As “internet of things” connectivity grows, more and more items can be considered “tech.” From digital watches to refrigerators… basically everything you can play Skyrim on, there is always more to discover. Since these items also improve our lives in tangible ways, they make exceptional gift items.
Whether this year brings iterative improvements to your favorite, daily-use items, massive leaps in the way tech is manufactured (which reduces how much tech costs), or new inventions altogether, tech makes our lives easier, improves the way we go about doing our work and play, and so much more.
To help you live your best life, and make the most of your tech, we’ve assembled a list of great devices from several different areas. From higher-end items like tablets and watches, to smaller items like smart plugs, Bluetooth item trackers, and more, we’ve got you covered regardless of what you (or your loved ones) are into.
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Best Tablet Gifts
The best tablet gifts, whether you want a simple reader or a versatile machine.
Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
Fortnite’s Season 5 added 40 non-playable characters to the battle royale. They are spread out across the map, with some spawning in multiple locations, and can give players special weapons, upgrades, missions, and bounty contracts. This guide will give you the locations of every NPC that’s currently available in-game. It’ll also give you tips on how to best reach all of them.
Where Is Every Fortnite NPC Located?
NPCs are spread across the map, some with multiple spawn locations, as detailed in the map below.
Fortnite NPC Map
There are multiple quirks to how the NPC system works, including the fact that NPCs spawn at different locations from game-to-game. You may go to a specific locations to talk to a character, but you won’t always find them. You’ll need to visit every location that NPC spawns at in order to complete the in-game log. It might take several attempts to complete.
NPCs walk around, so they may not be in the exact same location each time you visit them. A little thought bubble will appear on the map once you are close enough, though. Select NPCs can also be hired to fight alongside you, although they aren’t very helpful.
How Can I Keep Track Of NPCs I’ve Found?
Epic Games added a new section to its “Collections” tab that previously only displayed the various fish players caught. The new section has all NPCs you’ve visited, including the number of locations they spawn at. The location you found them will be listed at the bottom of each character’s page.
All you need to do is interact with an NPC in order to add them to your collections tab. You can also shoot a character, even if they’ve been hired by another player or squad, in order to add them to your collections page.
Fortnite’s Collection Tab
Players will earn an extra 15,000 experience points once they fill out their log. More characters could be added throughout the season, though. The NPC system has replaced Fortnite’s typical challenge system, although players can still access daily and battle pass-based challenges the same way they would in previous seasons.
Last week, Warner Bros. rocked the entertainment world with an unprecedented announcement: Every one of their 2021 releases would hit their streaming service, HBO Max, simultaneously with theatrical release. This means that in the upcoming year, major blockbusters like The Suicide Squad, Dune, and Godzilla vs. Kong will be available to watch from the comfort of your living room right away. It’s a plan they’re rolling out this month with the release of Wonder Woman 1984, the pilot film in the program, which will be in theatres were available and on HBO Max on Christmas day.
The plan has, unsurprisingly, caused quite a stir. Designed with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, Warner Bros. maintains that this is a temporary solution and will only extend through the end of 2021–but some of their partners in production are less than thrilled about the arrangement.
Variety reports that Legendary Entertainment, the co-finaner of films like Dune and Godzilla vs. Kong are considering legal action to fight against the decision. Sources say that, while no challenge has been filed yet, a potential breach of contract may be used as grounds to take things to court. Apparently the top brass of Legendary feel as though Warner Bros was not transparent in their intentions leading up to the big announcement, leaving those with financial stakes in the films without say in how their films were distributed.
Also according to Variety, Dune director Denis Villeneuve felt similar frustrations and would much rather see Dune get a traditional theatrical release.
Legendary and their partners are not alone in their frustration. The CEO of AMC Theaters has publicly aired grievances about the decision saying that “Clearly, Warner Media intends to sacrifice a considerable portion of the profitability of its movie studio division, and that of its production partners and filmmakers, to subsidize its HBO Max startup.”
It is unclear what potential repercussions legal action, if filed, could have on the plan or on the release of any of the affected films. One potential outcome may be a buyout of the films by Warner Bros outright before distribution.
Godzilla vs. Kong is scheduled to hit theaters and HBO Max on May 21 while Dune is scheduled to hit theaters and HBO Max on October 1.
