computer science

Do you miss the iconic keyboard of BlackBerry smartphones? Well, a gadget is on the way that might fill your void. More precisely, it is a portable USB keyboard identical to that of the BlackBerry Classic (also called Q20). The project, created by the Swedish guys from Solder Party, was made possible by the fact that the team managed to get their hands on a significant amount of telephone keypads. Next, they squeezed all the necessary components into a transparent plastic case and a compact Raspberry Pi RP2040 board, which can detect key presses. In addition, the gadget, in addition to being characterized by the logo of the Canadian company, is equipped with a USB-C port and supports USB-HID, which therefore makes it possible to connect the small keyboard to a PC Mac, Windows or Linux, or even Apple and Android mobile devices. Among other things, there is also the physical key / trackpad which allows the gadget – called BB Q20 – to also be used as a traditional mouse. Finally, the price of the keyboard is not even excessive: in fact, we are talking regarding around 30 dollars. Therefore, for BlackBerry nostalgics and, why not, for the curious, it can be a rather interesting purchase. In addition, the kit is open-source: in short, it will be possible to “direct” the gadget towards various projects.

No points, just skateboarding.

There was a time, for those born in the 90s, when Tony Hawk was an idol to many and riding a skateboard was something definitive for those who wanted to stand out from the crowd. Like skateboards, BMX and many other mediums, seeing people on these boards was like seeing free people, able to fly from step to step. For those born in this era, therefore, it is also normal to have played games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and so on, where you might, by pressing a few buttons, hover in the air performing the strangest tricks. All the games released so far, however, lacked realism, being very arcade: this is where Session: Skate Sim comes in, a game that aims to depict the world of skateboarding in a realistic way. This is why there is no score in the game, but rather figures which will initially be very difficult to achieve. The analog sticks represent your avatar’s two feet, so moving them one way or the other will give you a different result. We also asked a member of the development team to explain the game to us, so we will try to tell you regarding the experience in the same way.

Once you’ve placed your feet on the board (which you can step on or off with the press of a button), your right foot will be at the back, your left at the front (at least normally). To make the board jump, you will therefore have to load your foot by pressing on it (hence the right analog down), then lift your left foot (hence the left analog up), thus achieving an Ollie . Starting from there, to then do a Kickflip (Ollie + rotation of the board), you will have to do the same procedure, but pushing the left analog no longer upwards, but to the right. So, to do a grind, you will have to press your feet with the analogs in a certain way, and to do the most difficult tricks, you will have to go almost as crazy as in reality. The basic idea has always been to offer a game that would be a skate simulator, capable of giving space to those who like this activity (or to those who would like a more realistic game). The approach to checkpoints is also interesting: they can be placed anywhere on the map and have the advantage of giving this sense of repetitiveness and trial and error to skateboarding. In fact, skateboarding is not regarding doing random tricks to accumulate points, but rather doing the same trick over and over once more, which will fail each time, until you succeed.

Three cities and a free zone.

Of course, speaking of realism, don’t expect to have half pipes and ramps everywhere: the cities offered in the game are New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. All three are full of spots where skaters use their boards, and some areas have even been restored to how they were in the 90s, when they had a lot more room to ride and therefore allowed for a lot more tricks. Finally, the game features a kind of campaign that will allow you to learn the basics, piece by piece, so that you can make your way through the different towns and move around as you please. The avatars that you can select will not be numerous, but where the aesthetic customization – really bland – ends, the customization of the clothing items of the skaters begins, detailed also thanks to the presence of famous brands. Finally, the set is completed by a photo mode, or rather a video mode, which allows you to record your exploits with various effects. If in reality, a skateboarder almost always has a friend ready to film (more falls than successes), here you can actually see a replay of your actions and put effects, change the frame, in short, do whatever you want . Since there are few interactions and the worlds are not alive, continuing to play to master everything is not easy either. No pedestrians or cars on the streets, everything is lifeless and makes you think of a completely locked city. It’s a shame, because the areas where you can skate are varied and the environment offers many opportunities to pull off some cool tricks.

