Microsoft is partnering with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide Xbox Adaptive Controller units to 22 initial VA rehab centres across the U.S.

For active duty military members, playing video games can help release stress, build camaraderie and offer comforting familiarity in foreign environments. For veterans returning from combat, gaming can reduce isolation, renew connections with fellow service members and provide therapeutic benefits.

While gaming is a popular activity among the military community, navigating a traditional controller can be difficult or impossible for injured veterans. The inability to game can mean the loss of connection to veterans’ military communities and to an activity that was a significant part of their lives during service.

This partnership aims to give veterans with limited mobility the opportunity to game again, get them more involved with their rehabilitation and increase social interaction.

Head on over to Microsoft Stories for some stories from the veterans who are benefiting from the Xbox Adaptive Controller.

The post MS & VA Bring Xbox One Adaptive Controller to Veterans appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Is there another you?

From Jordan Peele, the film maker who bought us ‘Get Out’ in 2017 pens and directs a dark thriller; Us.

After a terrifying encounter at a Santa Cruz beach-side Carnival, a young Adelaide Thomas (Lupita Nyong’o) is changed for life.

As an adult, she marries and has two kids. One of her children, a son, is special needs.

A family trip to her parents’ house back in Santa Cruz not only reawakens the nightmares from her youth – it causes an outbreak across America as the ‘tethered’ escape their confinements within repurposed and otherwise disused subway tunnels.

The ‘tethered’ are cloned humans, humans also without a soul.

Us is one hell of a ride of a film. It retains enough suspense (initially) and offers up a few fright scares and cringingly gory moments as the suppressed try to gain control in order to eventually live a harmonious existence, holding hands across America…

But, Us also left me a bit confused.

There is a lot to this story, so much infact that I felt as though vital pieces were missing to explain some of the why’s, how’s and motives behind the ‘tethered’.

Surprisingly Us also does not take itself seriously and there are actually many laugh out loud moments.

As she does in every film, Lupita owns the role of Adelaide and pulls in a superb performance.

If you liked Get Out – it’s a win, if you are after a really good thriller with an amusement factor, albeit you may feel confused with missing parts to the story, Us is the one.

The post Us (Universal Pictures – 2019) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.