General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Don't Call It A Comeback: 7 Products That Saved Their Companies (And 2 That Didn't)

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 03:03 PM PDT

They say fate's a fickle mistress, but destiny's got nothing on the free market. For every Microsoft-esque success story, there's the burnt out husk of Sun Microsystems (R.I.P.). The really interesting tales have nothing to do with overwhelming successes or overwhelming failures, though; any budding novelist can tell you that a good story needs some tension.

Join us as we take a look back at ten companies that found themselves broken, beaten, and battered, leaning on the ropes and looking woozy. Seven of them were able to summon the strength of Soda Popinksi and roar back to life stronger than ever. Two Glass Joe wannabes tried to put up a fight but found themselves on the mat in short order. The last one's still covering its face and playing rope-a-dope. Can it survive after staring down the face of extinction? Call them good or call them lucky – just don't call it a comeback.

THE CHAMPS

Intel: 386 microprocessor

"Intel?" we can hear you asking. "How do you start with Intel? They're friggin' Intel!" Well, they weren't always – at least not as the chip-slinging microprocessor giant that you know and love. Once upon a time, Intel was known more for its memory-making prowess. And aside from a momentary downward dip in the 1974 thanks to a nationwide recession, things went pretty well for the company.

Flash forward to the early 80s: the majority of Intel's focus remained in DRAM – and things weren't looking so good for DRAM manufacturers. Competitive Japanese suppliers had sucked the profit margins out of the business for companies like Intel. Things got ugly; Intel imposed extra hours on salaried employees and pay cuts on, well, pretty much everybody. Something had to change, and it had to change quickly.

That something ended up being a massive shift in Intel's focus. After striking gold with the 80286 – better known to geeks as the 286 – in 1982, CEO Andrew Grove chose to pull back from the cut-throat DRAM market and focus instead on microprocessors, which didn't have as many up-and-down cycles as other semiconductor components. Intel decided to keep the design of its megapopular 32-bit 386 chip to itself, making it the first single-sourced microprocessor in history – which meant PC makers could only get the chip from Intel. The cash flowed like wine and Intel as we know it was born.

AMD: Am386

 

Like Intel, AMD maintained a heavy presence in the RAM market throughout the early 1980s, and like Intel, the rise of Japanese competition devastated AMD's bottom line. Then, in 1986, Intel canceled a contract that allowed AMD to build the Am286 as a second-source 80286 supplier, kicking off a legal battle that lasted until 1994. To top it off, the country was in the midst of a recession. Broke and barred from building the popular 286 chipset, AMD was forced to lay off a portion of its workforce.

AMD came to the same conclusion as Intel; the future lied in microprocessors. And if Intel wouldn't hand over the design for the 386, AMD would figure it out itself, dammit! The company's engineers hunkered down and in 1991, AMD achieved its goal: the debut of the speedy, reverse-engineered Am386. Seven months and 1 million Am386s later, AMD was once again on the path to success – a path that would eventually lead to the internally developed K5 processor.

Iomega Zip Drive

 

In the early 90s, Iomega's Bernoulli Box was nearly 10 years old and starting to show its age (and, um, it was still incredibly expensive) while standard disk drives were plummeting in price and becoming more common in PCs. Unsurprisingly, Iomega was hemorrhaging cash and stock value. By 1993, the company was flat broke and its stock was worth less than $2. CEO Fred Wenninger said enough was enough and jumped ship.

His replacement, Kim Edwards, decided that if the company wanted to pull itself out of the quagmire, it needed a cheaper product with more consumer appeal. The Zip Drive launched towards the end of 1994 with a $200 price tag and reasonably priced 25MB and 100MB disks. Buoyed by a massive pre-launch ad campaign, the Zip Drives sold out immediately, then kept on selling. Six months after the Zip Drive's launch, Iomega's stock rose ten-fold. By 1996, the company was rolling in cash, bringing in over $1.2 billion in revenue. Disaster had been averted, and then some.

