Daily Loaf

I’m exhausted. It’s the good kind of exhausted though, like finally lying down in your bed after weeks of traveling on vacation. Dragon Age: Origins, the new high-fantasy role-playing game from Bioware really is an epic journey to a far off land, and like anyone whose traveled abroad knows, there are plenty of rough spots and minor annoyances as you go, but looking back all you’ll think about are the grand vistas, the strange cities, and the demon spawn you got to kill. With well over forty hours of play time (at least), Dragon Age: Origins is no weekend getaway. It requires commitment, endurance, a desire to learn new language and the patience to put up with some unsavory meals. In return you’ll get memories that will last a lifetime (or at least until Mass Effect 2 or Final Fantasy XIII come out).

Set in a fantasy world of Bioware’s own creation, Dragon Age: Origins tells a familiar but satisfying tale of evil hordes invading the mortal world, threatening to destroy all creation with their gnashing teeth and overly-spikey armor. The developers take pride in making their generic fantasy setting not totally generic. The elves are either slaves, serfs, or nomads, not scions of high civilization. The dwarves obsesses over politics and scheming and have American accents. The arch-demons are really dragons. Read the rest of this entry »

Saying Borderlands is my favorite combination of first person shooter and role-playing game is like saying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are my favorite mass market peanut butter and chocolate candy – sure there’s not a lot of competition, but damn they’re both really good.

Set on the a sci-fi western/post apocalyptic planet called Pandora, Borderlands puts you behind the gun sights of one of four different mercenaries trying to find an ancient alien Vault and the presumed techno-treasures sealed therein. Each character has a different specialty: Roland the soldier, Lilith the elementalist siren, Mordecai the hunter, and Brick the berserker. Each has unique skill trees giving them special powers that define a large part of how they play. For example, the siren can turn invisible for short periods of time, the hunter has a helpful and deadly hawk companion, the soldier can deploy auto-turrets, and the berserker can pound people to a pulp with his bare hands. All the characters and the world they inhabit are rendered in a striking, almost painterly style that gives Borderlands a look that helps it stand out among virtual worlds.

One thing all these characters have in common, the unifying force that ties all of Borderlands together into a giant, violent, explosive ball of fun is the panoply of guns. There are pistols, revolvers, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, grenades, and even alien weaponry. Within each category weapons vary by damage, elemental effects, clip size, rate of fire, accuracy, and other special features. Although the some characters specialize in some weapons, all of them are useful and most characters routinely run around with at least one or two of each type. Enemies and monsters drop guns when you kill them, boxes scattered around the landscape hold guns, vending machines sell guns, piles of trash have guns in them. The game advertises “Bazillions of Guns!” and they ain’t lying. The constant quest for new weapons, something just a little better or a lot different or both drives you to keep playing, to keep shooting, to keep exploring It’s every bit as addictive as it’s meant to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Until this week, I had no idea that the World Wide Web that I am accustomed to is called “Web 2.0”, a second wave in the development of our most important medium for communication. Web 2.0 can be thought of as inspiring a shift in the role of the user, from receiver to creator, allowing participants to become “core developers”). The Web became a two-way street, constantly changing at the hands of the public (for a detailed description of Web 2.0 and its development, click here). As hard as it is to imagine the Web without its interactivity, Web 2.0 only came about in reaction to the dot-com bust, when the unidirectional Web 1.0 was in a crisis. The response, a rethinking and reworking of the existing system, introduced the world to many of the most successful applications and websites in use today, from MySpace to YouTube to Facebook.

