General Gaming Article |
- YouTube Rental Service Gets Disney Films
- Spotify Grows to 2.5 Million Paying Members
- Google Expands Auto-Complete Blacklist
- Future Tense: Zombie Jamboree
- Lenovo Puts "World's Smallest Desktop" Up For Preorder
- QPAD Unveils World's First USB NKRO Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
- How To Access Region-Locked Content Online
- HP Elitebook 2560p Review
- Doom 3 Source Code Released Under GPL License
- Having Performance Issues in Batman: Arkham City? Stop Using DirectX 11, Publisher Says
| YouTube Rental Service Gets Disney Films Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:52 PM PST
These titles are, as we said, for rent on YouTube, but also in the Android Market. This allows users to stream, and save the movies for offline viewing. Pricing is $3.99 for most titles, and the viewing window is 24 hours. With many Americans on the way to see family, it's a fine time to get access to some new rental content. More Disney movies are going to appear in the Google ecosystem in the coming weeks, as well. |
| Spotify Grows to 2.5 Million Paying Members Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:30 PM PST
Spotify offers a $5 per month plan for unlimited streaming, and a $10 plan that also includes mobile and offline access to tracks. At the same time Spotify was rolling out in America, it was also partnering with Facebook to allow users to share their listening habits. As with all things Facebook these days, it was also a traffic driver for the company. Spotify has said that 500,000 members have been added since the Facebook integration went live. Spotify isn't giving up, and isn't admitting fault. A press event has been scheduled for next week where Spotify will make some sort of major announcement. Whatever the issues with content might be, users are flocking to Spotify in huge numbers. Maybe the mystery event will accelerate that even more. |
| Google Expands Auto-Complete Blacklist Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:13 PM PST
Users that enter searches including terms like pirate bay, isohunt, and btmon are finding their searches pull up no suggestions. It's just a few extra keystrokes, so what's the harm? Statistics have shown that limiting auto-complete results negatively affects the traffic for sites. The sites are still in search results, but people find them less. These moves are likely undertaken to win support from the entertainment industry. While this is certainly more acceptable than extreme anti-piracy measures like SOPA/Protect IP, something doesn't sit right. A Pirate Bay spokesperson claims this is one more step along the road to censoring search results. Do you think so? |
| Posted: 23 Nov 2011 11:35 AM PST
One of my favorite zombie movies is Revenge Of The Zombies, made in 1943. It stars John Carradine as the mad scientist and Gale Storm as the female ingénue. It's not a great movie, in fact it's not even a very good one, but it has an ending that still disturbs me to this day. John Carradine has turned his beautiful wife into a zombie. He's also trying to breed a race of zombies for Hitler. But his wife still has some free will. She takes control of the growing army of zombies (well, only four or five) and they take Carradine down to the spooky swamp, where she faces him, holds him by the shoulders so he can't escape, and they both sink down into the quicksand. He struggles, she doesn't. The rest of the zombies sink down with them. What's disturbing about this ending is the thought that if zombies never die, then they're all still down there, waiting, brooding…and maybe some night will come oozing and squelching out of the swamp…? Zombies were not a big staple in horror films until 1968 when George Romero made Night Of The Living Dead for $114,000. At the time of its initial release, it was dismissed by critics for its explicit violence and overlooked by most audiences. But only a couple of years later, it was a regular item on the late-night movie circuit. I first saw it in Greenwich Village at a midnight showing. As with Rocky Horror Picture Show, the audience was filled with regulars and their virgin guests. You can watch this movie on TV, but to really appreciate the sheer visceral impact, you have to see it very late at night with a large audience. None of the remakes or sequels have ever come close to the same gritty horror of the original. What I remember most about that first screening was that the first thirty minutes were so relentless that the audience actually breathed a gasp of relief when Ben (Duane Jones) the hero hammered the final board over the last window. The rest of the picture was similarly punctuated by gasps of horror as each new atrocity occurred. Up till that time, blood and gore had been kept mostly offscreen. The horror was in the suggestion, not what was shown. Night Of The Living Dead changed that. Flash forward to 1992. A state of the art computer had a 386 processor running at 33mhz, a megabyte of RAM, a VGA video board, and a stereo Sound Blaster card. The top games are Flight Simulator and Wolfenstein 3D. Wolfenstein 3D was a good test of the power of your system. If you could run it full screen, you could run just about anything else. The game was created by Id Software and published by Apogee. As with previous Apogee games, the first ten levels were free, you paid ($15 if I remember correctly) for the next twenty. The game was the most successful game that Apogee had ever published. It not only popularized the first person shooter, it also introduced hundreds of thousands of users to the shareware concept. Wolfenstein 3D takes place during World War II. You're playing the role of B.J. Blazkowicz (Duke Nukem's grampa?), and you're trying to escape a Nazi prison. As you