Thursday, September 30, 2010
Honda Fever - Nintendo Wii
Price: $19.99 ETA: 10/4/2010No information available.
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GameCity Festival - the latest Nights info, plus more on Gamesblog Breakfasts
The GameCity Festival has its latest mini-event on Friday, featuring the intriguing and technically rather amazing Hydrophobia. Plus more on Gamesblog at GameCity...
Just a heads-up if you're anywhere near Nottingham on Friday night. The organisers of the GameCity festival will be holding their latest GameCity Nights event, and the centrepiece is a demo of Hydrophobia, Dark Energy Digital's inventive and visually impressive aquatic adventure game for Xbox Live Arcade, which is released today. Senior creative designer Rob Hewson will be discussing the technology behind this watery sci-fi epic in which a huge floating city is attacked by terrorists.
There will also be a cabal of indie developers hanging about on the night showing off their latest wares including Nerf Games, Ben Bradley and Richard Brooksby. It's all taking place at the Antenna club, and it's three quid on the door. You need to register first here.
Meanwhile, excitement (or in my case, raw fear) is building for this year's main event, the fifth annual GameCity festival, taking place from October 26-30. As we've mentioned, I will be there, presenting a daily Gamesblog Breakfast 'show', with topical discussion, audience debate and lots of special guests. I can semi-confirm that the stars of the One Life Left radio show will be among my panelists, as will (fingers crossed) indie game design genius Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman (responsible for Canabalt) and singing game reviewer Rebecca Mayes who are teaming up to design a new title during the event. Please come along ? if only for the full English breakfast that will be served during the lively intellectual banter...
MOVE Sports Champions Bundle - Playstation 3
Price: $99.99 ETA: 9/17/2010PlayStationMove is the world's most accurate motion gaming experience.So whether you're spiking a volleyball, shooting an arrow, or defendingyourself in a gladiator dual, your every move is translated into the gamewith complete precision. With party games perfect for family game night,creative titles for kids, and astounding experiences for core gamers,PlayStationMove will change the way you play. It's the most immersivegaming experience ever, and it's possible only on the PlayStation3 system.Sports Champions will let you and your friends physically engage in an array ofcompetitive sporting activities as you go head to head in six events. Use yourmotion controller as a racket in table tennis as you conduct high speed exchangesagainst your challenger; or ignite the arena as your motion controller becomes asword and swing your arm forward to battle your opponent.
Games Chatterbox Column Wednesday
The place to talk about games, and just about anything else too...
Wednesday's edition of Chatterbox
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The Bachelor Videogame - Nintendo Wii
Old Price: $19.99 Current Price: $14.99The quest for love doesn't have to end after the show's final rose. Now, you can experience the excitement of the TV show in your very own adventure and compete for the affections of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette! It's up to you to make an impression that will leave your suitor with only one option...to offer you the final rose!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Animal Crossing Screens
3 new shots posted.
Get the full article at GameSpot
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Obama Seeks Greater Access to Online Communication
In order to combat the decreasing use of archaic telephones, the Obama administration is preparing a bill that would allow law enforcement and national security officials greater access to online communications.
As reported by the New York Times, such a bill would require online services such as Blackberry’s encrypted email system, or social sites like Facebook, to be “technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.”
Some, like Columbia University’s Steven Bellovin, a Computer Science Professor, see a problem with the mandate, because hackers could figure out how to gain access through the new backdoors. Bellovin called it, “… a disaster waiting to happen.”
Read More
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Why Republicans May Not Support Net Neutrality
Republicans who may want to support net neutrality are caught between interest groups and the Tea Party, according to The Hill. A bill floated by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is probably not going to survive the process as a result.
Net roots groups are probably happy to hear that – many, but not all - consider the bill to be a watered down measure that takes authority away from the FCC and makes many concessions to telecom companies. Nevertheless, Republicans who avoided the ire of the Tea Party during primaries are afraid to be on the wrong side of the issue.
"I hope [GOP House members] keep in mind that the fired-up group of people this cycle is the Tea Party," Seton Motley told The Hill. Motley runs the group Less Government, which is against what it sees as "government regulations."
While Democratic lawmakers involved with the legislation are trying to get GOP support during the lame-duck session, signs point to an uphill battle. Read More
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Lost in Shadow - Nintendo Wii
Price: $39.99 ETA: 10/1/2010There is a Tower that rises above all in an alternate world. No one knows who built this or why it was built. One thing is certain, the Tower both sheds a large shadow and at the same time is filled with moving shadows.There is a shadow of a boy that climbs this tower. He runs through the shadow of the Tower, solves mysteries and puzzles along the way, and fights off enemies that try to impede his progress. The boy is not affected by gravity but his movement is restricted within the thin boarder between light and shadow.The boy is not alone in his endeavors as a creature of light joins him on his quest. A winged sylph known as a 'Spangle' supports him in his journey. Lost In Shadow mixes unique platform elements and levels of puzzling, to challenge the player. The combination of light and shadow creates a unique blend of game styles, with the shadow boy altering shapes of surrounding objects' shadows, creating walkways to previously inaccessible areas, and adventuring into a world never before seen on WiiTM.
