For CES 2021, Razer revealed two concepts for new products, including a smart N95 mask and a new type of gaming chair. Dubbed Project Brooklyn, the chair transforms into an immersive gaming station with an OLED “surround” screen. Built with carbon fiber and adorned with RGB lighting, it is designed to be a “cockpit”-style chair.
“Project Brooklyn is an exciting concept developed on the true essence of a fully immersive gaming station,” Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan said in a press release. “The haptic feedback, visuals, and overall functional design with attention to ergonomics will deliver a one-of-a-kind gameplay experience.”
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Project Brooklyn takes design inspiration from the Razer Iskur, a gaming chair released in October 2020 that prioritizes comfort. Meanwhile, the adjustable platform of the chair takes inspiration from the Razer Raptor monitor, supporting a 60″ full surround OLED display.
Additionally, Project Brooklyn incorporates Razer’s audio-driven haptic feedback prototype that was first shown off at CES 2019, so it vibrates differently depending on what you’re currently doing in-game–similarly to the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, just for an entire chair.
Alongside Project Brooklyn, Razer also revealed its plans for Project Hazel, a smart mask. Project Hazel is designed with an airtight seal and ventilators, ideal for the gamer who really doesn’t want to get sick. A built-in microphone also amplifies your voice so that you’re not muffled while wearing the mask.
Razer revealed new Blade laptop models at CES 2021, but it didn’t stop there, unveiling two product concepts its design teams have been working on. The first is an immersive gaming chair with a 60-inch surround OLED display, while the second was designed with the current state of the world in mind. Razer’s Project Hazel is a smart mask that’s designed to keep people safe during the pandemic and sociable in a world where social distancing has become the norm.
The Project Hazel smart mask has surgical N95 respirators that use rechargeable active ventilators and replaceable Smart Pod filters. Razer says the “high bacterial filtration efficiency Smart Pods filter at least 95% of airborne particles.” Additionally, each mask comes with a wireless charging case to replenish the ventilators’ battery life. This case also features a UV sterilizer to ensure the cleanliness of the mask.
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As for actually wearing the mask, Project Hazel is made of scratch-resistant and waterproof plastic. It boasts adjustable ear loops, custom sizes, and an air-tight seal with active cooling to allow for a smooth air flow and the disposal of carbon dioxide. The transparent design allows other people to see the wearer’s mouth to help with social situations and those who require lip reading to communicate. The mask has a low-light mode that activates lights in the dark and a built-in microphone to amplify the wearer’s voice for better communication.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Razer product without Chroma RGB lighting, and Project Hazel has exactly that. The RGB lighting can be found on a ring light around the ventilators and customized with over 16 million colours.
If you’re hoping to buy Project Hazel for yourself, you may have to wait quite a while. Razer doesn’t currently have plans to sell this, though the company notes that it will continue to optimize Project Hazel by putting it through “rigorous testing and user feedback to ensure safety compliance and maximum comfort and usability.” It’s unclear when Project Hazel will be available to the public, but for now, you can learn more at Razer.
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During Razer’s livestream presentation at CES, the company announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 will get Razer Chroma functionality with its line of Chroma-enabled products. A brief trailer showed off the functionality working with a Razer keyboard and mouse.
Razer Chroma changes the coloring across the full RGB lighting spectrum in certain lit areas of its peripherals, like underneath the keys and on the letter caps of a keyboard. In the video we saw this used to set the mood with red lighting during a particularly demonic moment, highlighting the number keys during a decision moment, and even using the keys to approximate the shape of a D20. The announcement promised the functionality is coming soon, but did not give a date.
Baldur’s Gate 3 released in early access last year, and a release date for the final version is still unannounced. In GameSpot’s Baldur’s Gate 3 early access review, David Wildgoose wrote that it “shows a good deal of promise, yet there are plenty of warning signs it may not fulfill its potential.”
Fans of Motion Twin’s roguelite metroidvania Dead Cells will be stoked to know that Motion Twin and Evil Empire have announced the game’s second paid DLC: Fatal Falls. It will be arriving for both consoles and PC on January 26, and will cost $5/€5.
