Month: December 2023

Fortnite Festival tries to bring back the heyday of music gaming

Between Fortnite’s propensity for big-name concerts and Epic’s purchase of Harmonix two years ago, the inclusion of some kind of music-making feature in the game was inevitable. What Epic is releasing today is actually far grander: an entirely new mode called Fortnite Festival, a social space where players can team…

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Fortnite Festival is Rock Band without the plastic instruments

What that means is you’ll be hitting notes along to popular songs, but instead of doing that on a toy guitar or drum set, you’re using a game controller or mouse and keyboard. The basic flow is identical, though: notes move down a lane, and you have to hit (or…

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Apple’s 10th-gen iPad is actually worthwhile when it’s $100 off

We’ve found Apple’s latest generation of its base-model iPad to be a bit awkwardly priced from the start. At $449 it’s a little close to the much nicer iPad Air and simultaneously a lot pricier than its ninth-gen predecessor. But that all looks different when you knock a Benjamin off…

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How to build a bike lane in America

When most people in the US need to go somewhere, they reach for their car keys. There are plenty of reasons for this: driving is easy, it’s comfortable, and it requires very little preparation. But also, it’s hard to do anything else, and maybe the hardest of those hard things…

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Hirokazu Kore-eda is so back

A building is on fire; we don’t know why. A principal at an elementary school trips a kid at the grocery store; we don’t know why. A student gets in a fight with a classmate, leading to a messy altercation with a teacher; we don’t know why. Monster is a…

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Finishing every part of Mario Wonder is no peach

My mission to 100 percent Super Mario Bros. Wonder officially started a couple of weeks ago, but really it began in the late ‘80s. As a kid, I was certifiably bad at Mario. We didn’t have our own Nintendo console, so any time I spent playing Mario prior to that…

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