go through the levels, any qualms you might have about shooting other human beings can be quickly dismissed. These are Nazis, after all—they deserve it—and when you reach the final boss level, you get to shoot mechano-Hitler, who's armed with four Gatling guns. Graphically, Wolfenstein 3D was primitive. The levels were flat mazes laid out in a square grid. The characters were cartoonish sprites. But the game was genuinely interactive. Gamers could explore a three-dimensional environment in real time, collecting guns, ammunition, treasures, meals, med-kits, and keys to locked doors. Despite the crude graphics, you could feel as if you were inside a real and knowable space. In December of 1993, Id released Doom and gaming has never been the same. Wolfenstein 3D was just a warm-up. Doom introduced variations in lighting, stereo sound, jumping, and a true three-dimensional environment. Environments had stairs, terraces, shelves, balconies, elevators, pits, towers, and chasms. The graphics were smoother and more detailed than before, although the characters were still sprites. The game took place on a Martian military base where something awful has happened. Some experiment has gone terribly wrong. This time you're a space marine and you start out fighting other marines—ones who have been zombified. But very quickly, you're up against alien monkeys who throw fireballs and pink pig-things and various other alien demons from Hell. The environments in Doom were (and still are) genuinely terrifying. Every time you came to a door, you had no idea what horrors might be waiting on the other side, what dark corners you'd have to search, what puzzles would challenge you. The first ten levels taught you various tricks—listen for a door, that's a clue. Maneuver through the strobing darkness. Jump from this shelf to that one. You start out with a meager pistol, quickly followed by the iconic shotgun (which is just one of the most fun weapons in the game), and eventually you work your way up to the BFG-9000. (BFG stands for "big fucking gun.") Doom had it's own uniquely disturbing mood—helped in no small part by Bobby Prince's appropriately monstrous score. Doom was one of the most successful computer games of all time. It dropped people into its malevolent Martian landscape and sucked their brains out through their eyes and fingers. Many gamers played obsessively for hours at a time—and then reported dreaming Doom environments while they slept. Rumor had it that one teenager even had a psychotic breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Other players found the game environments so disturbing that they had to stop playing for a while. (I was one of those folks. I was playing too many hours a day. One night, I was walking down a dark unfamiliar hall, and I noticed that I experienced genuine anxiety as I approached the corner at the end. When I did come back to the game, I limited my time at the keyboard.) Looking back, it's clear that Wolfenstein 3D and Doom spawned the whole first-person-shooter genre. There have been a lot of other noteworthy games since then, but none have ever had such a widespread and sudden cultural impact. Trying to capture a piece of that same market, a lot of companies invested hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, into developing their own powerful 3D gaming engines. Not all of them got to market. Even fewer succeeded. But it was clear that gamers wanted a certain kind of first-person interactive environment, they wanted interesting enemies, and they wanted to shoot them. The balance has always been tricky, but companies that have found the right balance have profited enormously. One of the issues in any game has been finding the right enemy, so you don't have to worry about that troubling little commandment about how thou shalt not do something or other. Even committing a vicarious murder carries a karmic price. Recreating the great conflicts of history—especially World War II—often works well. You can almost justify the battle action as "educational," because the player gets to experience the circumstances first hand. Nazis have been terrific villains for movies and books, because you can portray them as completely without redeeming qualities of any kind. There are no good Nazis, therefore revenge is justified. It's all right to hate them, and shooting them is a good thing, because you're stopping them from further atrocities. But aliens are even better than Nazis. Aliens are giant bugs or slithery reptiles or gigantic machines that fire death rays. You don't have to justify shooting bugs or snakes or machines. You're human, they're not. That's all the justification you need. But one of the best enemies for games and movies has turned out to be zombies. They're not human anymore. They're mindless. They're dead. They're either slow and clumsy or fast and vicious. It doesn't matter. If they're slow, they want to eat your brain. If they're fast, they're infected with rage. And the best part is, you don't have to justify shooting them. It's just self-defense. You're still human, they aren't. The uncomfortable question is whether or not this kind of gaming is psychologically healthy. Does it have an effect on the player? I've seen this argued both ways. If television doesn't influence how you behave, then why are there commercials? Do the game environments you explore affect how you see the world or deal with other people? My son loves driving games, the faster the better. He plays them obsessively, even more so after he got his driver's license. And he used to sneak out at night and go racing on the freeway to see how fast his car could go. One night, some dudes pulled up alongside him at a red light and tried to carjack him. He out-drove them and lost them in two