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In real life, I don’t like creepy crawly things. I’m terrified of spiders, appalled by roaches, scared stupid of wasps, and refuse to touch any animal that might be deemed “slimy.” My wife kills all the bugs in our house. That fear adds a little gravity and catharsis to fighting the thousands of house-sized monstrosities in EDF 5 – and “thousands” is no hyperbole. During my playthrough of Earth Defense Force 5, I have thus far killed precisely 21,369 space aliens, murderous robots, and giant insects. I know this because the record-keeping department of the Earth Defense Force tells me so, and yet somehow even that astronomical number seems far too low for the amount of satisfaction I’ve derived from it – even before jumping into the excellent co-op multiplayer. EDF 5 is fundamentally a solid wave-based arcade shooter built on top of a deep class-based loadout and leveling system, and both elements compliment one another nicely. Missions feature dozens of huge, sci-fi-tastic B-movie enemies attacking head-on in vast, fully destructible, and frightfully ugly city environments. Upon being blown up bad guys burst into loot explosions, spraying red and green upgrade boxes – a phenomenon I mentally dubbed “Christmastime.” Between missions, I looked over my new loot, tweaked my configuration in a few seconds, and then eagerly jumped back into battle to try it out. The considerable computing power of the PlayStation 4 is used not to render gorgeous graphics, but instead creatively harnessed to render enormous quantities of humongous enemies all attacking at the same time, like a tsunami of alien flesh and insect exoskeletons. Dozens of daunting foes typically appear at once, each ranging somewhere in size from that of a tank to a small town, and once the gunfire starts they’re all screaming, exploding, and bleeding all over everything. The resulting orgy of gore and destruction is exhilarating and rarely gets old. Mission difficulty can be a little uneven, but at most of the customizable difficulty levels EDF allowed me to keep a generous portion of the loot I picked up even when I died. Every time I tried again I was a little tougher, and if worse came to worst I could always opt to dial a single battle down to easy mode, move on to the next fight at standard difficulty, and come back later and tackle the sticking point when I was better equipped. I rarely choose to do so, but I very much appreciated the option as a safety net. Even after 60 hours of bug hunting with a huge assortment of weapons and abilities, the mass bug-slaughter that EDF 5 does well is deliciously unique and keeps me coming back. It looks and feels like a throwback to a simpler age of gaming and and suffers from some unpolished technical decisions and sometimes less-than-stellar late-game balance, but the vast majority of EDF 5’s missions are energetic essays on a largely forgotten philosophy of action game that deserves further exploration. And when you’re joined by others, it becomes way too much fun to miss.

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(Bloomberg) -- Official Washington will turn out to honor the late President George H.W. Bush on Wednesday with the full pageantry of a state funeral, bringing President Donald Trump together with his three most recent predecessors for the service at the National Cathedral. The moment will provide a rare public show of respect for the traditions of the capital by a president whose tweets and public statements have shattered the boundaries of political discourse. Trump will sit in the pews as Washington eulogizes a political figure renowned for his scrupulous social etiquette and prolific handwritten thank-you notes. Left unsaid will be the years of criticism and attacks the president has leveled against the Bush family, as well as the Bush family’s at times barely disguised contempt for Trump, whose approach to leadership runs at odds with the “kinder, gentler” conservatism the late president espoused. It will be the first time Trump will be in close proximity to Barack and Michelle Obama or Bill and Hillary Clinton since his inauguration nearly two years ago. He has since issued countless attacks on Twitter and at political rallies attacking both former first couples. Trump wasn’t welcome at the last two occasions that brought former presidents together. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who died earlier this year, made clear she didn’t want the president at her funeral. He also wasn’t invited to the funeral for Republican Senator John McCain, who died in August.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Russia's intelligence services were behind cyber attacks targeting the Czech foreign ministry last year, the Czech security service said on Monday in its annual report. The BIS counter-intelligence service has long warned against Russian activity in the Czech Republic, a member of NATO since 1999 and of the European Union since 2004. Many other Western countries have issued similar warnings. In its report, BIS said two separate attacks on the Czech foreign ministry were partly the work of the APT28 hacking group, which is linked to the Russian government and has been blamed for past attacks in Germany and the United States. "All the findings make clear that it was the Turla cyberespionage campaign, originating from the FSB, a Russian intelligence service, and APT28/Sofacy, which is credited to the Russian military intelligence, the GRU," the annual report said. In a hack of the ministry's information system, it said, attackers accessed