Fatal Falls is bringing two brand-new biomes for players to explore and fight their way through: The Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores. These are parallels to the Stilt Village, Clock Tower, and Time Keeper areas in the base game, and were designed to serve as alternate paths to spice up your mid-game runs. The DLC will also be adding a “new” boss, The Scarecrow, that current fans may recognize as the Royal Gardener, now infected with Malaise.
On your way to take the Scarecrow down, you will encounter eight new “slightly psychotic” enemy types including the Myopic Crow, Clumsy Swordsman, and Compulsive Gravedigger. But don’t worry, you’ll be getting some new weapons to take them on with. Seven, to be exact:
Lightning Rods
Ferryman’s Lantern
Scarecrow’s Sickles
Iron Staff
Snake Fangs
Serenade
Cocoon.
Each of these will be useful in different areas of the two new biomes. And to make sure you look as cool as you feel while taking these goons down with your new toys, the DLC will also come with 10 new outfits.
To celebrate Fatal Falls’ release, Motion Twin and Evil Genius have also announced several sales and bundles for Dead Cells. Starting on January 26, prices for the standard game will be slashed across all platforms, though the dates of sales will depend on the platform, so plan accordingly and keep an eye on your preferred platform’s storefront.
Switch players can now preorder the Fatal Seed Bundle at a 33% discount. The bundle includes all of the game’s previous free updates and both paid DLCs, Fatal Falls and The Bad Seed, for $20/€20. This bundle will be available across all platforms at a 33% discount starting on January 26. The base version of Dead Cells will also be available for 50% off ($12.50/€12.50) during the celebratory sale period, in case you want to give it a try before committing to the full bundle experience.
GameSpot’s review said that “Dead Cells is a phenomenal effort to blend together some very disparate genres into a tight, cohesive whole. It’s one of the better examples of how to remix ideas without losing their individual strengths.” If you’ve been thinking about grabbing it, there’s never been a better time.
While we have to wait until Fall 2021 to actually play Halo Infinite, the merchandise around the game is already kicking into gear, and this now includes a very comfy-looking branded bathrobe.
Toynk is now selling an officially licensed Halo Infinite-themed bathrobe. Available in one adult size, the $60 USD bathrobe is “authentically designed” to look like Master Chief’s iconic green armor. The 100% polyester fleece robe features the number 117 on the chest, two front pockets, an adjustable belt, and embroidered shoulder pauldrons. The hood becomes Master Chief’s helmet when you drape it over your face, which is a nice touch.
“Perfect for slipping into after an exhausting day of saving humanity as a cybernetically-enhanced space marine. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to look good doing it, right?” reads a line from the item’s description.
You can check out more photos of the Halo Infinite robe below.
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Halo Infinite was originally slated to release as a launch title for the Xbox Series X|S in November, but Microsoft elected to push the game to 2021 due in part to complications related to COVID-19 and working from home. Recently, 343 boss Bonnie Ross said the wait will be worth it.
Cyberpunk 2077’s multiplayer component isn’t coming out anytime soon, but we may have just received a hint about what it could include. Dataminers have reportedly found information surrounding two game modes within the game’s files, according to DSOGaming.
The first is a standard deathmatch game mode that you’d see in most multiplayer shooters, but the second mode is something different. The files indicate that there will be some sort of “heist” mode that has players complete missions that are similar to the ones found in the single-player campaign. We don’t have any details yet, but some of the files hint at the game mode playing similarly to the heists in Grand Theft Auto Online.
The game reportedly includes files with names like “MP.Heist.MessagePlayerReady” and “MP.Heist.SetPlayerCharacterClass” among others that seemingly reference new players spawning and players having to gather in a specific area in order for the heist to begin. These are just files within Cyberpunk 2077, so nothing is confirmed. The final product could be very different from what we’re seeing here.
CD Projekt Red executive Adam Kicinski said that the studio would share more news on the standalone multiplayer game in the first quarter of 2021.
Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t launch nearly as well as CD Projekt Red had hoped, and the blowback has only grown worse for the studio. Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection has begun investigating CD Projekt Red. The studio could receive a fine that amounts to 10% of the income for its most recent financial year if it can’t provide a substantial explanation for the games shortcomings.