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Robo Pop
Use your bionic arm to protect your robot from troublesome bubbles.QUALCOMM QUANTA COMPUTER RESEARCH IN MOTION ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit ? how multiplayer must evolve
We speak to Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit senior producer Matt Webster about social gaming in the asynchronous era.
Last week, we visited the offices of EA Criterion in downtown Guilford for a hands-on session with Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. While we were there, we grabbed a few minutes with senior producer Matt Webster to talk about the game's advanced approach to social connectivity. Turns out, you'll never really be playing Need For Speed alone ever again...
Was it difficult to merge the sensibilities of Criterion with the Need For Speed franchise?
I think whatever game Criterion makes is going to sit with a number of principles. Fun, accessibility, simplicity ? whether that's game modes or mechanics. And it's got to be highly connected. Irrespective of whatever game we make, it's going to be built on those principles. In a driving game that's going to mean speed, action, and the ability to pick the pad up and have fun very quickly. So this is Criterion's take on Need For Speed, that's what we were always talking about, and we discuss these things in the office quite a lot, 'if we were making this game, we'd do this or that', we're always talking about our take on different kinds of games.
When it came to this one, we thought 'what does Need For Speed mean for us oldies?' It's the very first one, it's exotic cars, it's cops? We would have been insane not to use those elements. And it's about the ease of driving the cars, the sense of speed and those action moments, trying to wrap them around a simple but engaging set of game constructs. And we always knew we wanted to go hard on the connected aspect; Autolog came out of watching how people played Burnout Paradise, and looking at where we thought connected gaming was going.
Getting a bunch of machines connected is relatively trivial these days, but lots of people don't play that way. I mean, seasoned gamers may have six to ten friends on their platform friends lists, but in actuality, the mass market gamer doesn't have that many ? if they have any at all. We wanted to ramp up the sense of social competition, and have a system that does it for you.
And the social system extends into the single-player mode doesn't it?
Yes, that's the whole point. The whole point. What we're most excited about is the solo connectivity, so as I'm browsing through things to play, I've always got information about what my friends have done on that event to encourage me to get involved. And when I have played the event, I'll get auto alerts on when my time has been beaten. And I think the 'Autolog Recommends' feature is going to change the way people play racing games ? it's the ultimate distraction. It's like any social network, there's a relatively small chance of you being connected to Twitter or Facebook at the same time as a friend, but the constructs are there for you to be able to engage with each other as if you were there at the same time.
So you've taken your cues very much from social network design and from social discovery systems like Apple's Ping?
Yes. But it also comes from those very natural discussions you have when you're playing games: 'what was your score?', ''what was your best time?'. You know, the game should do this for you! It knows everything, it's attached to a server, it knows who my friends are ? with some decent tech and a good creative, we can start pressing some of those buttons for people.
This has all been born out of Burnout Paradise where we had an asynchronous feature named Road Wars. And what we saw was that players would hit it quite late, because actually we did a good job of burying it. But when they did use it, it really hooked them. So we thought, how can we engineer this system to remember it and ping it, so everything I do is a potential recommendation for my friends? And if a bunch of friends are playing a particular event, it's going to tell me about that as well.
So you're shifting the focus, really, from pure multiplayer, to connected single player...
Getting online together is straightforward but a relatively rare occurrence, so we end up playing with strangers. And playing online? it's not a pleasant place. I mean, I'm a seasoned FPS player and it is not pleasant. If someone is new to video gaming, and they go online for the first time, that's going to be really offputting. Now people can play with friends at their own pace and in comfort ? the spotlight of performance isn't on you, but you get the pay off, which is beating a friend.
And the game lets you extend your network too doesn't it? It lets you see messages your friends have sent to their friends. That's very much a social networking feature?
Yes, definitely. These machines have social networks on them, it's just that no one's quite realised it. We've all got platform friends, we all have machines with network cables, but you can't see it, and there's no persistence, the context is always changing. But what we're doing with Need For Speed is persistent, and we're doing pushes to you that are personalised. If I beat your time and go top of a speedwall, it'll contextualise that information for you; you know, 'Matt goes top, you're now fifth and 32 seconds behind'. That's where the cool shit that goes on inside our comparison engine comes in, it makes it very rich, very personal and dynamic. It's doing many tens of thousands of comparisons and then punting that information out. It's the richness of the information that's important. If you look on a standard leaderboard, you don't know when I went top, you don't know the gap between your performances, you have to work that out for yourself. This system joins the dots. It's more powerful. It's real-time.