more than 150 staff mailboxes, copying emails and attachments. "They thus obtained data that may be used for future attacks, as well as a list of potential targets in virtually all the important state institutions," it said. The Czech foreign ministry said at the time it believed a foreign state was behind the cyber attacks on it but said no confidential material was compromised.As in previous years, the report warned of Russia's continued use of undeclared intelligence officers acting under diplomatic cover as part of a general hybrid strategy against member states of the European Union and NATO. BIS said it had also detected several attacks against Czech military targets, with the most serious compromising several private email accounts of people linked to the Defence Ministry and army and also compromising an IP address by malware know as X-Agent.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin got his chance to talk with U.S. President Donald Trump after all — but their brief exchange over Ukraine didn't accomplish much. Russia put on a brave face after Trump abruptly junked a much-awaited sit-down with Putin, blaming it on internal U.S. politics and "anti-Russian hysteria." But Trump's snub was a clear kick to Putin as he joined a Group of 20 gathering in Argentina, where Western leaders banded together to denounce Russia's actions in Ukraine. The two men did end up talking briefly on the sidelines of the G-20 — just long enough for Trump to ask Putin what he is up to in Ukraine, and for Putin to respond."I answered his questions about the incident in the Black Sea. He has his position. I have my own. We stayed in our own positions," Putin told reporters. He subbed in Turkey's president for the time slot he had reserved for Trump, and sought to strengthen his alliance with China and other non-Western economies. And he cozied up at Friday's round-table talks to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, somewhat of a fellow outcast at the G-20 over his suspected role in the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist. Putin called it "too bad" that Trump cancelled their formal meeting, and hinted at the potential fallout if the leaders of the world's two biggest nuclear powers can't talk to each other substantively. Putin warned that the U.S. intention to opt out of a Cold War-era nuclear pact "creates risks of an uncontrollable arms race." Such weapons are seen as extremely destabilizing as they take just a few minutes to reach targets, leaving virtually no time for decision-makers and dramatically increasing the possibility of a nuclear conflict over a false attack warning or technical glitch.There was a risk that the Trump-Putin meeting could have worked out badly for both of them. After the summit with Putin in July, Trump was widely criticized for failing to publicly denounce Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election and appearing to accept Putin's denials of such activity. More anti-Russian sanctions followed and relations soured further.

You’ve been here before: an adventurer awakens in a strange place, only to realize that they — and only they! — are the one who can fulfill an ancient prophecy and save the land from evil. This is the premise for The Swords of Ditto, and it is in no way unique. But there’s something about the game’s charm and structure that help it stand out. It’s sort of like a classic Legend of Zelda game, but dropped into the world of a Saturday morning cartoon. The game's title, The Swords of Ditto, doesn’t actually refer to a weapon. Instead, the swords are the heroes who are meant to defend the land. You start out as one of the swords, washed up on a beach, and a flying bug tells you the deal: you have four days to eradicate an evil magical being. You’re then largely left up to your own to figure out how to do that. The game feels a lot like a 2D Zelda game, along the lines of A Link to the Past or the NES original. There’s a fairly large and open map that you can explore however you see fit; you’ll get some guidance, but you can ignore it if you want to. The colorful world is full of monsters, like puking zombies and flying skulls, and you’ll regularly come across people in need of help, and dungeons you can explore to find new items for the final battle. It’s all very cute and charming, with a middle school vibe. Your weapons and gear are all toys, and you can equip collectible stickers for new abilities. If you need to fast travel you play a kazoo to call a bus, and you can buy cookies and sushi from a convenience store to replenish your health. There are two main things that make Ditto different than Zelda: time pressure and randomness. The four day deadline isn’t just a narrative conceit, it also dominates the structure of the game. You have four in-game days to become powerful enough to take on the final boss, and then defeat them. When you fail — which you definitely will in the beginning — you’ll reawaken as a new adventurer a century later, taking up the fight once again. But when you wake up everything has changed: Ditto uses procedurally generated worlds to ensure that it’s different each time you play. So instead of memorizing a specific path through the game, you have to learn more general skills to get you through each playthrough. This structure means that the game offers something different than Zelda. It’s not a sprawling open world you can lose yourself in; instead, it’s a smaller playground, one that’s different each time you explore. It’s bite-sized and random, bright and bubbly — which makes it a great chaser to Breath of the Wild.