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AMD has announces its latest batch of Ryzen 5000 series mobile processors for laptops and gaming laptops.
Bringing the Zen 3 core to mobile, AMD announced a trio of Ryzen 5000 Processors including the Ryzen 7 5800U, Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Ryzen 9 5980HX.
Starting off with AMD’s flagship Ryzen 7 5800U, it’s an 8 core and 16 thread processor with a 4.4GHz maximum boost clock. According to AMD, the Ryzen 7 5800U far outpaces Intel’s latest 11th Gen Core i7-1185G7 by 44% in Adobe Premier video encoding and 39% in Blender 3D Ray Tracing.
What’s more AMD has announced a new line of even higher-end HX-Series mobile CPUs unlocked for overclocking to bring desktop-like performance to mobile. The first HX-Series processors we’ll see include the Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Ryzen 9 5980HX.
The Ryzen 9 5900HX is an 8 core, 16 thread processor with a 4.6Ghz boost clock and 20MB of cache. The Ryzen 9 5980HX meanwhile features 8 cores and 16 threads, a 4.8GHz Boost Clock and 20MB of cache.
Additionally all of the Ryzen 5000 Series mobile processors are getting an injection of RDNA 2 that’s found in AMD’s latest graphics cards as well as the chips powering the Xbox Series X and PS5. To prove how much more powerful its integrated graphics is, AMD showed off how it can run Horizon Zero Dawn at 1080p and over 100fps.
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Kevin Lee is IGN’s Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam
The online Mario game’s first World Count Challenge runs from January 18-25. While the event still pits you against other players, there’s an overarching objective that everyone will be working toward. If players can cumulatively defeat 3.5 million Bowsers during the event period, everyone who participated and defeated at least one Bowser will take home 350 My Nintendo Platinum points. These points can be redeemed for rewards on the My Nintendo website.
The World Count Challenge kicks off at 11 PM PT on January 18 and runs until the same time on January 25. Nintendo plans to hold two more World Count Challenge events in February and March, but no further details on those have been announced yet. You can read more about the event on Nintendo’s website.
Much like Tetris 99, Super Mario Bros. 35 is a battle-royale style game that’s free to download and play for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. You’ll need an active membership to participate in the World Count Challenge event. Subscriptions cost $4 for one month, $8 for three months, and $20 for one year, while an annual Family Plan costs $35.
It’s official: Flash is dead. Adobe is now blocking content made with Flash from running on browsers.
On Flash’s final update page, the company stated, “Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems.”
It’s more accurate to say Flash has been dead since Adobe’s announcement for the tool’s end-of-life plans in 2017. And before that, Flash certainly was well on its way to the grave. Not a lot of websites were still using it, and HTML/CSS became pretty much the new tool kit. iOS devices also stopped officially supporting Flash, circa 2010. Steve Jobs famously hated Flash and wrote an open letter criticizing the plug-in for its reliability and security, among other things.
But in its heyday, people used Flash to make websites–like really popular websites–and DIY novelty games, as explored in writing like Nathalie Lawhead’s Short History of Flash is a good one and The Death of 2 Advanced.
Not all was good, of course. Adobe made the decision to kill off Flash in part because of its security issues. Flash’s security holes provided the throughway for multiple attacks against desktops.
If you’re curious about what a slice of the Flash era looked like, preservationists are doing the good work of documenting Flash games and websites. One developer ported his Flash games to the original Game Boy, and others are creating repositories like the Flash Game Archive.
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and The Umbrella Academy comic book series.
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Netflix has renewed The Umbrella Academy for a third 10-episode season, which seems like an obvious choice considering that the show’s second season was hugely popular. Production will begin in February with the main cast being joined by a (mostly) new group of actors who will be playing the Sparrow Academy. This nasty gang are the students of Sir Reginald Hargreeves in the alternate present our heroes will find themselves in during Season 3.
The extremely dysfunctional superpowered family has spent the past two seasons trying to stop apocalyptic events of their own making, so the question is what the future — or alt-present as — has in store. The comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba that the show is based on likely have some answers, so let’s dig into some possibilities.