In a similar sense, we are currently in an energy crisis, yet continuing to rely on old, out-of-date systems of provision that are no longer viable, economically or ecologically. Energy is distributed from power plants to consumers in a top-down fashion that leaves all the control in the hands of large corporations. Additionally, power stations produce massive amounts of waste and CO2 emissions, illuminating the need for a radical transformation in the way that energy is produced and distributed. What must occur, to follow the above analogy, is a shift to Energy 2.0.
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Is Nathan Drake the best video game character of this console generation? I think he must be. Part Lara Croft and part Han Solo, the star of the Uncharted series for Playstion 3 brims over with goofy, roguish charm and is just the right amount of both badass and smarty-pants. Voice-acted to perfection by Nolan North (who you might remember from every other game in the world), Drake never grows tiresome, holding players’ interests from opening cut-scene to the make-you-want-to-smile/cry final lines of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Add in the equally alluring and well-acted characters of Elena, Chloe, and Sully combined with action and graphics worthy of a mega-budget movie, and you get one of the best games of the year.

Uncharted 2 is most definitely going for that blockbuster movie experience. In an age where open worlds and non-linear stories get all the glory, it seems almost quaint that Uncharted 2’s game play and story unfold along a very strict course. It has a complex story about Marco Polo’s lost fleet in Borneo and an ancient treasure hidden in the Himalayas to tell, and there’s no time for open world dilly dallying with side quests. Read the rest of this entry »

I know that people who make environmentally-friendly inventions have the best intentions at heart, but sometimes they take it a bit too far and come up with things that are, well, weird. Just in time for the creepiest holiday of the year, TreeHugger has compiled a slideshow list of some of the most unusual (to put it politely) green inventions out there.

And what, you ask, is on this strange list? Take, for instance, a luminol-filled lamp that runs on – you guessed it – blood. It’s the same stuff that forensic analysts use to find traces of blood at a crime scene and now you can light up your home with that same eerie blue glow.
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I’ve got mixed feelings writing this review, and not just because it means I have to figure out how to use umlauts. No, those mixed feelings are more primal, more basic than that – they are the painful discomfort associated with having something not live up to your expectations. And my expectations for Brütal Legend were as high as they get. Lead designer Tim Schafer made Psychonauts, my favorite game of the last console generation.

He’s been a consistently innovative, funny, and entertaining game developer with a unique sense of style. He always pushes the limits, always tries to give us something we haven’t seen before, and he does all those things with this game too. I firmly believe that reviewers should do everything they can to ignore their own expectations. Each game deserves to be taken on its own terms, judged according to what’s actually there, not what I wanted to be there. Judged on its own, Brütal Legend has all those Schafer hallmarks: an evocative, unique setting, a smart-yet-ridiculous sense of humor, and well-written, engaging characters. It’s also only kinda fun. Read the rest of this entry »

As winter approaches and as America gently heaves itself out of economic implosion, the mainstay of our country’s ingenuity, the automobile, has finally reached the breaking point of “do or do not”.

With oil and gas prices still at an all-time high, Americans do want those vehicles of the future the car companies have been promising us for the last few decades. We do not want the same old song and dance routine previously touted to us by the big three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) rendering us dumbfounded as to when an oil-free salvation will come. General Motors appears to be at the forefront of this retooling thanks to their help from Uncle Sam.

Nevertheless, the public, for the most part, is still skeptical as to how the government’s intervention in bailing out General Motors will affect the automotive industry and the economy as a whole. The bailout came with a stipulation that GM must buy back the company from the government by the end of 2010. Politics aside, GM has unveiled a new marketing and ad campaign focusing on their biggest sellers. A new commercial starring the new chief of GM, Edward Whitacre Jr. (formerly of AT&T), made the offer that “if you’re not 100% happy, return it, we’ll take it back.” It is their new 60-day satisfaction guarantee on all four of the brands that survived the cut: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac.