It also tracks the number of attempts a friend as made on your record. So if you're top of a speedwall, and someone who's second has made 32 attempts on your time, you know they're going really hard after you. It'll also tell you which cars your friends selected on every event. You're getting an insight into how your friends play. It's fun little bits of data that we can store and track. And it engenders the spirit of replayability.
But another thing you're saying is that, despite this sense of inclusion, and the ease with which we can get to grips with these cars, this is all based on accurate data. Is that right?
I have one example I always use. When we got all the data from McLaren for the SLR 722 we saw that the car's meant to do 209 mph. But in the game it wouldn't, it would only do 204 mph. We checked the numbers, because there's a deep physical simulation going on there; there are 20 values just for the rear wheels another 20 for the front, then there are dimensions and torque curves, all that stuff ? which we do a really good job of covering up, because the game is all about having fun. But the McLaren was still only doing 204, so we started looking for physics bugs? then we realised that the rear tyres were 2mm too small. We increased the size, ran the simulation and off it went: 209 mph?
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is set for release on PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 on 19 November.
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Monday, September 27, 2010
New Game: Reincarnation: The Backfire Of Hell
Take a road trip with our demon friend and find if the Reincarny is back to his evil ways. I've also set it up so you can pay through PayPal if you would like a demon doll. Check out the link on the main menu. Thanks for all the support so far!Green Day: Rock Band - Playstation 3
Old Price: $49.98 Current Price: $39.98Green Day: Rock Band puts players on stage as multi-platinum selling and Grammy Award winning group Green Day, featuring the band's most-defining albums and key moments throughout their career to date. Players perform vocals, guitar, bass and drums using award-winning Rock Band technology. 3D visuals and archival material give players a unique view into the music and vision of this pioneering band.
Medal of Honor Greg Goodridge and Patrick Liu Interview
We chat with the magnificently bearded Greg Goodridge and Patrick Liu about multiplayer in Medal of Honor.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
Call of Duty: Black Ops Prestige Edition - Xbox 360
Price: $149.99 ETA: 11/9/2010On the heels of last year's hit Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops will insert you behind enemy lines again, this time during the Cold War, when large governments were officially not involved in the affairs of smaller countries, but unofficially trying to either topple or prevent the toppling of those dominoes. So when you're thrown into the boots of elite special forces units engaged in covert warfare, you'd better succeed, because anyone who can help you will say 'What mission?' in this era of 'deniable operations' in explosive conflicts around the globe.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Xbox 360
Old Price: $59.99 Current Price: $49.99The sequel to the best-selling first-person action game of all time, Modern Warfare 2 continues the gripping and heart-racing action as players face off against a new threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. The newest installment in the groundbreaking Call of Duty series, Modern Warfare 2 features for the first time in video games, the musical soundtrack of legendary Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Grammy Award and Tony winning composer Hans Zimmer. The title picks up immediately following the historic events of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the blockbuster title that earned worldwide critical acclaim, including 14 million copies sold worldwide; 'Most Played Online Video Game' in history, 2009 Guinness World Records; more than 50 Game of the Year awards, including the Console Game of the Year and Overall Game of the Year, 2007, from the Academy of Interactive Arts andamp; Sciences
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Tournament Edition Fightstick - Xbox 360
Price: $129.99 ETA: 9/28/2010Style and comfort reign supreme with an authenti c arcade experience featuring Japanese-style joysti ck andamp; butt ons, multi -speed turbo functi onality and offi cially licensed artwork portraying your favorite characters. Using the exact Sanwa joysti ck and 30mm butt ons found in arcade machines, along with realisti c spacing and an eight-butt on layout, the Blazblue: Conti nuum Shift Tournament Editi on brings the true arcade experience right into your lap. The Tournament Editi on is the perfect weapon to bring your fi ghti ng skills and level of gaming enjoyment to new heights. Inferno Divider!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Is interactive fiction the future of books?
Global design agency IDEO thinks merging the digital novel with playful interactions might lead to a new era of writing...
What impact will digital books have on the experience of the written word ? apart from the form factor, and the ability to store hundreds of works on a single ebook reader? Will the rise of gadgets like Kindle and tablet computers like iPad actually contribute to the medium in a creative way?
