Gaming posts

Though recently it has been the smartphone market that has garnered the most attention in the tech world, the arrival of a revamped – if slightly disappointing – Apple TV is a reminder that the living room is the next big play for digital transformation. Think about it: unlike so many other sectors of society, the living room is one in which traditional approaches to media still largely dominate. DVD sales still dwarf streaming and online video in both numbers and revenue, while the web has yet to make any serious inroads onto people’s TVs. So there is a massive market ready for the taking – if only someone…

Assuming you’re a gamer, you will be tickled not only pink, but an entire double rainbow of colours to know that Duke Nukem Forever will finally, finally, finally see release. Christmas will come twice in 2011. If you’re less in the know, Duke Nukem Forever began development in 1997 by 3D Realms, the studio behind the legendary Duke Nukem 3D. But as the ambition of the project continued to grow, the release date continued to be pushed back, eventually to “when it’s done”. The game eventually became synonymous with vapourware, and even the most hardcore Duke fans (myself included) eventually lost…

The worm has turned, gentlemen. A Hawaii man has sued developer NC Interactive over his addiction to the computer game Lineage II. And won. For real. Someone just beat the end-user license agreement. Craig Smallwood has sunk more than 20,000 hours into Lineage II, compulsively playing when he could have presumably been doing more constructive things. Like going to the pub with friends. Or dressing himself. Or bathing. Or playing a better game than Lineage II. Smallwood was reportedly hospitalized for extreme emotional distress and depression after he was locked out of his three accounts,…

Forget pen and paper, wet acrylics, coloring pencils, and all those other artsy tools — all you need today is the Wii. Well, you also need the $70 uDraw tablet by THQ, but maybe it is worth the price to put one-up the mighty Pablo Picasso himself. The uDraw tablet takes me back to the days of Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo, but some things have changed in the past 18 years or so. For instance, now we have an actual pen to go along with that tablet. And the hardware looks very solid. Sure, it might not be a Wacom tablet (what the professionals use), but for kids and adults alike who want to take a dip into digital…

It would seem Sony is setting something of a double standard, taking an indirect dig at Apple in its latest PSP ad. Though the phone is never mentioned by name, it’s clear ‘Josh Rose’, apparently kidding himself, is bragging about having downloaded, er… ‘Game Castle’ on an iPhone (looks like tight graphics if I’ve ever seen them). The commercial goes on to essentially say that for $9.99, you could be getting far greater and more playable games than the typical iPhone fare. And guess what? It’s not wrong. The double standard of which I’m speaking, though, is the fact that, well… isn’t Sony planning…

Fans of Microsoft Flight Simulator are all gathering today to hold hands and weep – the franchise, previously pronounced dead last year, will be resurrected in the form of Microsoft Flight. Though, while some weep with joy, others may be weeping for an entirely different reason. “Microsoft Flight will bring a new perspective to the long-standing genre,” raps the press release, “welcoming everyone, including long-time fans, to experience the magic of flight.” Magic, huh? I almost thought this was an Apple product for a moment. ‘Everyone’ is a very telling word, here. Previous incarnations…

Microsoft’s Kinect would have you believe that no controller is the way of the future for gaming. Microsoft’s Kinect would have you believe that gaming hardware represents a barbaric, uncivilized class of gamer. Well, colour me barbaric, because Microsoft’s Kinect don’ got nuthin’ on this. Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have slapped together (I guess more accurately, like, ‘toiled meticulously for countless weeks’) a gaming rig that refuses to take any of this new age motion control bullspit. Seriously, start making some phone calls – you’re…

I’m totally a PC gamer, especially when it comes to first-person shooters. I play Team Fortress 2 most nights of my life (Heavy, if you’re wondering), and I’ve even been known to pick up the odd bout of Modern Warfare 2. So this news gives me a bit of a shit-eating grin. My apologies in advance to the Halo-folk reading this. Rahul Sood, whom you may or may not recognize as the founder of Voodoo, and also CTO of HP’s gaming affairs, recently sounded off on Microsoft’s decision to axe console/PC cross-platform gaming, and champion the Xbox as its gaming saviour. “There was a project that got killed at Microsoft….

Alright, this just blew my mind a little. Not so much that I’m left a catatonic husk, though – I can still type. Lucky you. Anyway, Sony has filed two patents (bada boom, bada bing) that, when combined, reveal the secret to local multiplayer gaming like ain’t never been seen before. Actually, it will technically never be seen, even once it’s implemented. We’re all familiar with how 3D works, right? Alternating frames, left and right, illusion of depth, all that jazz. I won’t insult your intelligence. Sony has filed patents that dare threaten to take the concept to the next level – offering the end…

This is absolutely the coolest thing I’ve seen in days and I’m not letting you get away without seeing it. I kinda like how Super Mario Bros. is one of those things that gets used as a benchmark and/or guinea pig to test out other technologies and whatnot. What you see before you is no exception. As part of his thesis at the Hannover University of Applied Science and Art, student Andreas Heikaus has put SMB to the test in an exploration of applying familiar computer graphics to a new environment. I’m a LITTLE disappointed that he uses the warp zones and whatnot, and that the previous level gets deleted…