Footnote: The Zip Drive saved Iomega, but the company didn't stay on top. By 1998, the Zip Drive's "Click of Death" was a well-known and much-hated sound. The rise of cheap CD burners sealed the Zip Drive's fate. Iomega's still around, but in reduced form.

Razer Diamondhead

 

Razer got off to a fast start with its highly accurate Boomslang mouse. Before you could say "Boom! Headshot!", Razer was everywhere serious FPS fans gathered, launching the Cyber Athlete Professional League and sponsoring Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.

Then literal disaster struck: while the company was still reeling from the dot-com bubble burst, a major earthquake completely destroyed Razer's manufacturing facilities in Taiwan. In the blink of an eye, Razer's inventory was wiped out, along with its ability to replenish it.

The launch of the optical Viper 1000 and redesigned Boomslang variants in 2003 couldn't rescue Razer's devastated business, and by 2004, most of the senior management fled the company, leaving co-founders Min-Liang Tan and Robert "Razerguy" Krakoff in charge. They rolled out the 1600 dpi Diamondback towards the end of the year to the delight of reviewers and consumers alike. Scads of Diamondbacks sold – in fact, the initial run of the limited edition Diamondback Plasma sold out in just over half an hour – and Razer follows it up with the widely acclaimed 2000 dpi Copperhead in 2005. Before you know it, Razer bigwigs were lighting their cigars with $100 bills once again.

Nvidia RIVA 128

 

Flash back to 1995: 3D cards were the hot new high-end thing in PCs, and tons of companies were trying to establish a foothold in the market. Nobody had even settled on a standard way of displaying 3D graphics. Two year old Nvidia threw its young weight behind quadratic texture maps when it released its NV1 graphics card.

Big mistake.

Shortly after Nvidia launched the NV1, Microsoft released Direct3D, which relied on polygons for its 3D effects. Developers ran screaming from the quadratic-rific NV1 and OEMs treated the card like the kiss of death. A Sega-funded NV2 chip never actually materialized. Cue the pink slips.

Nvidia went to work on the RIVA 128 in 1997. After the disastrous NV1 and the vapor-ware NV2, big things weren't expected from the GPU, but big-enough things were delivered. Critic's weren't exactly blown away – both boot, Maximum PC's forefather, as well as Tom's Hardware declared 3dfx's Voodoo Graphics superior to the RIVA 128. But unlike 3dfx's offering, the RIVA 128 offered both 2D and 3D support – a feature OEMs loved. PC manufacturers snapped the RIVA 128 up in droves and Nvidia's been sitting pretty ever since.

 

 

ATI Radeon

 

By the turn of the century, Nvidia had not only come back from the brink of extinction, it was dominating the graphics card market with its GeForce 256 card. 3dfx, once king of the graphics arena with its Voodoo line, was dying a slow death en route to being acquired by Nvidia. ATI's Rage, a traditional contender, was beginning to look weak; the Rage 128 GL, Rage 128 Pro and Rage Fury Maxx all fizzled in one way or another. Graphics hardware was degenerating into a distinctly one-horse race.

Then came Radeon.

The Radeon GPU did it all when the line launched in 2000, and it did it all well. Radeon offered a bevy of graphical options that were powerful enough to stand toe-to-toe with Nvidia's benchmark-leading GeForce2 GTS. Radeon restored ATI to a competitive, if not quite dominant, position in the graphics market. When the Radeon 9700 Pro hit the streets in 2002, it blew other graphics cards out of the water – even Nvidia's. Even though AMD long ago bought the reinvigorated ATI for a whopping $5.4b, the Radeon line still lives on.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster

 

Creative Technology started out as a small computer repair shop in Singapore. How many other major companies can say that? In any case, the co-founders quickly moved into the computer manufacturing business themselves. In 1986, the company rolled out the Cubic CT, a computer developed specifically for the Singapore market. It flopped, and flopped hard. Creative Technology stood on the brink of extinction and decided to focus their energy – and dwindling cash reserves – on the innovative sound card it created for the Cubic CT.

