Alexa and Cortana Teamed Up, But Consumer Tech Is Still Stuck in an Ecosystem War. The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced today. Its the kind of cooperation that we dont see enough between the Big Five, or really any company thats grown out of its desperately cobble together partnerships so we look relevant phase and into its abandon all cooperation that doesnt lock customers into our shitty ecosystem phase. Cortana and Alexas competitors, Google Assistant and Siri, wont be integrating any time soon. As Gizmodo notes, Google and Apple have far more users locked into their ecosystems, so they have far less incentive to cooperate with competing systems. By combining forces, Microsoft and Amazon are admitting theyve lost the war for mobile, the dominant user interface now, and holding onto their own core competencies Microsoft for business communication, Amazon for consumption. Meanwhile, though Google Assistant runs on i. Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' title='Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' />Lets be clear If your favorites arent on this list, its not because we forgot to consider them. Headlines 2. Ron Paul Tillerson Laid Out A Raving Neocon Foreign Policy In His Senate Hearing US Intel Try To StrongArm Trump Into Russian War. Now that U. S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly has ruled in favor of President Trumps right to appoint OMB Director Mick Mulvaney as the acting director of the. It turns out theres a code to unlock Shin Akuma in Ultra Street Fighter II. Revealed by Capcom at this years SDCC, you can play as the characters demon form. OS, its very limited and cant be activated without opening an app. Siri wont run at all on Android. And even on its native platform, Siri wont control best in class apps like Spotify, Gmail, or Google Maps. Google Assistant is more flexible, but it cant order things on Amazon the way Alexa can. You can run Alexa on Android, but only through Amazons app, and again with limitations. Your device also wont play well with a competing desktop OS Apples Handoff and i. Cloud make i. Phones and Macs work together seamlessly, whereas coordinating an Android phone with a Mac is clunky, and plugging an i. Phone into a Windows machine is eye twitchingly uncomfortable, thanks to Apples lousy Windows port of i. Tunes. The TV ecosystem is just as bad, largely thanks to Amazons own selfish decisions. Amazon still hasnt released its promised Apple TV app, so Prime customers have to stream Transparent and Curb Your Enthusiasm from their phones. There are no plans for an Amazon app on the Chromecast, or for Spotify on Apple TV. You can retreat to a third party media player like Roku, but then you cant play videos purchased through i. Tunes without a wonky file conversion. Starting at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell the Chromecast or Apple TV. Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' title='Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' />AndRead more Read. Meanwhile, Facebook runs around kind of integrating with all these other services while trying to push its own messaging and sharing platforms, and burying every post that dares link to You. Tube or Twitter. As a customer choosing a phone, computer, and media player, youre stuck with three choices Buy into an ecosystem that inevitably has some crappy elements. You could choose Google, and miss out on Apples slick interface and seamless desktop to mobile integration. Or choose Apple, lose a lot of third party functionality, and get locked into increasingly bizarre design choices your Lightning headphones wont work on your laptop and inferior software like Apple Maps, Mail, and Calendar. Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' title='Hack Gears War 2 Ranked' />Announced during a livestream from Gamescom, Fighter Pack 2 features two characters I knew were coming and one Im so excited about I called my wife into my office. News, reviews, previews, tips, and downloads for multiple platforms. On desktop, choose Windows and miss out on that same integration, or choose Apple, pay more for the same computing power, and get your computer games a year late. Straddle ecosystems, running the Google Suite instead of MS Office and hooking your i. Phone up to your PC or your Android to your Mac. Run Spotify, buy an Echo, and live with their limited capabilities. Maybe even run Excel on OS X. All but the most basic users reach outside their main ecosystem at some point. Install Linux on your Chromebook, jailbreak your i. Phone, run Cortana on your Fit. Bit, hack your Echo to play Tidal, and write a viral Medium post encouraging people to unplug. In the short term, all these companies have good reasons to lock up their platforms wherever they still think they can steal market share from the others, and wherever they would rather focus resources on improving their own service instead of handing millions of customers to their competitors through a partnership. But in the long term, this lock in keeps the Big Five from innovating, their products leaning on the crutch of the ecosystem, alienating customers who will then abandon the ecosystem for third party services like Spotify, Dropbox, Whats. App, 1. Password, and Overcast. OS has a bunch of great podcast managers these days, but after testing all of them, our favoriteRead more Read. Historically, these ecosystems tend to open up, making way for the next battle. Macs and PCs didnt always run so many of the same apps. Internet Explorer and Netscape were much more mutually exclusive than Chrome and Safari. And for a while, your Internet came in flavors of AOL, Prodigy, or Compu. Serve. Even Android and i. OS used to have zero apps in common. But each time, interoperability won out, bringing most of each platforms strengths to everyone. But things could get worse before they get better. The Big Five are all racing to win at online payments, wearables, AI, AR, VR, smart homes, smart cars, and the growing Internet of Things. And as long as each company thinks it can win, it will try to push out the others instead of playing nice. Eventually there will be winners and losers, or decentralized cooperation. Every now and then, a new protocol will open up thats as decentralized as email or HTTP. And the giants of the day will move onto a new fight. In the meantime, theres nearly always some way to force the ecosystems to play together, at the expense of simplicity and not having your shit constantly break. Theres always some third option to jimmy into the gap and outperform all the defaults. And thats what Lifehackers all about. God of War 2. 00. God of War. DevelopersSCE Santa Monica Studio. PublishersDirectorsDavid Jaffe. ProducersShannon Studstill. DesignersDavid Jaffe. ProgrammersTim Moss. ArtistsCharlie Wen. Terry Smith. Steve Scat Caterson. WritersComposersSeries. God of War. Engine. PlatformsRelease. March 2. 2, 2. 00. Play. Station 2. NA March 2. EU July 8, 2. 