A lot went on in the gaming space this year, with the industry seeing waves of acquisitions, the rise and fall of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, some game releases that took the world by storm and a casting choice for a video game movie that we all came together to dunk on. Think you can remember all the big stories? Try our quiz below to see how well you know the gaming news of 2022. Nintendo showed the first trailer for "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" in October, giving all of us an earful of Chris Pratt (of "Parks and Recreation" and Guardians of the Galaxy fame) as the iconic plumber. Many fans were swift to decry the choice for the snub to Mario's longtime voice actor, Charles Martinet, and for what they felt was Pratt's uninspired voice acting (not to mention his ties to the controversial megachurch Hillsong).

Alas, game-streaming service Google Stadia is no more. Two years and 11 months after its launch, it will wind down in January, marking the end, for now, of the tech company's aspirations in video games. At least one guy who used to tweet at me every time we published a review to point out that the game in question was also available on Stadia can finally stand down. Customers, meanwhile, are being looked after: Google is refunding every purchase made through Stadia, from controllers to subscriptions to the games themselves. And the writing had been on the wall for a while: Google started shutting the game studios it had established to make Stadia games early last year, and in February it was reported that it has begun attempts to sell the streaming tech that powers it to other companies. But the Verge revealed last week that developers who were working on games for the service only discovered that their projects were being cancelled when the news started proliferating across Twitter.

Google said it will terminate services for Stadia, its troubled cloud gaming service, after it failed to gain traction with players almost three years after its launch. Stadia was an attempt from Alphabet Inc.'s Google to take on the video game console giants with a platform of its own. Unlike traditional consoles, Stadia allowed users to play games on devices such as Android phones and Chromecast apps for TV, by funneling data directly from Google's server clusters. "While Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected," Phil Harrison, Stadia vice president and general manager, wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "So we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

While Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected,

Google has responded to last week's rumors that it may sunset its Stadia gaming service this year: "Stadia is not shutting down," the official Stadia Twitter account told a concerned fan in a tweet spotted by PC Gamer. "Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." I mentioned in my story about Xbox's streaming adventures into Samsung TVs that it's all been a little too quiet on the Stadia front when rival game streaming options have upped their game. Hopefully, Google has some exciting plans to reveal sooner rather than later. Hitting the Books: How Moderna dialed in its vaccine to fight COVID's variants Cellular service is coming to New York's subway tunnels, but it's going to take a while With horror stories of hackers selling personal information, it can be stressful to send your smartphone for repair. Yes, you could wipe your phone, but then you have to go through the hassle of restoring it afterward.

CD Projekt RED's open-world epic is probably not the genre-defining revolution rather a lot had hoped for, however the Stadia model performs nice. Whereas the PS4 and Xbox One editions presently undergo from horrible efficiency points and tons of bugs, the Stadia model is corresponding to enjoying on a gaming PC and is arguably one of the best ways to play the sport. I loved it rather a lot in my evaluation and am excited to see it get higher. Though it is nonetheless in Early Entry, Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 is already shaping as much as be one other RPG masterpiece from one of many style's greats. The builders behind the critically-acclaimed Divinity: Unique Sin sequence have taken the reins of the long-lasting Dungeons & Dragons universe on this wonderful feast of turn-based techniques and great storytelling.

In March 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to tell gamers what he owed them. He wasn't a big gamer, he admitted. Google, though, was indebted to games. Games were the entry point for countless Googlers into computer science. Games like chess and G o helped train Google's DeepMind AI.

If you bought the newest iPhone last year, you might have struggled with unlocking it on the go. Yes, like all iPhones since the iPhone X, there's Face ID, but when half your face is covered with a mask, it doesn't work. With Apple's new iOS 14.5 developer beta, you can unlock your iPhone via Face ID even in a mask -- just so long as you own an Apple Watch and are wearing it at the time. You'll just need to glance at your iPhone, and you'll get a haptic buzz on your wrist, letting you know the unlock was successful. With your Apple Watch unlocked and on your person, your iPhone will unlock through FaceID despite much lower facial recognition accuracy.

It's been just a few weeks since the Microsoft Xbox Series S/X and Sony PlayStation 5 consoles hit store shelves, with people scrambling to pick up what little available stock there is before the holidays arrive. But said consoles are hundreds of dollars a pop, and right now they aren't worth the price of admission considering how few next-gen titles are available. So what's a gamer with a slim wallet and a dream to play the latest games to do? With streaming services on the rise thanks to advances in broadband internet speeds, now is the time to look to game streaming as just another option, like video and music streaming. Whether you're just itching to play the latest titles on your outdated laptop, or want to enjoy your own personal library on the go, there are multiple game streaming services to choose from, all catering to different needs.

Google launched Stadia, a streaming service that lets you play high-quality video games, exactly 12 months ago. The launch was met with a mixture of skepticism and disappointment. Was Stadia viable for people with an average-at-best internet connection? Would Google abandon it like Daydream, Reader and so many other services? These were perfectly valid questions. A year ago, it arrived without visible achievements, voice chat, 4K resolution on the web and most of the social features teased at the Game Developers' Conference, such as State Share and Crowd Play. The company has spent the last year adding features that fans were clamoring for at launch. The store has a broader selection of games and Stadia Pro, its subscription-based offering, has a better lineup of freebies, too. The service faces stiff competition, though, from rival offerings such as Microsoft's xCloud.