The game in technical terms unfortunately shows its side on several occasions, but it is also true that the aim of Session: Skate Sim is not to give an aesthetic simulator, but a practical one: certainly fixing the simplest bugs would have been great, but we are sure that the team will work on it. Even the drop system, very Ragdoll, is sometimes plastic (but fun to watch). Finally, the city is very stripped down in terms of population, as everything looks like a big empty skate track, but maybe this detail stems from the wishes of the developers. Footnote, work continues: The game has experimental features that show that the Crea-ture Studios team is still working on the game, possibly implementing additional features that may come in the future, but for now you will have to try them in “beta” mode. If you enable the city pedestrian option, the game will run even worse than it already did, with an even lower framerate and choppy frames. Indeed, Session: Skate Sim is really not up to scratch technically on the Nintendo Switch. First of all, the graphics are of a very questionable standard, reviving old Playstation 2 moments visually. Effects like shadows appear suddenly, car mirrors pop up when you approach them, etc. Also, the level of detail in the worlds is extremely low and everything looks dull. The refresh rate is also very disappointing, which means that the feeling of speed is not super present.

VERDICT

The game is for all intents and purposes a cut above other skateboarding titles: jumping and finishing a trick in this Session: Skate Sim, even if barely, is far more satisfying and fun. The removed points system makes the experience even freer: there are no levels to unlock, just a series of real maps to navigate as you see fit. There are no constraints, and the only thing that will stop you from pulling off the trick you imagine is your ability to learn the controls, which are difficult at first but become almost natural once you get used to them. Too bad for the technical compartment, which unfortunately remains faithful to the years from which the game was inspired. If you’ve ever wanted to juggle those boards, if you had Tony Hawk as your idol for a while, or if you’re curious regarding the difficulty behind the sport, then Session: Skate Sim is the place to be. for you. But the Switch version has dropped considerably more than a little and that’s very disappointing.

Demeo : D’n’D façon VR?

The modern, or rather contemporary, video game world has certainly brought with it a degree of innovation that, while now rather predictable and in the realm of the realistic, might have seemed to a gamer or video gamer 30 years ago pure magic: virtual reality, graphical fidelity bordering on photorealism, new mechanics of insane depth, or even just game concepts inspired by pre-existing IPs that seem straight out of the original work. On the other hand, the distance from a physical place to play and the intra-our material detachment that the march towards all-digital makes us adopt today have rendered unfathomable a whole spectrum of emotions that only the sharing of oxygen and square meters might have been able to restore in time. Even the world of D’n’D has had to adapt a bit to these contexts and, perhaps needless to say, its influences are felt all over the game today. Demeo is indeed the fruit of these inspirations, but he decides to propose the formula once more without reinventing it… except in its ‘aesthetic’ context, that is to say the format in which we find ourselves immersed in its solid central loop. (because proven many times). Demeo is actually a cross-platform cooperative adventure that allows four players to recreate all the magic of a D’n’D campaign in the absolute comfort of the relative newness that PlayStation VR2 offers. The alter-egos whose sordid shoes we can don are classic (hunter, wizard, assassin, guardian, bard, mage and barbarian) and, as you might expect, each offers slightly different gameplay possibilities: if with the he assassin can stand behind an enemy and attempt a critical attack, the barbarian has great mobility thanks to his chained scythe. This actually leads to quite a varied experience and approaching each map differently depending on the champion chosen is enjoyable and a source of curious and unexpected pleasure.

A second important factor at the level of mechanics is the use of “movement cards”, each with its own cost in action points and its own effects: while some of them are generic and universal (among others, the move that makes us use a potion), most of them are specific moves for our character and they are the ones that give greater depth to the abilities of individual characters, without reinventing the wheel in any way either. So far we’ve described a rather generic RPG, so what makes Demeo that special treasure we talked regarding at the start? Precisely in its aesthetic rendering, because in the title of Resolution Games, we are an ethereal presence in a cellar, surrounded by role-playing games, leaning over a table on which our game will take place, a bit as if we were really in front of the board of our board game. It would seem like a minimal effort if Resolution had not gone further: Demeo indeed allows us to move freely, we practically become the playroom, and zooming in on the playing field to almost the height of the characters, here represented by very well made statuettes. The level of detail is very high, for the characters, and a similar care is obviously found in the design of the enemies and the creation of the environments, even if the latter suffer a little from the random generativity of the title, inherent in the “campaign” structure. which Demeo also embraces at the level of its UI. Going back to the freedom offered to the player, it’s borderline extraordinary how the ability to go from an aerial view to an American shot on the various characters goes through an immersive journey that fits perfectly the detachment that we want to have in relation to the game.