Creative's first major sound card, dubbed the Creative Music System, launched in 1987. It didn't quite flop, but the rival AdLib sound card quickly mopped the floor with the newcomer.

Creative Labs, Creative Technology's US subsidiary, paid careful attention while Adlib was busy kicking its butt. The result? The legendary Sound Blaster. When the Sound Blaster debuted in 1989, it featured all the tech behind the Creative Music System, plus the Yamaha YM3812 chip that powered AdLib. That meant that the Sound Blaster was fully compatible with every game that included AdLib support. Plus, the Sound Blaster packed in a joystick port – a relative rarity in those days. Creative combined that technological superiority with a hyper-aggressive ad campaign and by the end of 1990 the Sound Blaster was the best selling computer add-on around and a must-have accessory for PC gamers.

THE PRETENDERS

Lotus SmartSuite

 

Sure, SmartSuite's still around. So's Lotus, kinda – but not in any way that matters to most consumers. Lotus focused on the IBM OS/2 in the early 1990s and found itself blindsided by the success of Windows 95 and its 32-bit architecture. After buying a bunch of other apps to try and compete with the various Windows programs, Lotus bundled them together under the SmartSuite name. Even though SmartSuite came gratis on many PCs, Microsoft Office wiped the floor with Lotus' product (partly because of Microsoft's Office bundling shenanigans) and took Lotus' throne as the king of all office applications. IBM acquired Lotus in a hostile takeover and the once-giant is now part of IBM's software group, a shadow of its former self.

Palm Pre

 

When the hardware-focused palmOne and the OS-focused PalmSource merged to reform Palm, Inc. in 2005, the glory days of the PalmPilot (and heck, even the Treo) were behind them. RIM's BlackBerry stole a lot of PalmPilot fans and Apple's iPhone would soon steal even more. Palm had a plan to get back on track, though. The wrong one, i.e. the Pre.

Unfortunately for Palm, consumers didn't like the Pre as much as the people at Palm did. The company signed an exclusivity deal with Sprint, who was only the third largest US carrier. The keyboard kinda sucked, and webOS's apps couldn't hold a candle to Apples. Perhaps worst of all there simply wasn't any reason to buy a Pre (or its follow-up, the Pixi) over a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone. In fact, in 2010, Palm's CEO admitted that he'd never even touched an iPhone.

HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion, less than a year after the Pre hit the streets. HP quickly killed off the Palm brand and is focusing its efforts on webOS. Edit: The day this article was published, HP killed webOS as well.

ON THE ROPES

Research In Motion Playbo.. Tor... Um... QNX...?

RIM's in the same place Palm was five years ago; fading away. Android's climb to the top of the smartphone heap has come largely at RIM's expense. Since June, RIM's shares have hit a five year low and the company's been forced to axe over 2,000 workers, which amounts to about 11 percent of its workforce. Clearly RIM's on the ropes – and it needs to land a hit.

But does the old fighter have any gusto left? RIM pinned high hopes on its PlayBook tablet, but then they rushed it to market prematurely – without native email, calendar or contact apps – and struggled with a small recall early. Sales have been so underwhelming that Sprint recently decided that they didn't really want to carry a 4G PlayBook after all.

Before the PlayBook, RIM had high hopes for the BlackBerry Torch – hopes that failed to turn into reality. "If you don't already own a BlackBerry, you will not want this phone," Matt Buchanan said in his Gizmodo review of the Torch. "And if you do, you still might not want it, even if it may very well be the best BlackBerry ever." Ouch.

So what's left? RIM plans on rolling out its first smartphone with the QNX operating system in the first quarter of 2012. Will "Colt" be the magic pill RIM needs? The initial signs are shaky, and the digerati are already skeptical. QNX is the OS behind the underwhelming PlayBook. That's not a tremendous heritage (especially if it's still lacking email support when Colt launches), but if the phone manages to appeal to consumers rather than just the traditional RIM business client, the company still has time to right the ship.

