MagicSpan

Plus: A bad Zoom bug, a billion-dollar cocaine bust, and more of the week’s top security news.
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Author: Brian Barrett

Comics have never been bigger: with Marvel TV shows, DC movies, and indie adaptations growing by the day, comic books have never been more prominent in pop culture. This biweekly Verge column recommends comic series new and old, whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer.

Comics can be pretty depressing these days. Existential drama, dark storylines, and epic battles for the fate of the galaxy are all regular occurrences. But on the other side of the spectrum is Check, Please, a heartwarming hockey comic that’s the feel-good equivalent of a slice of warm apple pie.

What is it? Check, Please is a webcomic / graphic novel by Ngozi Ukazu. It’s set across the four years of college for Eric “Bitty” Bittle, a gay NCAA hockey player at the…

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Author: Chaim Gartenberg

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is set to release in just over a month, and the remastered trilogy’s project director Mac Walters has announced that it has gone gold. That means there is very little chance it’s going to get bumped from its May 14 release date.

Walters celebrated the occasion with a clip of several Mass Effect characters dancing, including meme legend Garrus Vakarian.

When a game “goes gold,” it essentially means that its code is finalized to the point where it can be put onto discs and shipped. However, because we live in an era of content updates and patches, it doesn’t really mean as much as it used to. BioWare could choose to replace huge amounts of the game’s code in the future if it wanted to change something, but it does still serve as a big milestone for developers who have been working on the project for months or years.

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Author: Gabe Gurwin

Brunch may still be out of the question, but you can send your ma the best sweatpants ever made.
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Author: Adrienne So

Photographs of people getting triumphantly vaccinated against COVID-19 are all over social networks, as are announcements of upcoming appointments, first and second injections, and how well (or badly) they reacted to the vaccine. Like births, weddings, and graduations, the act of getting your Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson injection has become a cause for public celebration.

So don’t you want something to mark the occasion? A souvenir of the first indication that you can begin to think seriously about hugging your relatives, entering a store without tension, and even <gasp!> eating comfortably in a restaurant?

Sites such as Etsy, Zazzle, and Redbubble are overflowing with T-shirts, hats, and buttons proclaiming “Fully Vaccinated,”…

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Author: Barbara Krasnoff

Trash-burning facilities once seemed like a useful way to minimize pollution and generate power. But the EU is withdrawing support over emissions concerns.
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Author: Beth Gardiner

We may all still be trapped at home for a while, but we can at least take flight. Virtually, that is.
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Author: Richard Baguley

The game bounces wildly between violence and wry humor, with some dark and harrowing commentary. And it’s certainly worth your time.
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Author: Reid McCarter

Springtime is here, and so are some surprisingly good deals on kitchen appliances and computer components.
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Author: Gear Team

First shown off during the March [email protected] showcase, Soup Pot is the debut title of Manila developer Chikon Club. The adorable-looking cooking game captured my attention with the reveal that it possesses no fail states (a rarity for cooking games), so I caught up with Chikon Club’s Trina Pagtakhan and Gwendelyn Foster to talk about how the game grades the player without failing them.

Eventually, our conversation turned to other aspects of Soup Pot, such as the game’s connection to real-world events. Soup Pot sees you play as someone stuck indoors during a pandemic, teaching yourself how to cook in order to pass the time and have something to eat. Your only human interaction are the chat rooms for your livestreams that document your efforts and conversations with the people delivering ingredients to your door. You also fill your downtime by scrolling through a fictional cooking-based social media site called Cookbook, where you’ll remain apprised of what’s going on in the world. So even though Soup Pot is a cute, humor-focused exploration of Filipino and Southeast Asian cuisine, there’s a meaningful underlying narrative thread to the game too.

My conversation with Pagtakhan and Foster is transcribed below. Edits have been made to aid in readability. Soup Pot is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC in August.

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Author: Jordan Ramée