Season 2 ended with the Hargreeves siblings having successfully stopped nuclear war from breaking out in 1963 and time traveling back to 2019. Unfortunately their time in the past seems to have significantly affected the future.
Though in Season 1 their adoptive father Sir Reginald Hargreeves had killed himself in 2019 in a bid to reunite the Umbrella Academy in the hopes that they would prevent the end of the world, apparently in this timeline he’s still alive and found a new group of superpowered kids to turn into a superhero team. Also, it seems he’s a pretty horrible father in both timelines.
At the end of Season 2, when the Hargreeves siblings return from 1963 to their home in 2019, they discover it’s now the base of the Sparrow Academy, a group led by their dead sibling Ben (Justin H. Min), who also apparently didn’t die in this new timeline. Posing behind him, with their faces obscured so that the actors and characters could be revealed later, are the members of this entirely different squad. Presumably they’re made up of members of the strange group of 43 children who were born on the same day in 1989, just like the Umbrella Academy gang.
The Sparrow Academy as glimpsed in the Season 2 finale.
The Sparrow Academy in the Comics
The Sparrow Academy does feature significantly in the third collection of the comics, Hotel Oblivion. Vanya is left seriously injured by her fight with the rest of the Umbrella Academy and spends much of the time after that incident trying to recover physically and mentally. In Hotel Oblivion, her robotic mother, who didn’t die in the comics as she did in the show’s first season, takes her to meet a friend named Deever who once worked with Reginald Hargreeves. It’s likely that he was involved in the same project to locate and train the 43 children.
After Deever grills Vanya for 20 minutes, her mother (called Grace in the show but just Mom in the comics) takes her to Paris where she meets a woman wearing a red jacket with a sparrow pin similar to the umbrella logo members of the Umbrella Academy sport. The woman tells Vanya that she’s “coming home” and leads her to a remote facility in Norway where she says Vanya will find family. Later, seven members of the Sparrows bail out the Umbrella Academy during a big fight. Their Number One greets Luther as a brother, further reinforcing the idea that they’re all from the same group of children.
That’s the very last scene in Hotel Oblivion, but more is coming. Gerard Way is currently working on a spinoff prequel centering on fan favorite character Klaus, but he’s announced that Volume 4 of the main series will be called Sparrow Academy and likely center on this new group. There’s no announced date for the comic, so it’s possible that the show will start answering these questions even before the comics.
The Sparrow Academy from the comics.
Who’s in the Sparrow Academy?
One big departure in the show is that Ben is alive and part of the Sparrow Academy. But beyond him, the comics don’t provide a ton of info about the Sparrows beyond a hint as to their powers. Vanya is in a wheelchair when she first meets a member of the Sparrow Academy and insists that she can’t walk. When the woman says “I don’t believe you,” Vanya discovers to her surprise that she can actually walk. When she asks how that’s possible, the woman responds “I said so.” That strongly hints that she might have the sort of extremely powerful mind controlling and reality warping powers of Allison Hargreeves, who can make something true just by saying “I heard a rumor…”
All of the members of the Sparrow Academy seem to be able to fly, though it’s unclear if they each individually have that power, if one character gives the others the power, or if they’re using technology. The powers demonstrated by the members of the Sparrow Academy in the comics are:
Dark energy eye blasts
Transforming into a flock of birds
A human voodoo doll who can hurt themselves to damage enemies
Netflix has revealed what to expect from the Sparrows in the show. They will include:
Marcus, a.k.a. Sparrow No. 1, will be played by Justin Cornwell and is apparently the group’s leader. “Graceful but lethal, calculated but compassionate, he is as smart as he is strong,” says Netflix.
Justin H. Min returns as Ben, Sparrow No. 2. This alternate Ben is described as “a Machiavellian tactician, wrapped up in a pretty boy body with a rumbling inner-squid.” He’s “vicious, pragmatic, and hyper-vigilant” and wants to become the leader of the group.
Fei, Sparrow No. 3, will be played by Britne Oldford. She “sees the world in a special way” and “comes across as a misanthrope who would rather be alone than spend even a second with you.”
Alphonso, Sparrow No. 4, is played by Jake Epstein as a person whose face and body are scarred with “countless visual reminders of his battles” from his years of crime-fighting.