Conclusion

So what did we get wrong? What did we get right? We're sure at least one of you thinks we're idiots – why? Did we forget about a company? Let us know in the comments!

AMD's New Catalyst 11.8 Drivers Enhance Overclocking Controls, Black Ops Performance

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 03:00 PM PDT

AMD decided to shake things up a bit with its last major driver release of the summer, Catalyst 11.8. The new driver package integrates the chip maker's CPU Overdrive utility into the AMD Vision Control Center, putting CPU and GPU overclocking controls at your fingertips from a central location (note that the software only supports CPU overclocking of Black Edition chips).

When you're finished overclocking and ready to get down to the business of playing games, Catalyst 11.8 promises to deliver up to 20 percent better performance in Call of Duty Black Operations for both single- and multi-GPU setups running Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series graphics cards, up to 30 percent when AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) is enabled through the Control Center, up to 10 percent in Crysis 2 (DirectX 11 version), and up to 8 percent in F.E.A.R. 3 (DirectX 11 version) with application enabled AA.

Finally, Catalyst 11.8 resolves a number of issues, including one that could previously cause a system to hang or BSOD when playing HD content overnight using Windows Media Center in Windows 7, as well as when installing the driver with Crossfire enabled in Windows Vista.

Driver Download
Release Notes

Google Adds Weather Layer to Maps

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 02:49 PM PDT

mapsGoogle has announced a new feature for Google Maps that makes so much sense we're shocked it wasn't already there. Now when you are using Maps, you will be able to toggle on a weather layer. This is a handy feature when you're planning a trip, or just want to check the goings on around the globe.

When the layer it activated, the map will populate with a series of weather icons and temperatures. This is great, but you can also click on any of them for more detail. Maps will display a popup with data like wind, humidity and a 4-day forecast.

The left-hand panel will also have detailed weather information when the layer is enabled. This is where you can change the units between imperial and metric. Unlike many Google rollouts, this one is happening all at once for everyone. Head over to Maps and let us know how you like it.

Browser Extension of the Week: After the Deadline

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 12:01 PM PDT

Spellchecking software has been in the business of softening up the brains of computer users everywhere since 1980, and let us tell you: business is good. In the three decades since spellcheck first hit the scene, most of us have come to rely upon the safety and false sense of intellectual security provided by the knowledge that even though we've failed as students of our mother tongue, we can still shine in print... most of the time. When you're dealing with the wild and wooly world wide web, the availability of decent spellchecking can be deeply varied. While you might be able to sort out the mistakes you've made in Google Docs, Twitter will still show all of your ugly spelling errors to the world. Unless of course, you install After the Deadline, our Browser Extension of the Week.

Available as a Firefox add-on or a Chrome extension, After the Deadline is an open source spelling and grammar checking solution that works with any site you visit.  After installing it, users will note that mistakes made while filling in forms, fields or any other text-related in-browser task will be underlined in red for a spelling error and in green for grammar.

Click on the underlined word and After the Deadline will offer you a number of suggestions to make it right. The extension can even offer you stylistic suggestions to help you polish up your work, making it a breeze to put your best written foot forward online.

Be sure to check back every Thursday for another edition of Maximum PC's Browser Extension of the Week.

Windows Prez (Kind Of) Confirms A Windows 8 App Store

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 11:50 AM PDT

The rumor mill's been all abuzz about the possibility of an App Store in the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, and for once, the hub-bub was based off of some fairly logical deductions. One: Microsoft said a long time ago that Windows 8 was being developed for use on mobile platforms as well as PCs. Two: when Apple tried to trademark "App Store," Microsoft argued the term was too generic. It looks like that deductive reasoning was well-founded; if you use a bit more deductive reasoning, you'll infer that the Windows Prez recently confirmed a Windows 8 app store.