Video after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since the Wii was released, third party attachment and peripheral makers have been having a field day. If it’ll attach to your Wii remote, it’ll sell. If it’ll make you feel like the hero in the game while simultaneously making people question your mental faculties, it’s a hot item in the minds of attachment makers. There have been swords, light sabers, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and bowling ball attachments to name a few. But none shame gamers as much as the add-on above. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of us are so used to using social networking sites daily that we forget that there is a big world out there. I admit, I have also become accustomed to living life at 140 characters or less. The allure of being able to network in my underwear has become all too tempting. Finally, having enough of staring at status updates about someone’s lunch, I put some pants on and attended the Tech/Social Media conference BarCamp Tampa Bay 2009 on Sunday, September 27th at USF.

The local social media driven event was running two consecutive days, Saturday was focused on Tech/Development and Sunday was geared towards the Social Media/Marketing crowd. Each day is filled with attendee driven panels and discussions, making BarCamp a unique experience. Unlike most conferences, every guest at Barcamp has a chance to sign up for a panel spot to speak their minds about the hottest tech/social media topics. Best of all, it’s free!

Video below the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Video games allow us to simulate amazing feats and experience what it’s like to possess superhuman abilities, or to put it another way – to act like superheroes. Even games like Halo or Call of Duty owe as much to the super-heroic experience as they do to modern warfare. In real life, you can’t just shrug off a burst a machine gun fire by hiding behind a rock for five seconds. That’s a bona fide, Wolverine-style super power. It’s off then that there have been so many bad superhero games over the years. But we’re in a new golden age of such games, and if you read my Batman: Arkham Asylum review then you know it’s possible to make a superhero game that perfectly captures that comic book experience. Batman focused all its efforts on simulating one particular hero. The new Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 takes the opposite approach, offering a whole comic book universe of heroes to choose from in an attempt to recreate the world of Marvel Comics in one giant epic tale.

Ultimate Alliance’s story is drawn straight from two recent cross-over events in Marvel Comics – the Secret War and The Civil War. The Civil War in particular strove to achieve some really interesting political and social relevance with the legal and moral issues facing superheroes mirroring real world debates about freedom vs. security in the age of terror. With Marvel’s heroes split into two camps – Pro-Government led by Iron-Man and Pro-Freedom led by Captain America – the high drama of brother against brother that only comes from a civil war played out in dark, dramatic fashion across the pages of dozens of different comic book titles. This game offers a pretty close (but not by any means exact) version of that story, leaving it to the players as to which side they will support. And of course since it’s a video game, you can always go back and play it again from the other side. Read the rest of this entry »

A great opportunity crossed my path when Jamie Trahan from the USF Clean Energy Research Center called. As a local green builder, she thought I could help her search for homes to feature on the 14th annual ASES National Solar Tour being held across the country on October 3rd.

Sadly, I informed her although I researched installing solar on our super energy efficient homes, I couldn’t find a way to make it work. Our mission is to build sustainable and affordable. We went with a gas fired tankless hot water system. Yes, it is natural gas, not a renewable, but still better than a traditional water heater sapping electricity around the clock. I know everyone can relate to waiting for water to come from the tank to your shower and up to a comfortable temp, wasting gallons upon gallons of water in our already deprived region. Tankless saves money and almost more importantly, water. Would I have preferred solar? Damn straight I would, future homeowners of our Ec0-Craftsman would have benefited from a zero energy home, but solar is caught in a conundrum of sorts. There’s not the demand to spur mass production, which leads to lower costs while at the same time, there isn’t the mass production leading to lower cost which would spur demand.
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Geek Squad and Best Buy are now offering the invaluable service of plugging in two cables for the low, low price of $129. Yes, that’s $129 USD, not $129 Mexican pesos. Not even the pitch-master Billy Mays combined with the spin power of Rush “El Rushbo” Limbaugh could get any sane consumer to buy this service. That is, unless you are above 70 years of age and all “vidja-games” are still called “Atari.” Although the in-store ad specified the PlayStation 3 as the console being set up, we imagine Best Buy and Geek Squad would be happy to take your $129 to set up an Xbox 360 as well.

