transformation. Cisco has the potential to help our customers embrace technology and fundamentally change the driving experience,” Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chair and CEO, said.
If you like to run, hike, or bike to get some fresh air, Google Maps’ new ‘Air Quality Index (AQI)’ layer might appeal to you.
Google Maps’ ‘Air Quality Index ‘ (AQI) overlay utilizes data collected from agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. to calculate air quality information. The feature is currently only available in the U.S., but it will likely make its way to Canada soon.
MobileSyrup has reached out to Google for more information.
As temperatures heat up and summer officially begins across the U.S., many of us are taking the opportunity to get outside. If you have an adventure on the horizon, here are two ways you can use our tools to stay safe and healthy this summer → https://t.co/qbVkou168r ☀️
PurpleAir will also offer a low-cost sensor network that detects conditions within hyper-local areas that appear on Google Maps. Air quality information from PurpleAir can be accessed on Nest smart displays and speakers.
Following the platform’s new ‘Air Quality Index’ feature, Google Maps also now offers a wildfire layer within the app to help users avoid areas that are at risk of or are experiencing wildfires. This feature was developed in partnership with the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).
Diablo Immortal was released on mobile on both the App Store and Google Play Store.
The game released sometime this morning in both Canada and United States, a day before the expected date for the launch of the PC version, which will be released on June 2nd. In fact, North America is the only region so far, where the game is available for download on both iOS and Android. But that could change as the day moves forward, according to DigitalTrends.
#Diablo Immortal has already started showing up in app stores one day ahead of its official launch. https://t.co/iUH9lHr1uh
As for the PC version, Activision Blizzard sent out a tweet mapping out the estimated release times for each region, also mentioning that players “may see it populate on servers even sooner” than its June 2nd release date.
Notably, another message was pinned on the Diablo Immortal official Discord server on May 28th, in which it states:
“As we note in our blog iOS and Android players will start to see Diablo Immortal propagate on their respective stores on the morning of 6/1. We don’t exactly know who will see it first or in what order of those who will see it. We expect this to be fairly early in the morning that this process will start (Pacific Time).”
The game will include optional in-game purchases, cross-play and cross-progression between PC and mobile, and accessibility features.
Diablo Immortal is currently free to play on both Android and IOS stores.
