Mass Effect 2 celebrates its 10th anniversary today, showing us how far the series has come (and how much it's changed).

If the original Mass Effect was good, then Mass Effect 2 was great. It's still among my favorite BioWare games, only second to Dragon Age: Origins, but definitely the best Mass Effect title ever made. The sequel had it all: Intrigue, mystery, a kind of dark sci-fi allure that made you want to explore its hidden depths, interesting characters (with the exception of Jacob) that you felt bonded to and wanted to actually get to know. The Illusive Man (probably one of the best NPCs ever made), Jack's harrow backstory, the suicide mission...Mass Effect 2 had it all.

The best part of the game was that it's a middle ground that promised more to come. Mass Effect 2 is a bridge rather than the end, and keeps you wondering. It doesn't squash or resolve the potential like many other sequels, but ignites your imagination to what's to come. The reapers are on the way--they're not here yet--and the sense of unease and anxiety is palpable.

Valve's new VR-exclusive Half-Life game promises to deliver tons of freedom, reactivity, and immersion.

The reveal trailers and gameplay footage has already show just how interactive Half-Life: Alyx is. Gamers can pick items off of shelves and throw them at enemies, scour nearby ruins for materials for makeshift high-tech weaponry, and even search drawers for ammo. Everything looks realistic and more importantly reactive to what players actually do, throwing them into chaotic gunfights where twitch reflexes are just as important as Portal-esque experimentation and environment manipulation (those gravity gloves look amazingly fun).

Now in a recent Reddit AmA, Valve reveals more pieces of the dynamic puzzle that is Half-Life: Alyx. VR brings a new dimension of immersion by simply virtue of the medium itself, but the new Half-Life game was built specifically for the platform and should be virtual reality's killer app while also representing the culmination of Valve's SteamVR efforts.

Why didn't Valve ever talk about Half-Life 3? Simple: A new Half-Life game hasn't been in development for quite some time.

Half-Life: Alyx marks Valve's return to proper games development, and more importantly, a return to the series altogether. But why did it take so long? Why didn't we ever hear about any other Half-Life projects? According to Valve's recent Reddit AmA, these projects simply didn't exist until now. Half-Life was pretty much in stasis for the longest time as Valve focused on its VR hardware endeavors and managing the billion-dollar Steam storefront.

"We didn't talk about Half-Life for a long time because we weren't actively working on a Half-Life game. Once Half-Life: Alyx became a reality internally, it was already clear to us that this was something we wanted to involve the community in. We're going to be doing more of this in the next few weeks as we prepare to launch it," the devs said in the AmA.

Bluepoint Games' new PlayStation 5 project will be even more titanic than Shadow of the Colossus.

The so-called masters of remasters at Bluepoint are working on something big for the PlayStation 5. No one knows what it is just yet (rumor has it they're working on a Demon's Souls remake) but we do know it's their crowning achievement. This speaks volumes given Bluepoint's strong pedigree with Shadow of the Colossus, The Nathan Drake Collection, and Titanfall on Xbox 360. The dev team has swelled to 90 people to help manifest this new project.

"Established in 2006, with a team now over 90 people, Bluepoint has developed a history of delivering the highest quality remasters and remakes in the industry. But that's not enough for us. Our latest project is the largest in our history, and aims to define the visual benchmark for the next generation of gaming hardware," reads Bluepoint's updated website.

If you thought the US smartphone market was the largest in the world, well you were wrong -- twice. First, China is the largest smartphone market in the world and now India has dethroned the US.

According to a new report from Counterpoint Research, India overtook the US and is now the second-largest smartphone market in the world with 158 million smartphones shipping into India in 2019 alone. The reason for this gigantic surge and overtaking of the US market is thanks to Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo.

In fact, 72% of smartphones shipped to India were Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo. But what about Apple and Samsung? Samsung still holds 21% of the Indian smartphone market, while Xiaomi commands 28% winning 5% of the smartphone market in 2019 from Samsung. Realme is the real surprise here, going from 3% to 10% which is a 255% increase year-over-year.

I'm sure that you have all heard about Coronavirus by now, with China shutting down cities and conspiracy theories spreading, but now game sales are spiking because of it. Game sales, you ask?

You might remember (or even play) Plague Inc: Evolved, an outbreak management simulation available on Steam and mobile that was made by Ndemic Creations. The Steam player count has spiked just like cases of Coronavirus, with the developers coming out and saying that people shouldn't be using their game as a basis for real-world disease control... like people needed to know this.

Using data on the Steam Charts we can see that in the last 30 days that Plague Inc: Evolved peak players have increased by 84% to 15,823 players up from 1988 players back in December 2019. This is the highest peak players the game has ever had, highlighting the fact that Coronavirus is spreading on Steam faster than it is in real life.

Samsung has filed a new patent for its 2020 model of its Odyssey mixed reality headset. Based on the patent, Let'sGoDigital has created some images of what it looks like.

The report states that Samsung Electronics filed the patent in China with China National Intellectual Property Administration or CNIPA. The filing was dated back to early 2019, and then the CNIPA approved the patent on January 17th, 2020.

The patent included eight images of the new design, which show some clear changes when compared to Samsung's older mixed reality headsets. Right off the bat, we can see that the new patent designs for the 2020 model come with a larger, more robust head strap, no rotary wheel, and adoption of a mesh-like material. The patent also included two separate colors, which can be seen in the images.

Marvel fans have started a new petition to replace Captain Marvel actress, Brie Larson, with a "woman of color". The petition has got more traction than you'd think.

The petition which has been started on ThePetitionSite details that Brie Larson must step down from her role as Captain Marvel to prove that she is an ally of social justice. The description for the petition also states that if Larson stepped down, she should be replaced with "Monica, the original female & BLACK Captain Marvel instead of white-washing characters for the benefit of the straight, white men running Disney."

At the time of writing this, the petition has already gathered 27,897 signatures and is well on its way to its goal of 30,000. Kevin Feige, the head of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), has stated that Captain Marvel will be an extremely important part of the MCU moving forward. This makes me think that this petition won't be changing anything, especially since Larson has established herself in the role of Captain Marvel in several MCU movies.

This year will be known as the year of foldable smartphones really taking off, with Samsung already dominating the foldable smarpthone market with its Galaxy Fold and soon to be Galaxy Z -- which folds out like a Z, oh and the Galaxy Z Flip.

But don't forget that Motorola will be shipping its cheaper Razr, a new foldable that will see pre-orders from Verizon and Walmart shipping this month. Motorola's new foldable Razr smartphone is 'just' $1500, packing Qualcomm's mid-range Snapdragon 710, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of RAM compared to the Snapdragon 855 inside of the Galaxy Fold.

Motorola's foldable Razr smartphone packs a foldable 6.2-inch pOLED as its main display, while there's also a 2.7-inch OLED external display.

Back in December, hackers were wiping out and stealing Fallout 76 player inventories en masse. Now Bethesda has restored those items.

Fallout 76 is no stranger to hacking, but one nefarious spree deleted gearsets and inventories for lots of players, a move that threatened to basically destroy the game's playerbase. Thankfully Bethesda had a backup plan. The team cloned previous versions of gamers' characters to replicate their compromised gear and return it back to the owners. The clone can then be used to transfer the gear to a user's main.

"A clone of your character will be restored on January 22, 2020. Once restored, this character will have the entire inventory of items, gear and scrap (100% of your stuff) that it posessed on December 20, 2019," Bethesda wrote in a support ticket.