Asus launched its latest budget smartphone, Zenfone Lite L1 in the Indian market this October. Besides the Zenfone Lite L1, the Taiwanese tech firm launched another budget phone Zenfone Max M1 with the aim to take on the dominant Chinese player Xiaomi’s budget devices. The entry-level Asus Zenfone Lite L1 was introduced at an introductory price of Rs 6,999 for the 2GB RAM and 16GB onboard storage. The new Asus phone features a 5.45-inch display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor and a single 13MP camera at the back. Asus Zenfone L1 Lite specifications: 5.45-inch HD display | Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor | ZenUI based Android Oreo | 13MP primary camera | 5MP front-facing camera with LED flash | 3000mAh battery | 2GB RAM/16GB storage Talking about performance, the Zenfone Lite L1 managed to smoothly handle day-to-day tasks. The casual games run fine and we did not observe any lag or stutter while playing for an hour. During benchmark tests, the phone scored 55669 points on AnTuTu, which is in line with most phones in this price segment. Under bright light, the Zenfone Lite L1 could capture portraits an landscape photos with decent colour reproduction. In the indoor situation, the rear camera could render output with decent detailing and colours. The new Asus phone packs a battery capacity of 3000mAh and promises a day’s worth of backup with moderate usage. During the PCMark test, the phone lasted for about 9 hours and 44 minutes.

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You may have played many versions of Tetris, but you’ve probably never played one like Tetris Effect. The latest iteration of the falling-block puzzler comes from Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Enhance Experience and combines music, sound, vibration, and visuals into something that becomes almost transcendent. It does have a late-game difficulty spike that’s worse for those that aren’t playing in VR, but this is still a masterfully presented new entry in a long-running series. The main campaign of Tetris Effect is Journey, an engrossing series of connected boards each with their own diverse art style, music, and ruleset. Each board is unique and I was constantly surprised by what they offered. One might see you starting underwater as a beautiful particle-effect whale swims around you, while the next will be a desert landscape with a meandering caravan of camels that, halfway through, transitions to a realistic-looking version of the moon complete with an astronaut tooling around in a lunar vehicle. Some don’t have music at all, instead opting for a soundscape drawn from the sounds of wind. Another had me inadvertently creating a jazz jam with the sound effects created by rotating, moving, and dropping pieces. Don’t be fooled by the focus on music and mood though - Tetris Effect can be punishingly difficult. There’s no hard-and-fast rule to how each stage will play: some are traditional in that they start off slow and ramp up after you clear a set number of lines, while others start blisteringly fast then slow all the way down to let you regain your composure, only to suddenly speed up again without warning. This constant fluctuation in speed and difficulty at times feels at odds with the often meditative presentation of Tetris Effect’s stages. The ability to rotate a piece several times after it lands and the return of the hold queue, with which you can substitute a Tetromino once per turn, give you several ways to react but it can still feel cheap to suddenly see a board speed up 5 or 6 levels, slamming blocks into positions and ruining my carefully laid plans. If you find yourself in a pickle, you can activate Tetris Effect’s trippy new time suspending Zone mechanic. Zone accrues as you play and activating it pauses the action, allowing you to clear lines for a high-score combo or to set up your board without the constant threat of falling blocks. Zone may not be as revolutionary as something like the ability to swap out a Tetromino for one in your hold queue but I enjoyed it for the strategic possibilities of stacking a board as high as I could and then quickly working to clear it as the timer ran down. Early on I’d horde my Zone until I found myself in a jam, but a quick look at the leaderboards convinced me to use it as often as possible. Who would think that a new version of a simple game like Tetris could deliver such a thoroughly absorbing experience? The merging of time-tested gameplay with the synesthesia-inducing sound and visual design of Tetsuya Mizuguchi creates something you’ve likely never experienced. While Tetris Effect’s diverse and beautiful presentation can sometimes literally get in the way of the gameplay, this is proof that even after 30+ years, Tetris can still feel fresh.