blocks. (In another circumstance, a state highway patrolman told my son that he'd never seen anyone handle a CRX so well. Don't ask.) In a more controlled environment, it has been demonstrated that children do emulate behaviors they see on TV. One remarkable experiment portrayed two different reactions to a frustrating toy. A child was shown one tape or the other, then given the same frustrating toy to play with. The pieces didn't fit, it didn't work. The children who had seen the angry portrayal of frustration tended to behave the same way, they got angry and shouted too. The children who had seen the actress just shrug and walk away from the toy were more likely to emulate that response. Again, if television doesn't influence us, why are there commercials? Why are there Batman costumes in the Halloween stores? And why did it take nearly six months to get my son to stop saying "All righty, then!" like Ace Ventura, Pet Detective? So I think it's fair to examine the cultural effects of any meme, of anything that is portrayed in films and on TV—especially when it becomes a hit. Why has our culture become so fascinated with zombie threats, and is there a deeper subtext that bears examination here? Books, movies, comics, TV shows—this meme shows no signs of fading away. In 1956, the classic film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers gave a lot of people sleepless nights. Some reviewers have put forth the theory that the movie was contemporary a metaphor for the fear of Communism—that your trusted neighbors might stop being the friendly people you know and become godless atheist soul-sucking collectivist zombies. If that's the case, then what do today's zombies represent? Fear of the other is commonplace throughout all cultures. It's possible that the way zombies are presented today is an artifact of that. More specifically, raging crazies can represent the fear of anything from violent jihadists to inner-city criminal gangs, from illegal immigrants to fanatics of any extreme. More specifically, the portrayal of zombies a class of humans it's all right to kill is interpreted by some (many?) as a thinly-veiled racism. Resident Evil has been very successful as a PC game (plus sequels), as well as a series of increasingly graphic movies. In the 2010 film, Resident Evil: Afterlife, human survivors exist in safe havens. They have walled off the outside world where infected crazies still run free. 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later are similarly themed—rage-infected people are killing innocents. It's possible that this particular iteration of zombies also represents fear of uncleanliness, disease, and poverty. Zombies aren't people. They have become animals, acting without thought, acting without regard for themselves or others—acting without even the essential core of identity. So it is all right for us to see them as monsters—no longer human. Despite the risk of someone invoking Godwin's Law, I'm going to point out that the Holocaust was preceded by ten years of systematic propaganda to convince the German population that Jews were untermenschen, repeatedly referencing them as "vermin." The first step in any perpetration or atrocity is to diminish your perception of the other person's humanity. Do all these movies and games subconsciously encourage fear and hatred of whole classes of people? Are they desensitizing us to the essential humanity of others?
I admit that's a pretty heavy question to ask. It's easier to argue that some people are taking the subject too seriously, and that the proliferation of zombie hordes in movies, games, books, and graphic novels have been deliciously scary and nothing more. I can see that point of view too. My favorites are Return Of The Living Dead ("Send more paramedics!"), Shaun Of The Dead, and Zombieland. World War Z and Pride And Prejudice And Zombies will be released sometime in 2012 and could also be big hits. The Walking Dead had some shuddery moments too. For most fans, zombies are probably just another excuse for cosplay. At the 2011 Comic-Con, fans held the one of the largest zombie-walks in the world, with the undead shambling and grunting and grinning maniacally in a line that stretched for blocks (at least ten, by my count). Still, it's worth looking at the psychological subtext. Some sociologists have said that Frankenstein represents the discomforts of adolescence (an awkward, ungainly body—an inability to fit in anywhere), that vampires represent forbidden sexuality (including homoerotic situations), and that the original Godzilla films spoke to Japan's fears of nuclear horror. If those metaphors have any significant cultural resonance, then it's equally fair to ask what zombies represent to us and why we choose to think that way. What do you think? |
| Lenovo Puts "World's Smallest Desktop" Up For Preorder Posted: 23 Nov 2011 11:25 AM PST
In fact, the 7.5 by 6.1 by 0.86 box seems to have been made with home theater in mind, as the IdeaCentre Q180 includes built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, 7.1-channel audio via an S/PDIF connection, full HD and Blu-ray 3D graphics, VGA and HDMI ports and an 8-in-1 card reader. HTPC-focused options include Lenovo's multimedia remote and a Blu-ray drive (although the base model, at $400, lacks any optical drive whatsoever). Both of the models found on the Lenovo website sport a 500GB hard drive and a pair of USB 3.0 ports. Check out the IdeaCentre Q180 product page for a full list of specs and options. The tiny PC is only available for pre-order right now; Lenovo expects to start shipping them out on December 2nd. |
| QPAD Unveils World's First USB NKRO Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Posted: 23 Nov 2011 10:46 AM PST