This is a question that design consultancy IDEO has grappled with, producing a Vimeo clip to show three possible book-reading applications for tablet computers and ebook readers: Nelson, Coupland and Alice. It's the third (from 3:03 onwards) that interests us. Alice, the narrative informs us, is "an interactive reading experience that invites the reader to engage with the story-telling process [...] Stories unfold and develop through the reader's active participation."
For example, clues could be unlocked by shaking the screen so that most of the words 'fall off' revealing hidden codes. Other narrative elements could be unveiled by opening the book while in a specific geographic location. The video also mentions the possibility of receiving text messages and emails from characters in the book. I guess Silence of the Lambs would be a bit more scary if you started getting texts from Buffalo Bill asking what your dress size is.
But these are more like reading enhancements than truly interactive narrative features. Later, the narrator talks about the reader adding to the narrative, co-developing the story, thereby gaining access to secret events, character backstories and new chapters. "In time a non-linear narrative emerges, allowing the reader to immerse themselves in the story from multiple angles."
Of course, interactive fiction is far from a new idea. 'Choose your own adventure books' were massive in the eighties, and the adventure gaming genre has been a mainstay of the computer games industry since the likes of The Hobbit and Zork. There's also been a thriving interactive fiction scene on the web for a decade, with independent developers creating interesting experimental examples to download.
But can 'traditional' novels really be enhanced in this way? I can sort of see the value in an ebook app that will hyperlink from any real-life location, item or person mentioned in a story, to further information online. I spent much of my time while reading James Ellroy's American Tabloid, looking up information on the Kennedy presidency, Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. But then, this is something of a distraction while you're trying to become engrossed in a novel, and could easily be commercially exploited ? the last thing most readers will want is an electronic novel stuffed with contextual advertising so that every place name or brand comes with a link to the relevant manufacturer or tourist board.
There's also the question of longevity. It's all very well setting up lots of nice little augmented reality stunts for a book's launch, but how long will the publisher support geo-tagging and 'secret events' for a single work? We don't all read the same books at the same time. And also this concept of a non-linear, multi-perspective narrative ? well, that might be fine for, say, Bret Easton Ellis, but the core of most novels is their very subjectivity.
I think there are definite possibilities, though, for a new breed of novels, and a coming generation of writers, to play with the ebook format and develop lots of new interactive ideas. There's already a growing mass of writers who are simultaneously contributing to games, films, comics and novels, combining narrative methods as entertainment evolves. Readers of crime fiction enjoy sorting the clues from the red herrings, so why not make that process more visual and haptic?
I'm not sure this concept should be applied to the canon of printed literature already available. I don't want to have to hang around in Clerkenwell to unlock some extra info on Bill Sykes, or play a balloon piloting game to ruin the beginning of Enduring Love. We all know that imagination is the ultimate form of narrative interactivity. But I quite like the idea of fresh novels that allow us to use the functionality of the technology to open up new elements. It's not sacrilege, is it? It's just... new.
Atelier Rorona:The Alchemists of Arland - Playstation 3
Price: $59.99 ETA: 9/28/2010Atelier Rorona is an all new alchemy RPG developed by Gust the creators of Mana Khemia and Ar tonelico series for the PS2. This all new game adopts a breathtaking anime 3D graphics while retaining the classic RPG feel of the Atelier series. Players can spent countless hours adventuring unexplored lands and synthesize rare items.
4. Lose the Heat
The police are hot on your trail, so it's time to lose the heat!QUALCOMM QUANTA COMPUTER RESEARCH IN MOTION ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 - PC
Old Price: $39.99 Current Price: $29.99Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 delivers the most trusted virus and spyware protection in the world.
Alien Asteroid Assault
Blast the asteroids to rake in the cash, but don't let them bash into you and crush your ship! Hit asteroids of the same color for a bonus.
Shady Puzzle: Super Awesome Compilation Edition ! HD! Screens
1 new shots posted.
Get the full article at GameSpot
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City - Nintendo DS
Price: $29.99 ETA: 9/21/2010The embodiment of adventure and discovery in the purest sense, EOIII transports gamers to a sparkling oceanic paradise filled with atmospheric dungeons to chart and survey, vast watery expanses to sail across, and rumors of a sunken city to investigate. With an entirely new host of character classes to customize and train, the addition of naval travel and exploration, and the unprecedented introduction of cooperative local multiplayer content, EOIII isn't content to simply continue the series; it seeks to redefine it.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Amicus Briefs Filed in California Violent Games SCOTUS Case
Cute Owl
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Galaxy Gunner
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Friday, September 17, 2010
F1: 2010 - Xbox 360
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Gormiti: The Lords of Nature! - Nintendo DS
Cabela's North American Adventure - Playstation 3
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
Mission Editor Utility Video
"Mission Editor Utility Video" was posted by MikeTao on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:59:25 -0700
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