This dear readers, is a rip-off. There is no other way to look at it. Yes, the service does include installing the latest firmware updates, set-up of one (read: 1, uno) solitary online account and the configuration of parental controls, but what 11-year-old neighbor couldn’t do this for you? In fact, if you can’t find an 11-year-old neighbor or relative, I’m willing to help out via e-mail. Just shoot an email to alexissantos@vgtribune.com, but whatever you do, please don’t waste $129 of your hard-earned money on a job that takes less than five minutes to complete.

[Source]

Yarr, mateys! It be Talk like a pirate day, in case ye not be knowin’. To give ye some fun on this day o’ international piracy, LucasArts and Telltale Games be offerin’ up the first episode in their new restart of Tales of Monkey Island.

All you need to do to pick up your free copy of the game is to head on over to http://www.playlikeapirate.com, plug in your email address and a password (they mail an activation code to you, so don’t fake it – although do be sure to uncheck the “add me to your mailing list” option if you don’t want further emails) and enjoy some time adventuring on the high seas – for free!

Keep in mind, this is only good until midnight tonight (Saturday, September 19th) so don’t wait if you want a copy.

I can’t think of another game that combines the utterly familiar with the intricately unique as well as The Beatles: Rock Band. The Fab Four’s music transcends fame, and everyone knows it (whether from growing up with it, discovering it as classic rock in their youth or hearing it in commercials). The game play is straight forward, Rock Band/Guitar Hero rhythm game stuff, modified only enough to make it more accessible and fun for new players. The resulting product may never be repeated. With it’s dedication to historical detail, its treasure trove of behind the scenes pictures and rare footage and its stunning visuals, this game celebrates The Beatles with every pixel. What other band’s story offers such a journey? What other band’s music has had such impact? What other band deserves such a great game?

The game’s Story Mode offers a glossy, cartoonish, and utterly engaging overview of The Beatles’ storied career. Divided into chronological stages representing different performance venues and recording sessions, The Beatles: Rock Band gives players all the highlights and none of the controversy. As musical history unfolds on screen in rhythm to your button presses and strum-bar clacks, it’s hard to imagine someone not coming away impressed or even moved by the Beatles’ evolution as both pop culture icons and rock and roll musicians. With each stage, the Beatle avatars change, from suit-wearing teen idol youngsters to bearded 60’s icons. The early sections feature the band in famous performance venues like the dingy Cavern where they got their start or Shea Stadium where they played for tens of thousands. Afterwards they move into a series of Abbey Road studio sessions, and players are treated to trippy, dream-like interpretations of songs like Yellow Submarine and I Am the Walrus. Of course it all comes to an end on the roof of Apple Corps. (A video preview of the game after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

I admit to that I have a mild obsession with celebrity nudity. I also have a major aversion to paying for it. So part of my daily Web routine involves regular visit to some free celeb nude sites like Egotastic, Nudography, and Babes of Babylon. The pics are free, at least when they first go up, and I collect them like found coins, stuffing them into a folder on my computer in hopes they’ll some day pay future dividends (if you know what I mean). But what about the stuff I miss? What about the stuff I’ve lost? Just the other day I couldn’t find my pic of NCIS supporting actress and resident goth chic, Pauley Perrette. I knew she’d posed topless and the pic was on some site somewhere, but Google totally let me down. So I did something I’ve never, ever done before: I searched using Bing! Read the rest of this entry »

The best game I’ve played all year.

Go buy it now.

There have been a lot of super hero games (I myself helped make one), and there have been even more games based on licensed properties. Most of them have been bad, disappointing, or insulting in some combination. Batman Arkham Asylum is great, totally satisfying, and utterly true to the source material. It is, quite simple, the best super hero game ever made.

No, it’s not perfect. There are a few, rare false notes and some brief, needlessly frustrating sequences but fade into smoke in the face of a game that really does make you feel like you’re playing Batman. Others have called it a Batman Sim or even a Batman RPG, and they aren’t wrong – Arkham Asylum not only offers some leveling-up mechanics and upgrades – but what we really mean when we say that is that the game captures the essence of Batman. He’s sneaky. He’s a detective. He’s bad ass in a fight. He’s fearless. As you play him you become all those things as well, and the only thing that sucks is that it has to end.