Why the shifty sentences? Because Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, didn't come right out an say that yes, there is an App Store in Windows 8. Instead, Engadget points out that when Sinofsky listed the software development groups in the Introducing the Team post on the new-found "Building Windows 8" blog, an App Store team was amongst those listed, alongside such stalwarts as "Storage and File Systems" and "Device Connectivity."

We'd love to offer up more details, but that's it. Sinofsky didn't elaborate, and we're guessing he facepalmed after he realized what he did. We'll be sure to pass on any future updates as they accidentally get leaked.

IBM Creates Cognitive Chips Modeled After The Human Brain

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 10:59 AM PDT

The Terminator movies are entertaining and all, but they forget to point out one important fact in the midst of all the cybernetic shotgunning; if Skynet is ever going to actually become self-aware, it'll probably require a drastic change in the way computers process information. Hey, James Cameron – don't sweat it. IBM has your back. The company just announced it's created a series of prototype "chips designed to emulate the brain's abilities for perception, action and cognition." We suspect they'll also be the key to the eventual robot revolution.

From the company's press release: "IBM's first cognitive computing prototype chips use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a "neurosynaptic core" with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons)."

The two prototypes created by IBM contain 256 "neurons." One core sports 262,144 "programmable synapses," while the other chip packs 65,536 "learning synapses." The cognitive chips have already been able to learn and remember simple tasks like navigation, pattern memorization and associative memory. IBM's eventual goal is to create a chip with ten billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses.

The chips, which were created as part of the "SyNAPSE" project, use considerably less energy than traditional bus-based configurations. "This architecture represents a critical shift away from traditional von Neumann computing to a potentially more power-efficient architecture that has no set programming, integrates memory with processor, and mimics the brain's event-driven, distributed and parallel processing," IBM boasts.

That's the first sign of the apocalypse. The second? DARPA just gave IBM and the four universities collaborating on the project $21 million to help fund Phase 2 of the research.

The 25 Most Brutal Deaths in PC Gaming

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 10:48 AM PDT

Just how gory do PC games get nowadays? Spoiler: Get your umbrella. There's a great crop of titles in the PC gaming universe that are guaranteed to make you squirm—either through a combination of their bloody mayhem, the actual method you go about killing someone (or being killed yourself), or the creativity a game puts into your hands and the decision it forces you to make about another character's life.

Are all of the games on our list blood-spraying fountains of mayhem? Nope! But each and every death we've highlighted comes with its own special reasoning as to why it's particularly brutal to watch. It goes without saying, but the videos we're featuring are not for the squeamish! You've been warned.

Hitman: Blood Money

Any game that's built around the idea of giving you maximum creative freedom for killing targets has nearly unlimited potential to be hilarious and brutal, all in one. Hitman: Blood Money is no exception, and the following clip shows just how gruesome this game's A.I. can be in addition to its body count.

The Sims 3

The Sims 3 might not win high marks for its gruesomeness but, in this case, brutality is in the eyes of the beholder. You can't make your Sim explode–we hope–but the sheer level of horribleness you can inflict on your Sims' lives is damaging enough for your personal well-being, let alone your dearly departed digital friends.

Tron: Evolution

Okay, so we're copping out: The video is obviously a clip from Tron: Legacy, not the PC game Tron: Evolution. Why the switch? Because the movie shows the brutal deaths better. And what's so especially brutal about Tron? You get hit by a Frisbee and explode into a million little pieces of glass. Tron's elementary school playgrounds must be killing grounds.

Diablo II

Want to talk about brutal? How about sinking countless hours and costly trades into developing a wicked, high-level hardcore character in Blizzard's Diablo II… only to find said person dead at the hands of an unscrupulous (yet funny) player-killer. The death itself might not be that glamorous or gory, but we can't say the same for the keyboard you'll be pounding your fists into.

Bioshock

Spoilers: If you're one of the three people who haven't played the original Bioshock, don't click this link. We beg of you. You're ruining a great moment in a great story, and that's all we're going to say about that. For those with card-carrying membership to the Beat Bioshock club, however, would you kindly tell us why we picked the scene we did for this list?