Now that the next-gen consoles are out, console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft are working hard to show off the games that will be coming to the Xbox Series X/S and the PlayStation 5 over the next year or two. A new montage from Sony has revealed some details about exclusivity periods for notable games like Deathloop, Ghostwire Tokyo, Gran Turismo 7, and more.
For example, Gran Turismo 7 appears to be a true PS5 exclusive, with no apparent plans for any other releases, even on the PS4, whereas the stylish shooter Deathloop will be exclusive to the PS5 (and not other consoles) for one year after its release date. However, it will be available on PC at launch.
Ghostwire Tokyo has the same deal as Deathloop, with one year of PS5 console exclusivity and a simultaneous PC launch. Project Athia will also be available for PC at launch, but it will be console-exclusive on the PS5 for two years after its release date. The montage also highlights already-released PS5 exclusives like the Demon’s Souls remake and console-exclusive Godfall. For a full list of PS5 games, check out our list of confirmed and expected PS5 games.
Since the disastrous release of Nvidia’s RTX 30 series, many PC gamers have struggled to obtain the latest and greatest GPUs that they desire, particularly the 3070, 3080 and 3090. (We reviewed the first two of those, if you’re interested in their performance.) However, some enterprising thieves in China have taken the shortages to the next level. According to MSI, 40 cargo boxes worth of top-end GPUs were stolen from an MSI factory in China.
For those of you counting at home, that’s over 200 RTX 3090s, which currently retail at around $1500. However, thanks to the ongoing GPU shortage–which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic–the 3090 often goes for $2000 or even more on sites like eBay.
MSI Chinese mainland factory was stolen, stolen 40 boxes RTX3090, the total value of 2200000RMB ……😓 MSI has been officially announced and informed to the police ,Reward of 100000 RMB for reporting effective information. pic.twitter.com/JWw8hOMioG
According to Tom’s Hardware, MSI believes that an insider stole the cards because the factory’s shipping area is covered by video cameras. They’re also offering clemency to those who participated in the heist, as long as they help recover the cards. There’s a 100,000 Yuan reward ($15,314) for anyone who has additional information on the cards.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons players dominated Tumblr in 2020. The small-town-with-animals simulator topped the video game and overall list of trendiest topics, beating out every other topic on the website.
Fans of the series have flooded Tumblr with original artwork, memes, and posts about their favorite villagers. Some have used the platform to expand on the relationships of their favorite in-game characters, like Flick and CJ. Others have made simple jokes about memorable in-game moments.
Flick & CJ. Credt: chicinlicin
Raymond, Marshal, Poppy, and Fauna came in as the most popular Animal Crossing villagers while Tom Nook, everyone’s favorite tanuki landlord, was the third most popular video game character. He was more popular than Cloud Strife, Arthur Morgan, and Link on Tumblr.
While Animal Crossing has been the go-to replacement for birthdays, weddings, and other meaningful events, it’s also been an easy way to escape the onslaught of bad news that is 2020.
So does the actual content live up to its pre-release hype? Critics offered varying flavors of: It depends on what gameplay element you’re looking at. Most applauded the game’s beautiful technical construction and generally engaging RPG elements, but also noted the pre-release build’s many bugs. Some critics also thought Cyberpunk 2077 was very tame, as opposed to its marketed edginess. For a game with “cyberpunk” in its title, a couple reviewers thought it wasn’t revolutionary nor groundbreaking, and instead felt like a knit of past cultural and gaming references.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a pretty big game with a lot of side content, with some critics noting they weren’t able to fully explore everything. Completion of Cyberpunk 2077’s main storyline is estimated to be around 30 hours, and if you want to explore everything the game has to offer, it will be a much longer playtime.
Game: Cyberpunk 2077
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Google Stadia
Developer: CD Projekt RED
Release Date: December 10
Price: $60 / £60
Other than the below review excerpts, you can check out GameSpot’s sister site Metacritic for more reviews on the game.