Arkahm Asylum is the mental institution where Gotham City houses its criminally insane super criminals. Its rusty, dark cells and brooding Gothic architecture set the scene for a classic confrontation between Batman and his arch-nemesis, The Joker. The game opens with Read the rest of this entry »

German company First Androids has created the ultimate sex doll. According to the latest issue of  H+ magazine, these sex droids “can hold multiple sex positions, be ordered to simulate breathing, perform oral sex acts, have a pulse, be equipped with a g-spot that responds to orgasm, and much, much more.” It’s the future, folks!

Before I go on, let’s look at some photos: Read the rest of this entry »

System: YooStar

MSRP: $169.99

Launch Date(s):

Available at Bloomingdale's on 8/24/09

Available at Best Buy on 9/8/09

If you haven’t said it before, you know someone who has: “I could’ve made that movie!” “I could’ve played that part better!” Some movie industry veterans got together to give you the chance to star in famous film scenes and see if you can do a better job. Film geeks, meet Yoostar. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have any reason to think 99% of the developers who programmed, designed or otherwise helped create the new X-Box Live Arcade game Shadow Complex hate gay people. I’m assuming they don’t. But I do know that one man associated closely with the game is a talented writer and outspoken anti-gay advocate named Orson Scott Card, a man whose books I used to love and whose fevered anti-gay rhetoric I utterly despise. Shadow Complex is set within a fictional near-future America that is the setting for Card’s novel Empire. That novel is also published in conjunction with Chair, the developers of the game. Chair previously worked with Card on the game Advent Rising and their Web site state plans for future projects based on his work. Card himself has done interviews promoting Shadow Complex. I lay all this out in advance because I want to make clear that Card is firmly connected to this game, albeit at an inspirational rather than hands-on level (as far as I can tell).

The game itself is really a ton of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Tis the season to be killing Nazis in alternate history epics, or at least in my life it is. First there was the history-bending, tense-monologue laden glory of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Now there’s Wolfenstein, one of the oldest game franchises around and the mirror image of Tarantino’s talky WWII pic.

Here we have action, action, action, as befits the latest iteration of the first 3-D first-person shooter. There’s a similar story too – a tale of a Jewish American soldier fighting behind Nazi lines, only instead of fancy-pants allegories about the power of film, Wolfenstein offers occult powers, particle cannons, and monsters from other dimensions. That’s the beauty of our modern media marketplace – Nazi-killing options are more diverse than ever.

The new version of Wolfenstein has flown a little under the radar. Read the rest of this entry »

Back before it was the Wii, Nintendo had code-named its new console The Revolution, and when the best selling console of this generation did come out a few years back, its motion controlled game play was indeed revolutionary. Like so many revolutions, it didn’t quite live up to its original promise.

Take the original Wii Sports, which came bundled with the system and offered a whole new experience – tennis, golf, baseball, bowling, and boxing that all felt somewhat, or even a lot like the real thing. You couldn’t help but smile a big, delighted grin the first time you tried it. But then came almost everything else for the damn Wii. Shovels full of middling to poor games, just a few bright gems (mostly from Nintendo) trying to shine from the towering dung heap of third-party cash-ins and motion-gimmick nonsense. My Wii, like that of many gamers, sat lonely and empty and un-played.

But those big, goofy grins are back baby! Read the rest of this entry »

Sony’s ugly duckling PS3 Slim has toppled Wii Sports Resort from it’s #1 spot on Amazon’s video game bestseller list and has held its ground for 5 consecutive days. That’s a feat when you’re a Sony product going up against a Wii Sports title. The PS3 Slim would like you to forget the fact that Wii Sports Resort has been on Amazon’s top 100 for the past 130 days and that the PSP Go is nowhere to be found.