Duke Nukem 3D

This timeless classic of first-person shooting–recently brought back into our lives via crappy remake–features such life-enriching feats of violence as kicking a field goal with an endgame boss's eyeball. Other acts of charitable vengeance shown in the game are almost too graphic, and too funny, to print. Who doesn't love catching up on the news?

 

Space Quest

This classic adventure series' creative approach to chaotic, unpredictable, and messy death is one of the finest in the genre. Depending on your stupidity, your death can range from simple, to painful, to downright messy: It's like a choose-your-own-adventure game with the grim reaper. We've linked one of our favorites in the accompanying video: Get yourself together!

Dead Space 2

Let Dead Space 2 be the official "horror game" entry into our feature, for we'd be here all week if we had to consider every single permutation of shock/gore/zombie title ever created. We applaud the game's creative combination of squishy and fatal when you, the poor guy stuck on one of Saturn's moons, fails to hit the correct series of buttons at the correct time. They don't make space Band-Aids big enough for the world of hurt you get put through.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Save for your untimely encounters with Killer Croc, Batman doesn't really die in the most horrific of ways in Arkham Asylum. Rather, it's your ineptitude as a player that causes various friends and hostages to meet their gory ends. And the icing on the cake? When you die, you get taunted: Harley Quinn rubbing verbal salt in your many wounds is brutal in its meanness, if nothing else.

Limbo

Death, done artistic, is still death. And you can certainly kick the bucket in all sorts of creative ways within this epic side-scrolling adventure. From bear traps that blow your body to a fine monochromatic mist to giant spider legs that impale your character, Limbo spares no messy details when it comes to removing you from, well, whatever world you're in. Boy, do we hate spiders.

Phantasmagoria

Remember this CD-ROM title? If you do, you win a Maximum PC Classic Gore award. This old Sierra On-Line adventure game harnessed the power of full-motion video to showcase all sorts of gruesome ways that you and the various characters populating the story could get ripped apart. One could say that Phantasmagoria was ahead of its time for shock value – but we wouldn't so far as to say its storyline was especially compelling.

Planescape: Torment

Look, the entire premise of this game is that you're immortal. You can't die. And should you happen to find your hit points reduced to zilch, you'll likely wake up right where the game started: On a slab in a mortuary. So, when your city's official protector-slash-deity wanders up and kills you good for some stupid thing you've done (like going around and murdering her servants for no reason, or worshipping her as a deity), you just know it has to be brutal. Give us a simple mazing any day.

Fallout 3

You might not be able to do much dying in some magnified, cutscene-laden blaze of glory like some of the other first-person shooters on our list, but this first-person RPG does allow you to kill your fellow inhabitants of Capital Wasteland in a variety of painful ways. Our favorite? The trusty Fat Man nuclear catapult. Yes, you get to pummel your foes with a miniature nuclear warhead. Vaporization is a pretty brutal way to go, is it not?

Quake 4

We should put an asterisk next to the specific scene we're highlighting in Quake 4 because, contrary to the laws of physics and the general construction of one's circulatory system, your player character really should be dead after his mistreatment at the hands of the game's chief antagonists. So chalk up this victory in the hands of certain death to some creative (albeit rusty) medical practices, although your ultimate survival in no way makes this scene any less painful to watch!

Bionic Commando Rearmed

Alright, oldschool gamers: Roll call. You know exactly what scene I'm talking about from the original Bionic Commando. And you'll be happy to know that the exact same splatterhouse effect, upon beating the game's final boss, has been faithfully recreated in this game's excellent remake. Or is that… rearm?

Soldier of Fortune: Payback

War is indeed hell, but in the case of the Soldier of Fortune first-person shooter series, it's also a Halloween haunted house. For there are more limbs flying around and buckets of blood spraying everywhere in this game than most modern-day war shooters. Soldier of Fortune: Payback remains banned in Germany as a result of its extremity, and a modified version—dismemberment disabled—had to be created for Australian gamers. Our take? We never knew a few bullets could do so much physical damage to a person.