00. JP November 1. 7, 2. Play. Station 3. God of War Collection. God of War Saga. Play. Station Vita. God of War Collection. GenresModesSingle player. God of War is a third personhack and slashaction adventure video game developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment SCE. First released on March 2. Play. Station 2 PS2 console, it is the first installment in the series of the same name and the third chronologically. Loosely based on Greek mythology, it is set in ancient Greece with vengeance as its central motif. Netbeans Download For Windows more. The player controls the protagonist Kratos, a Spartan warrior who serves the Olympian Gods. The goddess Athena tasks Kratos with killing Ares, the God of War and Kratos former mentor who tricked Kratos into killing his own wife and daughter. As Ares besieges Athens out of hatred for Athena, Kratos embarks on a quest to find the one object capable of stopping the god once and for all the legendary Pandoras Box. The gameplay of God of War focuses on combo based combat, achieved through the players main weaponthe Blades of Chaosand a secondary weapon acquired later in the game. It features quick time events that require the player to complete various game controller actions in a timed sequence to defeat stronger enemies and bosses. The player can use up to four magical attacks and a power enhancing ability as alternative combat options. It also features puzzles and platforming elements. God of War sold more than 4. Play. Station 2 game of all time. Regarded as one of the best action adventure games for the platform, it won several Game of the Year awards. In 2. 00. 9, entertainment website IGN named God of War the seventh best Play. Station 2 game of all time. It has been highly regarded for its graphics, sound, presentation, and story, in addition to its gameplay. It has been hailed as one of the greatest video games ever made. Success of the game led to the development of seven more games and expansion into other media. The game and its first sequel, God of War II, were remastered and released in November 2. God of War Collection, and in 2. God of War Saga, both for the Play. Station 3 PS3. A novelization of the game was published in May 2. GameplayeditGod of War is a third personsingle playeraction adventure video game with hack and slash elements, viewed from a fixed camera perspective. The player controls the character Kratos in combo based combat, platforming, and puzzle game elements, and battles foes who primarily stem from Greek mythology, including undead soldiers, harpies, minotaurs, Medusa and her Gorgons, cyclopes, wraiths, Sirens, satyrs, centaurs, cerberuses, and boss opponentsthe Hydra and a giant minotaur known as Pandoras Guardian. Platforming elements require the player to climb walls and ladders, jump across chasms, swing on ropes, and balance across beams to proceed through sections of the game. Some puzzles are simple, such as moving a box so that the player can use it as a jumping off point to access a pathway unreachable with normal jumping, but others are more complex, such as finding several items across different areas of the game to unlock one door. Throughout the game world, the player finds chests colored green, blue, or red, and each chest contains orbs of the corresponding color. Green orbs replenish the players health, blue orbs replenish magic allowing further usage, and red orbs provide experience for upgrading weapons and magicallowing new, more powerful attacksand replenishing the Rage meter, which, if full, allows for the usage of the Rage of the Gods ability. Red orbs are also collected by killing foes and destroying certain inanimate objects. The player can also find Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Feathers in unmarked chests. The Eyes and Feathers increase the length of the Health and Magic Meters, respectively finding eighteen of an item maximizes a meter and in turn, the players power. Kratos in air attacks the Hydra with the Blades of Chaos. The HUD in the upper left corner displays the Health Meter. The number indicates the number of red orbs the player has collected. The green meter at the bottom of the screen shows the opponents health. Kratos main weapon is the Blades of Chaos a pair of blades attached to chains that are wrapped around the characters wrists and forearms. In gameplay, the blades can be swung offensively in various maneuvers. Later in the game, Kratos acquires a secondary weapon called the Blade of Artemis a large sword that offers alternative combat options. Kratos also learns to use four magical abilities, such as Zeus Fury allowing lightning bolts to be thrown at distant targets which allow the character to kill both individual and multiple targets. Other magical abilities include Medusas Gaze, Poseidons Rage, and Army of Hades. A relic called Poseidons Trident is also acquired, allowing Kratos to breathe underwater and navigate through this environment. Early in the game, Kratos also acquires a special ability called Rage of the Gods, which provides temporary invulnerability and increased attack damage. In combat, a quick time event QTE feature, also called context sensitive attacks, is initiated when the player has weakened a strong foe. The player performs a sequence of actions on the game controller shortly after an image of its circle button appears as an on screen prompt. This allows for limited control of Kratos during a QTE cinematic sequence, which, if successful, ends the battle failure usually results in damage to the protagonist. Similar in function is a quick time sex mini game in the form of an encounter with female twins, which has become a regular feature throughout the series. When the game is completed, a challenge modeten trials called the Challenge of the Godsis unlocked this requires players to complete a series of specific tasks e. Kill all cyclopes before time runs out. The player may unlock bonus costumes for Kratos, behind the scenes videos, and concept art of the characters and environments, as rewards. Completion of each difficulty level unlocks additional rewards. SynopsiseditSettingeditGod of War is set in an alternate version of ancient Greece, populated by the Olympian Gods, Titans, and other beings of Greek mythology. With the exception of flashbacks, the events are set between those of the games Chains of Olympus 2. Ghost of Sparta 2. There are six locations explored, including fictional versions of the real world Aegean Sea and ancient city of Athens, and fictional locations of the Desert of Lost Souls, the Temple of Pandora, the Underworld, and a brief scene on Mount Olympus. The Aegean Sea setting includes a mass of shipwrecked vessels. Athens is a war torn city under assault by Ares, the God of War 1. Desert of Lost Souls, a vast and windy desert of ancient ruins. The majority of the game occurs in Pandoras Temple, which is chained to the back of the Titan Cronos, who crawls through the desert.