Sloane, Sparrow No. 5, is played by Genesis Rodriguez and is described as “a romantic and a dreamer who feels a higher cosmic calling leaving her eager to see the world and experience a life beyond her upbringing.”
Jayme, Sparrow No. 6, is played by Cazzie David and is “a loner hidden under a hoodie.”
Christopher, Sparrow No. 7, is “a telekinetic cube of unknown origin,” per Netflix. “He can turn the room freezing cold and induce paralyzing fear. He acts as the Sparrows’ consulted oracle who hands out incredible advice and serves as the family mediator.”
With the Handler dead, the Temps Commission in friendly hands, and Vanya rehabilitated, the Umbrella Academy is going to need a new villain. It’s possible that the season’s main antagonist will be Reginald, especially since last season revealed that he’s an alien in disguise — something shown in the comic’s first issue. But Hotel Oblivion also offers plenty of other options.
The titular location in Hotel Oblivion is a pocket dimension where Hargreeves sent all the supervillains that the Umbrella Academy defeated over the years, kind of like a more disturbing version of the Phantom Zone. Much of the story follows the Murder Magician, who doesn’t really live up to his name, having only “killed the physical manifestation of a lie in human form” which was apparently a version of Allison created through her powers.
He’s been in Hotel Oblivion for some time after a fight with the Umbrella Academy that killed his assistant. He has a baby with another prisoner, a mentally unstable shapeshifter who carries around a broken Magic 8-Ball. Trying to protect the baby from her, he hatches an escape plan with Obscura, a much more wicked gangster with a camera attached to his head. As weird as the Netflix adaptation is, the comics are much, much weirder.
The escapees arrive in the basement of the Perseus Corporation, a powerful company that has somehow acquired the teleportation device Reginald used to access his prison. John Perseus’ father, John Perseus the Ninth, was a supervillain defeated by the Umbrella Academy and condemned to Hotel Oblivion. When Perseus the Tenth realizes what he’s got, he goes to Hotel Oblivion to bust him out but finds that his father has committed suicide. He decides to take on his mantle with the help of Medusa, a floating robotic head. Then he releases all the still-living prisoners and causes absolute havoc.
Some of the former inmates include the Scientific Man, an extremely powerful villain with the ability to disintegrate people, who often kills other prisoners. He seems to be modeled after Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Terminal is seemingly based on Galactus and can absorb anything into his stomach to grow more powerful. The Peppermint Scarves is a gang inspired by a band that Gerard Way made up for Christmas cards. And there are a bunch of other very strange bad guys like the Sequin Skull, a giant eyeball on a human body that shoots lasers, and someone in a suit with a black widow spider for a head.
Any of these characters are up for grabs in Season 3, though it’s also possible that the show’s writers will just create new foes for the gang to face (as they did with Lila in Season 2).
Eldritch Terrors
When Luther and Diego go to Hotel Oblivion, the sky rips open and reveals a squidlike monstrosity that reaches down a tentacle to touch Luther on the forehead and give him a sequence of strange visions. It then shrieks and flees. Doctor Zoo, a friend of Reginald, realizes that the hotel was designed to be a cosmic trap for that entity, with the prisoners serving as bait.
Later in the comic, Klaus is suffering from a drug overdose where he is confronted by Ben’s ghost, who appears with a hole in his stomach. Ben’s ability was to summon eldritch tentacles from his abdomen and it’s never really explained how he died. His headstone reads “May the darkness within you find peace in the light,” which could imply he suffered from mental illness or that his own strange power killed him.
Ben gives Klaus the cryptic message “It’s coming. You better be ready.” That could be a further reference to the strange entity Hotel Oblivion was meant to trap. Reginald is seen escaping a dying planet for Earth in Season 1, so it’s possible that this cosmic threat was to blame for his previous home’s destruction and that it’s caught up with him. With Ben alive again in the show, we could learn more about how his powers work and how they’re connected to this threat.
Whatever material from the comics the new season does integrate, we’re just hoping that it maintains the show’s zany humor mixed with some good family drama. If you have any theories or characters you’d like to see, let us know in the comments!