 

Postal 2

High on the list of "ways to end it all in a video game" sits Postal 2. Or, to put it another way, who needs a quick-reload feature when you can simply stop walking, pull the pin in a grenade, put it in your mouth, and chew for a few seconds until your body spray-paints all the objects around you? Only a developer with the name "Running with Scissors" could think of quite such an ingenious—and messy—way to restart your game's progress.

Bloodrayne 2

Let's set this one up: You're a dhampir, your name is Rayne, and you have two huge blades attached to your arms. We don't think we need to walk through this one anymore than that. This game isn't so much a third-person shooter as it is a romp through a bloody fountain – the sheer amount of carnage you can inflict on your underpowered enemies puts this game's protagonist miles away from the standard "I vannnt to succck your blooood" vampire motif. She doesn't need fangs; she needs a straw.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

You might not think to place this complex theme park simulation game on a list of "goriest video games," but that's because you're probably a normal person. You have a heart. You understand love. You're a lot different than some of the RT3 fans whose very existences as theme park directors would make Walt Disney spin in his grave. Case in point: Rollercoaster Tycoon bowling. The balloons are an especially cruel touch, don't you think?

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

Spoiler alert! Don't read this, and don't click the link, if you don't want to learn that the exact same plot twist that happens in every Star Wars franchise also happens in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. While your character's dark-side death in the end isn't especially brutal for its gore, it's painful to watch for two reasons: One, any Star Wars fan worth his Wookie knows that the bad guys betray each other left and right at some point in every plot. And, two, your character is ultimately killed by… himself.

Warcraft III

Continuing the theme of, "Nothing's more brutal than betrayal," we present the classic cutscene that kicks off the life of frosty, frosty evil for fallen Alliance prince Arthas Menethil. Again, this particular death doesn't result in a fountain of blood being sprayed all over Lordaeron's throne room. But it does result in the "didn't see that coming" death of King Terenas, otherwise known as ol' Father Menethil. Talk about cold.

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II (E3 2008 Trailer)

It's a staple of the series: Any Warhammer video game is likely to be full of Orks screaming "waaagggh" and a seemingly unending legion of armored-up Space Marines looking to put chainswords through their green exteriors. We'd go into the fun weapons of all the other factions (don't get us started on Chaos), but we'd be here all day. However, there's one Warhammer weapon that always seems to catch our eye for its brutality. We're speaking, of course, about the Dreadnaught, a giant armored combat walker that uses all sorts of heinous methods to ruin an enemy's day.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Like Fallout 3, the brutality exhibited in Bethesda Softworks' Oblivion is entirely under your control. But while the game isn't all that gory on its face (at least, not compared to some of the other titles we've just featured), there's something special to be said about the horrible betrayal you can inflict on people who care a lot about you--dare we say, people who care more about you than anyone else in Tamriel. We'll let the video speak for itself.

F.E.A.R. Series (Nailgun)

The nailgun in the horror FPS series F.E.A.R. holds a special place in our hearts for its brutality, for we wholeheartedly approve of weapons that both gore and dismember to an extreme degree. But the nailgun—oh, the nailgun—does so much more than merely wound. The fact that you can stick your poor nail-encrusted victims to surfaces in all sorts of cruel, body-dangling ways is the bloody icing on the cake that earns F.E.A.R. a special shout-out on our list. We salute thee, nailgun.

Alien Versus Predator

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 23 years or so, we don't really need to do much of an introduction for a game called Alien Versus Predator. Acid, sharp tails, giant mandibles, razor-sharp blades, decapitations, loss of limbs, pain, blood—what else do you need to pack into a game whose entire premise is based on killing one of the two other factions that your current character despises/hunts/fears? As always, we pity the poor humans forced to serve as squishy pincushions for this game's extraterrestrial friends.