The Slim assures us it won’t meet the same fate as the PSP Go. Read the rest of this entry »

The GammaTesting.com guys dive deep into this ’90’s-era, comic-inspired, morally-devoid, open-world, super-dude action game and revel in the freedom of movement and wide range of epic combat options. Of course, no amount of car-throwing, copter-jacking or disease-tendrilizing can overcome brutal and blatantly manipulative boss fights, like the final one in Prototype.

Still, epic is good. Listen up! (Then check out all the other Gamma Testing episodes.)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep15: Prototype

Can a game succeed solely because of pop-culture fandom? Thankfully, Ghostbusters manages to capture enough ghost-wranglin’ gameplay that we don’t have to answer that question. We love the plot, find some fault with the repetitive — occasionally brutal — gameplay, and appreciate the light hand with Ghostbusters 2 fan service.

So, does bustin’ make the GammaTesting.com guys feel good? Sure. Good, but not great.

Listen up! (Then check out all the other Gamma Testing episodes.)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep14: Ghostbusters

The campaign for Best Local Blog in the Creative Loafing Readers’ Poll is getting serious; note the campaign photo at right.

Not everyone’s a fan. One jaded voter responded to the question this way:  “There’s no such thing.” We also got “no,” “none” and “I hate blogs” (which may be the name of a blog, I’m not sure).

But the 100-plus blogs nominated so far in the category suggest plenty of our readers would disagree.

The leaders at the moment? Here they are in no particular order (as the host says on I can’t remember which reality show): Read the rest of this entry »

Halo is one of the biggest video-game franchises of all time. When Peter Jackson announced he would bring the beloved franchise to the big screen, geeks everywhere were transformed into little kids on Christmas Eve. Sadly, the holiday quickly morphed into a trick-filled Halloween as first Jackson’s financing fell through, then Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro tried and failed to get the project off the ground. Hopes of ever seeing Master Chief at the multiplex were looking pretty grim. That is, until now, for Halo has a savior and Spielberg be thy name!

Read the rest of this entry »

We thought we had it all. We could use the Wii remote as a sword, fishing rod, tennis racket, baseball bat, lightsaber and an assortment of other weapons and sports paraphernalia. But alas, we didn’t have it all. At least not until Let’s Tap.

Now, gamers can set their Wiimotes down for a change and tap their way to single or multiplayer victory. Or just have fun with fish in a pond or fireworks in the sky.

Let’s Tap introduces a new way to play with the Wii remote, but is it more tech demo than full-fledged game? Hit the jump and find out!

Read the rest of this entry »

[About Daily Best of the Bay: Creative Loafing is posting writers' and editors' picks for Best of the Bay 2009 each day until the BOTB issue is released on Sept. 16. Vote now for your own BOTB choices in our Readers' Poll!]

With Jeff Houck (@TheStew) of the Tampa Tribune, you get food and dining coverage cooked medium-rare in a reduction sauce of snark. His Monday “Weekend Eats” retweets chronicle the amazing, drool-worthy meals his followers ate the previous weekend. And his Top Chef live commentary is a must-read complement to the broadcast each week. A sample tweet:

As for Johnson (@rommiej) — who does NOT blog in an official role as journalist, just an individual, I must preface — read a sample of his tweetstream after the break Read the rest of this entry »

This week, GammaTesting.com fails to forget to smash the state with Red Faction: Guerrilla. We love the entirely destructible environments, open world environment and varied gameplay. Almost as much as we love bashin’ stuff with our mining hammer. And, for the first time in a while, we actually felt like we were doing some good while playing a game. At least until Red Faction: Guerrilla 2 comes out, featuring us ruling Mars with an iron fist.