GameSpot – 7/10
“[I]t’s hard to get into Cyberpunk 2077’s world in general. So much of it is superficial set dressing, and there’s so much happening all around you–ads going off at all times, gunfights breaking out in the streets, texts coming in about cars you’ll never buy–that a lot of the game feels superfluous. The side quests and the characters they showcase are the shining beacon through the neon-soaked bleakness of Night City, and they give you room to explore the best the core RPG mechanics have to offer. These are what carried me through an otherwise disappointing experience.” — Kallie Plagge [Full Review]
IGN – 9/10
“Cyberpunk 2077 kicks you into its beautiful and dazzlingly dense cityscape with few restrictions. It offers a staggering amount of choice in how to build your character, approach quests, and confront enemies, and your decisions can have a tangible and natural-feeling impact on both the world around you and the stories of the people who inhabit it. Those stories can be emotional, funny, dark, exciting, and sometimes all of those things at once. The main quest may be shorter than expected when taken on its own and it’s not always clear what you need to do to make meaningful changes to its finale, but the multitude of side quests available almost from the start can have a surprisingly powerful effect on the options you have when you get there. It’s a shame that frustratingly frequent bugs can occasionally kill an otherwise well-set mood, but Cyberpunk 2077’s impressively flexible design makes it a truly remarkable RPG.” — Tom Marks [Full Review]
PC Gamer – 78/100
“It’s the kind of game I’d upgrade for though, because Cyberpunk is a technical stunner and seeing your friends in high definition is worth the ask. Sure, The Witcher 3 was funnier, more clever and subversive, with better dialogue on the whole, but I’m taken by how relentlessly hopeful Cyberpunk is. Its exploration of a technocapitalist future relies heavily on genre tropes, with everyone from punks to dirty cops playing the part established way back in William Gibson’s Neuromancer. But Cyberpunk 2077 remains a loving, faithful treatment of the genre, and one that constantly urged me to look for the silver lining in every shit-soaked gutter…I found it moving and life-affirming in the final moments, even in the face of near certain death and a relentless onslaught of bugs. I suppose it’s an appropriate thematic throughline though: Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about V coming apart at the seams, in a city coming apart at the seams, in a game coming apart at the seams. Play it in a few months.” — James Davenport [Full Review]
Polygon – Unscored
“Like the city in which it is set, Cyberpunk 2077 may give off one impression when regarded from afar, one carefully constructed through years of marketing hype, but once players experience it up close, they’ll find that the truth is something else. On one hand, it’s a more earnest and sincere game than all its edgy marketing has suggested. On the other, though the word cyberpunk evokes a radical vision of the future, there’s nothing revolutionary on offer here. Instead, it’s a game obsessed with the past.” — Carolyn Petit [Full Review]
The Verge – Unscored
“In the way that Dungeons & Dragons codified Tolkienesque fantasy, Cyberpunk 2077 distills the most recognizable elements from influential fiction like Blade Runner and Neuromancer. The loosely defined cyberpunk genre began as a grounded alternative to space operas and post-apocalyptic wastelands, heavily influenced by hardboiled fiction. In the decades since, it’s so thoroughly permeated science fiction that its innovations have become cliches. Today, “cyberpunk” has two contradictory meanings: tech-heavy futuristic media that feels organically grown from present-day social conditions, and a specific set of 1980s and ‘90s-influenced retro-future noir conventions. Cyberpunk 2077 is a version of the latter.” — Adi Robertson [Full Review]
VentureBeat – Unscored
“What Cyberpunk really is, however, is a big open-world action role-playing game. What it’s not is a look at gaming’s future. Instead, it feels like a summation of where we’ve come in gaming since the Xbox 360 generation. It feels like a game built by people looking around to see what works — like Grand Theft Auto’s open world, Watch Dogs’ hacking, Assassin’s Creed’s quest-filled maps, Fallout’s combat and character progression, Mass Effect’s dialogue system, Batman: Arkham Knight’s crime scene investigations, and every games’ skill trees. At the same time, Cyberpunk doesn’t try much new. It feels big and expensive — and getting all of these parts to fit together seems like an impossible challenge. But because of this, Cyberpunk 2077 is a glimpse at where we are and not what is next.” — Jeff Grubb [Full Review]
Vice – Unscored
“Cyberpunk 2077 is a game of the past and its forgotten futures. Its setting is a pastiche that was overtaken by history and technology. It is a piece of software that is a throwback to PC gaming of the 1990s and early 2000s in every possible way, and its aesthetic and narrative sensibilities of a teenage boy’s bedroom in the 1980s. Yet its lavish and utterly sincere devotion to its influences recalls what has made these dated visions so alluring and enduring. Cyberpunk is too tacky and graceless to be cool, but it’s very big, and very loud, and sometimes that’s all it takes to be awesome.” — Rob Zacny [Full Review]
Washington Post – Unscored
“Imagine the dense activities and detail of Kamurocho in the “Yakuza” games and other smaller role-playing titles, stretched out across miles of a proper “Grand Theft Auto” city, and you’re starting to grasp the ambition of the most anticipated game of the year…That game delivered what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime fantasy role-playing experience, with the kind of writing and interactivity we’d been hoping for in the genre. And yet, despite that praise, it will be hard for me to say anything definitive in this review — at least for now. In the time I’ve had with the game so far, I know I’ve missed out on a lot of the core experience…What makes matters worse is that this game is boiling over with glitches, particularly toward the game’s climax. As the game neared its end, every main character of the game was touched by some hilarious, scene-breaking glitch — including the very final shot of the story before the credits rolled. Whether this world holds together is a question I just can’t answer yet. My early impressions come with many caveats.” — Gene Park [Full Review]
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Nvidia and GOG are finally kicking off their GeForce Now streaming partnership with one of the biggest games of 2020, with Cyberpunk 2077 being the first officially supported title from the digital storefront.