Logitech Unveils New G300 Gaming Mouse

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 10:24 AM PDT

When it comes to gaming mice, the "Best PC Part I Ever Spent My Hard Earned Cash On Contest" proved that Maximum PC readers are gaga for R.A.T. Mice. and who can blame you? We love it too. But Logitech's not letting all the Cyborg love get in the way of their releases. The company just announced it has a mouse up its sleeve, too, in the form of the upcoming Logitech Gaming Mouse G300.

The Logitech Gaming Mouse G300 might not have the sheer badass look of the R.A.T. line, but it offers plenty of other features – like buttons. Scads of programmable buttons!

"It features nine programmable buttons that are carefully placed to be easily reachable, but also out of the way when you don't need them," Global Product Marketing Manager Chris Pate said in the blog post announcing the new mouse. "Out of the box there are three onboard profiles are configured with basic MMO, FPS, and productivity settings, and illuminated areas near the thumb glow red, blue, or green to let you know which one you're using."

Want some stats? The mouse measures in at a scant 112mm long x 73mm wide x 35m high and only weighs around a quarter pound. It sports a 2500 dpi optical sensor and an ambidextrous design, while customization options abound with the use of Logitech's Gaming Software, which lets you change almost every aspect of the device. The changes store in the onboard profiles, so if you bring your mouse to a buddy's house, your custom configuration remains intact.

Sound intriguing? You can preorder the Logitech Gaming Mouse G300 on Logitech's website for $40.

HP Reportedly Prepping $10 Billion for Software Company, Plans to Sell Off PC Business

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:55 AM PDT

The rumor mill spun a wild one back in March of this year when reports surfaced that Hewlett Packard was considering selling off its PC business. Quoting a Commercial Times report, news and rumor site DigiTimes said HP was shopping around its PC division to the likes of Lenovo, Foxconn, and Samsung. On hindsight, it wasn't such a wild rumor after all, and before the day is done, HP might be totally invested in software.

Bloomberg is reporting that HP is getting ready to announce a $10 billion buyout of Autonomy Corp., an enterprise software firm with three separate headquarters (Cambridge, United Kingdom, and San Francisco). That's a huge investment, but it's only half of the story. According to Bloomberg, HP plans to spin-off its PC business, which would indicate it found a buyer after all.

No other details are known at this time, such as who that buyer might be or what terms will be attached to the deal, but we won't have to wait long to find out. HP is supposed to report earnigs later today at 4:00PM EST.

Image Credit: thevarguy.com

Your Teacher's Wrong, "Sexting" IS in the Dictionary (and so is "Retweet")

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:35 AM PDT

Just so we're clear, "sexting" is a noun that means "the sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone." It's a self-explanatory term to anyone locked into modern social media, and one that didn't officially exist outside of the realm of technobabble, at least until now. Sexting is one of the latest additions to the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

So is "retweet," which qualifies as a verb meaning "(on the social networking service Twitter), report or forward a message (posted by another user)" or a noun describing "a reposted or forwarded message on Twitter, and "cyberbullying," a noun used to describe "the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature."

Not all of the 400 new words are tech related, such as "mankini," a noun for "a brief one-piece swimsuit for men, with a T-back," or you can just visualize Borat. According to the U.K.'s Telegraph, Oxford selected the new words after they were entered into a database with 2 billion words from contemporary websits and texts.

"It's how the dictionary has always worked -- we get as much evidence as we can so we know it's not just a small number of people using the word and it's not going to disappear," Angus Stevenson, the dictionary's editor, told Channel 4 News, according to The Telegraph. "There's no official panel of cabinet ministers for new words or anything like that."

The Oxford Dictionary hasn't been shy to recognize geek terms, or even acronyms like "OMG," "FYI," and "LOL." Neither has Merriam-Webster, which recognizes such terms as "malware," "webinar," "fanboy," and "tea-bag" (yes, that tea-bag).
Posted by Shri Krishna

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