Listen up! (Then check out all the other Gamma Testing episodes.)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep13 – Red Faction: Guerrilla

I’ve lived most of my life playing video games — 37 years that span the vast majority of video game history. We had a dedicated Pong console in my house growing up, and an Atari 2600 after that, and home computers after that. So as and old hand, it’s interesting to see everything old turn new again and nostalgia for the good old days become the new new thing. Thus we get the spiffy new, re-mastered version of the 1990 classic adventure game from Lucas Arts: The Secret of Monkey Island. It spawned many a sequel and many more fond memories amongst gamers, and its humor remains a touchstone moment in many gamers’ lives. It’s one of the classics. And until two weeks ago, I’d never played one second of it.

The less said about what happened with King’s Quest and why I stopped playing point-and-click adventure games when I was in middle school the better. Suffice it to say, I missed the whole Lucas Arts adventure game phenomenon of the early ’90s. But everyone says that Secret of Monkey Island is one of the best that’s ever been, and so, always eager for something new to play (even when it’s old), I downloaded the game to see what all the fuss is about. Read the rest of this entry »

Brian’s busy, so Rick and Matt run down inFAMOUS without the help of his dulcet tones. Still, their take on this open-world-third-person-super-dude-sim-with-lightning Playstation 3 exclusive barely suffers without him. Surprisingly.

The Hermanos Dakanos love the inFAMOUS gameplay so much, the dozens of minor annoyances are barely noticeable. Although they do wonder at main character Cole’s twin vulnerabilities: water and chain-link fences. Give it a listen, then check out all the other GammaTesting.com episodes.

Listen up!

Gamma Testing Ep12 – inFAMOUS

New iPods hitorically debut in the fall, around September. This report that says Toshiba will “ramp up” production of flash memory chips during the month of August. Word on the street is that Toshiba is doing so to meet a big order from Apple. So, new iPods could be on the way.

Why such speculation? Read the rest of this entry »

This week we take a look at the re-do of 1980s cult classic Bionic Commando. Turns out that fun gameplay trumps terrible story and unlikeable characters, yet again. Even if that gameplay has a steep learning curve. Still, once you get it down, swinging on your extendable bionic appendage is damn fun — especially if you turn the sound down and blast Matt’s music suggestion.

We also send a challenge out to Grin – Bionic Commando’s developer — to hire us to write their next game. If BC is any indication, they could use some fine content-generators like the GammaTesting.com crew. And, we work cheap!

Listen up! (And check out all the other Gamma Testing podcasts!)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep11 – Bionic Commando

We (CL) opened up our doors Wednesday night for about 50 potential new contributors. There was wine, beer, pizza and a micro-symposium on 21st-century community journalism. We got a chance to recruit some new voices and our guests got to feel out our site editors. Look for their contributions in the coming days.

One of our newbies, Robin Miller, captured the whole thing on video, which you can see below the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time since I had a game experience more mixed than Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. There’s lots to like, some things to hate, a fair amount that’s on the border, and even something I hated and then came to like. Playing this game was like riding an emotional roller coaster as I went from mildly interested to mildly annoyed and back again. Okay, maybe not really a roller coaster so much as a see-saw in the kiddie playground, but you get my point. There are some thrills to be had, but also some jarring landings.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is the prequel to a game I never played, nor do you need to have played it. It’s a perfectly competent first-person shooter set in the Old West, full of two-fisted six-gun action and horse riding and even a lasso or two. You play alternately as Tom and Ray, defending your car repair business from angry public radio listeners who haven’t received their tote bags yet. Or rather, Thomas and Ray, two nasty Confederate soldiers who abandon their posts to try and save their farm from the evil Sherman as he marches through Georgia. That doesn’t work out too well, and the brothers end up fleeing to the wilds of the West, their preacher little brother William in tow. There they hear tell of lost Aztec gold, both fall in love with the same Mexican seductress, fight various tribes of Indians, and have their pasts come back to haunt them. There’s a lot of shooting. Read the rest of this entry »