GeForce Now is Nvidia’s own take on game streaming. Instead of paying for games exclusive to its service, like Google Stadia, it pulls supported games from launchers where you have already purchased them, such as Steam and the Epic Games Store. Until this week GOG had not officially announced support, but that changes this week with Cyberpunk 2077.
“Players around the world, who own the game on GOG.COM, will be able to play the game via the cloud gaming service, exploring the streets of Night City on nearly any device including low-powered or incompatible Windows and Mac laptops, Chromebooks and more,” the announcement reads.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be the only game from GOG supported at this time, but the announcement hints at a possible expansion soon. The open-world RPG will be playable on the free tier as well as the paid one, which offers less waiting times in queues and support for features such as 4K and ray tracing.
If you’re still unsure about whether you should pick up CD Projekt Red’s latest title this week, our Cyberpunk 2077 review has you covered. “The side quests and the characters they showcase are the shining beacon through the neon-soaked bleakness of Night City, and they give you room to explore the best the core RPG mechanics have to offer,” wrote editor Kallie Plagge. “These are what carried me through an otherwise disappointing experience.”
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Update: Activision will unveil the first official gameplay look at Season 1 of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone at this year’s The Game Awards on December 10 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET.
The Season 1 headliner is the new Warzone map Rebirth Island, which was uncovered by dataminers earlier this month and subsequently revealed by Activision. The map takes players back to Alcatraz and looks very similar to the same-named map from Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
The cinematic trailer introduces and is narrated by Vikhor “Stitch” Kuzmin, an ex-KGB leader in charge of creating the biochemical weapon Nova 6 on Rebirth Island. After being tortured by Black Ops Cold War deuteragonist Russell Adler, Stitch wants to settle the score. With just one eye and a thirst for vengeance, Stitch is supposedly the latest operator coming to both games.
In preparation for launch on December 16, Activision called Season 1 “the largest free content drop in Black Ops history.” It includes the integration of operators, weapons, player progression, and Battle Pass rewards across Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.
Cyberpunk 2077 is almost upon us, with its release date of December 10 creeping ever closer. Now, depending on what platform you plan to play it on, the game is available for preloading if you’ve already bought it. As the below tweet shows, you can now preload the game on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
The wait is almost over! If you’re looking to play #Cyberpunk2077 as soon as it’s available, here’s a map with global release timings. For PC and Stadia players, the release is simultaneous and scheduled for midnight GMT, and for all console players – midnight local time. pic.twitter.com/W0QLIFAhH1
As for non-PC platforms, things are a little more complicated. According to an official release map, preloading has been available on Xbox since December 3. However, preloading won’t be enabled until two days prior to the release date on PlayStation, meaning that it’s not available until tomorrow. The game is also available for preload on GOG, the storefront that is also owned by the publisher of the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 is certainly the biggest game of the holiday season, if not the entire year. In GameSpot’s Cyberpunk 2077 review, critic Kallie Plagge praised the game’s sidequests and characters, while faulting its superficial world and many, many bugs.
“But then it’s hard to get into Cyberpunk 2077’s world in general,” she wrote. “So much of it is superficial set dressing, and there’s so much happening all around you–ads going off at all times, gunfights breaking out in the streets, texts coming in about cars you’ll never buy–that a lot of the game feels superfluous. The side quests and the characters they showcase are the shining beacon through the neon-soaked bleakness of Night City, and they give you room to explore the best the core RPG mechanics have to offer. These are what carried me through an otherwise disappointing experience.”
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