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8BitDo's new Pro controller lets you remap its buttons from your phone
The Pro 2 also gets two rear buttons and easy profile switching, and it's still just 50 bucks
8BitDo has become, in a very low-key way, one of the best gaming accessory companies out there. Its last high-end controller design was praised for its ability to rebind controls on both the PC and Nintendo Switch. With the upgraded model, christened the 8BitDo Pro 2, you can now do that reprogramming without needing a full-sized computer. Like the excellent SN30 Pro+, the controller can be customized in terms of button layout and more esoteric options, like analog stick dead zones or trigger sensitivity. (It's great for Nintendo's weird A-on-the-right habit.) But the 8BitDo Pro 2 can be programmed via and Android (or iOS) app over Bluetooth, making it a lot easier to tweak your settings if you're playing on mobile or the Switch. Even better, the profiles for your button mapping aren't bound to the connection mode anymore: a button on the front switches between profiles on the fly, a la the Xbox Elite controllers.
Games are a little more complicated to review than apps. Maybe the story and premise are intriguing and engulfing, but the controls are horrible. Or maybe the graphics are gorgeous, but the gameplay is terribly bad. What rating do you give? You might err toward an average rating, but wouldn't it be better if there was an easy way to specify which aspects were good and which were disappointing, for the benefit of the devs as well as other users?
You wear a disguise, to look like human guys, but you're not a man, you're a Chicken Boo. The classic Animaniacs sketch, wherein a six-foot chicken passes himself off as human in various Chaplin-style short farces, might very well be one of the inspirations for indie gaming hit Octodad: Dadliest Catch. In this casual physics game you play an eight-legged cephalopod trying to live the American dream, passing himself off as an average Joe as he gets married, enters the workforce, and raises a family.
I dare you to try and get through this story without getting Devo lyrics stuck in your head. Ready? Here we go: FireWhip is a casual game from developer Trichotomy that's unlike just about anything on the Play Store, despite its simplicity. You play a tiny pixelated blob which, for reasons that aren't adequately explained, has a whip made of fire. The objective is to kill as many bad guys (also represented by pixelated blobs) as possible, in a sort of 360-degree version of a top-down shooter.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a selection of lesser known music players for locally stored media that had some special powers and functions. However, playback and streaming aren't the only functions a music aficionado looks for, especially when your favorite app sometimes lacks a certain functionality. So how do you fill this void, or how do you improve on your basic listening experience? Here are 10 utilities that can be used in conjunction with your preferred music apps to complement them.
It really is staggering how much customization you can do with the flexible Xposed Framework, even on a stock phone or tablet. The latest interesting Xposed module adds some much-needed options to Chrome for Android, at least if you're a root user who knows your way around the tool. ChromePIE is not a delicious browser-flavored snack cake, it's a module that adds swiping controls to Chrome, modeled after the popular LMT-PIE navigation bar replacement.
If you thought (like me) that Update Wednesday had concluded, you thought wrong. It appears Google's also started pushing an update to Google Play Games, bringing the app up to version 2.0 with Level-up notification controls, XP rankings, and a few UI changes.
Invisible Gamepad Sticker-Controller Is Your Hilariously Bad Kickstarter Project Of The Day [Update]
Newsflash: touchscreen controls are almost universally bad. They're so bad that companies like Sony, Archos, and NVIDIA have created entirely new devices just for the novelty of shoving console-style physical controls onto Android hardware. There's got to be a way to make make non-tactile control schemes suck less. This Kickstarter project... isn't it.
Whether due to neglect or a topsy-turvy set of priorities, Android developers sometimes leave out basic features like lock screen or notification (I'm looking at you, Spotify) controls. Well, Pandora is fixing at least some of its problems with an update that brings the ability to pause or skip tracks from the lock screen. Unfortunately, notification controls still aren't available but, hey. One step at a time.
Yesterday, Google added support for audio playlists and media controls to Google Currents. We thought this sounded like a pretty neat feature, and, hey! We're on Google Currents! So why not put two and two together? Today we updated our Currents edition to include a feed of our audio podcast and it's actually kind of beautiful. Take a look:
Google Currents Update Adds Support For Audio Playlists, Media Bars, And Audio Controls
Google Currents Update Adds Support For Audio Playlists, Media Bars, And Audio Controls
Google released an update to the news reader it hasn't abandoned today, adding a bunch of support for audio-centric features. Playlists are now available for editions that contain audio content, and users will be able to play, pause, and jump forward or backward in the playlist. There are even status bar controls added for when audio is playing, so you don't have to sit staring at a blank playback page while listening.
Popular (and well-established) music manager/player Winamp got an update today, bringing the app to version 1.4.6 and introducing (among other things) long-awaited notification player controls. The controls match the look and feel of the app they belong to, using a design language that (unfortunately) doesn't look like it's been revisited in a while. That said, they work like a charm, and add much-needed functionality.
Back at the end of August, Archos announced an innovative new tablet called the GamePad. As its namesake suggests, it's built with gaming in mind - complete with on-board controls. In the announcement, Archos claimed the 7" device had "automatic gaming recognition and mapping tools" - the big question was, however, how's that going to work?
Bringing a new entry to the successful NBA 2KX franchise, 2K Games recently released NBA 2K13 to Google's Play Store. Like its predecessors, NBA 2K13 is built on the NBA 2K engine, with improved graphics and a new one-finger control option to give players "the ultimate NBA experience while on the go."