Interesting gameplay despite a sketchy story.

In this context, the story almost takes a back seat, either because of the repetitive structure (not in a negative sense) of the main loop, especially in the single-player game, or because of the propensity to emphasize regarding the short-term strategy of clashes rather than why you end up in a dungeon, slaying goblins and ravenous elementals. The solo is a point on which I have to dwell: playing Demeo alone is borderline useless. It may be able to give you an overview of your abilities, allow you to discover the different avatars to find the one with which you are most comfortable… but functionally, it does not bring you anything: to even finish that only one of the 3 floors that each “level” has is far too difficult and any XP you earn will only unlock cosmetic features for the character themselves or for your alter ego around the table. In short, you have no reason to face Demeo alone. It is therefore armed with patience and ready for some frustration that we decided to spend the rest of the game on Demeo, always in company: the drop-in of a game in progress is quite efficient and fast, thanks to the cross -play and the ability to play it without VR on PC, and even in situations where me and other party members found ourselves prone, it never reached the frustration level of other multiplayer experiences . There is however a remark to be made: in at least half of the matches that we faced, it was still rare to find yourself in a complete match, that is to say with three other players, and to face the floors of the dungeons with only one other companion, sometimes even with only two other people, is almost as difficult as facing it alone. In short, the game seems balanced for four-player play and this is a feature that might have been implemented a bit better. You should never leave a player alone if the enemies and the dungeons are calibrated on a full team, especially when the XP collected in the event of success has only an aesthetic function, therefore without long-term gameplay value. We can’t even speak of a player’s skill growing or evolving, since each enemy must be approached differently and the combinations in which we end up finding them make a more far-sighted strategy than a few moves almost useless.

An interesting implementation would have been the ability to command more than one character, so you might tackle a dungeon with another person while commanding a full party with relative peace of mind. Another element of imbalance is hard to miss in the mechanical management of traps, sorts of “containers” (you want poison, fire, ice, etc.) that seem to be approachable only from a distance, so as not to not hurt us. That’s all well and good, but there’s only one PG that has ranged attacks, so it’s a tough choice to justify and contextualize. There are just under ten Adventures available at the moment, with more to come, and they can be tackled in any order you prefer, knowing that the more advanced Adventures will offer a very high level of challenge. Depending on the replayability promised by Demeo, there is another negative point to highlight: the save system. Indeed, there is no way to save during the session, and it is only at the end of the dungeon floor that we can save: we sometimes speak of sessions of one hour per floor , and the fact of not having the possibility of pausing the game (obviously with the agreement of the participant) is a notable lack. On a technical level, there are not really any remarks to make to the Resolution Games team: the manual movement of each character in the chessboard projected on the ground of each of the different dungeons is immediate, the animations of attack are quite simple and minimalist, and the limited sphere of vision of our character is a great incentive to freely explore the game map with our head, to speculate on the routes by which the enemies will attack us, or perhaps on the positioning of a chest or a source of regeneration. The presence of coins that, once collected and only following successfully completing the dungeon plan, allow us to buy new cards is a logical addition, but one that is implemented in a rather safe way.

VERDICT

Demeo is one of the closest experiences to physical tabletop gaming with friends, and it’s the aspect of Resolution Games’ title that works best. The game is strongly oriented towards multiplayer, which is not too openly expressed but which we discover, willy-nilly, very early on. The attention and aesthetic care given to the characters is high, and the barrier between the player and the game itself is very quickly broken, also and above all thanks to the freedom that one acquires as a game camera. Too bad , however, that some aspects (like saves) deeply detract from the enjoyment of an experience that has the high potential to be enjoyable on all fronts.