There are other gamer-friendly features, too, including individual red backlights for each key, a removable wrist rest, spare USB and audio ports, software for multiple gamer profiles, and programming functions. As for the keys themselves, some may love them, and some may hate them: the Cherry Red MX switches should be plenty responsive enough, but they lack any audible or tactile feedback, which is good for folks who prefer silent typing, but bad for folks who like a physical response when a key is pressed. The company also unveiled the MK-50, which offers the same basic build and NKRO functionality as the MK-85, but sans backlights, extra ports or programming capabilities. Expect the MK-85 to hit the streets sometime in December for $200, while the stripped-down MK-50 will be available by the end of November for roughly half that price. Check out QPAD's press release for full details and scads of pics. |
| How To Access Region-Locked Content Online Posted: 23 Nov 2011 10:24 AM PST
A few notes before we begin: the solutions offered below aren't perfect. Surfing speeds are usually slow, content providers sometimes restrict access from certain proxies and VPNs, and you often have to pay proxy owners for access to streaming content. Got it? Good, let's go spoofing! ProxiesThe easiest way to bypass many region locks is by using free "High Anonymous" proxy servers, which don't identify themselves as proxies when connecting to websites; find them by searching proxy aggregators like proxy.org or running a quick Google search for "<country name> free proxy". Most free proxies don't allow streaming, however, so you'll have to do some digging. FoxyProxy offers access to high-speed proxies in countries around the world, but you have to pay for access. A lot of proxies use an in-browser interface to get the obscuring job done, but others require you to manually tweak your browser's proxy server settings. Here's how to do it. Internet Explorer
Click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner > "Internet options" > "Connections" tab > "Lan Settings". Check the box next to "Use a proxy server…" and enter the proxy's info in the "Address:" and "Port" fields. If the server uses additional settings, click on the "Advanced" button to input them. Firefox
Click "Firefox button" > "Options" > "Options" > "Advanced" tab > "Settings". Select "Manual Proxy Configuration" and enter the information provided by your proxy server. Chrome
In Chrome, you want to click the button marked "Change Proxy Settings" in the Options Screen. VPNsVirtual Private Networks often offer better region-cracking success than free proxies, but if you want to stream content, you usually have to pay for a premium VPN service. UltraVPN and HotSpot Shield are two free VPN services that allow U.S.-based streaming, but major services like Hulu and Netflix often block access by their servers. Make sure whatever VPN you choose offers IP addresses for the country you want to access content from. Many VPNs use stand-alone applications that you simply activate and log in to. Others may ask you to connect manually. Here's how to do just that in Windows 7/Vista:
Click "Control Panel" > "Network and Sharing Center" > "Set up a connection or network" > "Connect to a workplace" > "Next". If prompted, click "No, I'll create a new connection." Connect via "Use my Internet connection," and enter a name and the address provided to you by your VPN. Afterwards, connect to the VPN by selecting it from the network icon in the system tray. You'll need to enter your supplied username and password to access the VPN. Other DevicesYour options are few if you want to stream region locked content to gadgets like an iPad or Boxee Box rather than computers. Two premium DNS redirection services allow users to watch U.S.-locked content on devices (and computers) all around the world: Unblock-us and UnoTelly. Reports say these $5 services work well and speedily, but only for the devices and services listed on their websites. All you have to do to use them is sign up and tweak your gadget's DNS server settings; you can find device-specific instructions on the respective sites. Payment and Location
A quick note on payment options: accessing region-locked content on premium services like Steam and Netflix requires you to have a credit card from the country you're spoofing. A prepaid Entropay virtual card lets you hop that hurdle (Unblock-us has a great tutorial), but you'll still need to enter a valid country-specific physical address when registering with content sites. Usually, any valid address will do. Just sayin'. Remember not to do any banking, including Entropay transactions, while connected through a VPN or proxy. |
| Posted: 23 Nov 2011 10:06 AM PST To call HP's 2560p an "ultraportable" is pushing it. It has a slightly smaller footprint than the Toshiba R830, with a screen size of 12.5 inches, but it's heavier by more than a pound. With its power brick, you're looking at more than five pounds, including a battery that protrudes a full inch from the back of the notebook's body. This is no dainty package. Of course, it feels like a machine that can take its licks. HP likes to point out that the notebook is designed and tested to meet Mil-Spec standards for drops, temperature shock, and altitude changes, among other stressors. Nestled within the 2560p's island keyboard is a pointing stick (a la Lenovo's ThinkPads), which, along with an additional set of right and left mouse buttons below the spacebar, lets you control the cursor without moving your hands from the keys. It's a nice feature for folks who roll that way, but if you're partial to using a touchpad, you might resent how the additional mouse buttons encroach on the pad's surface area. We also found horizontal and vertical scrolling on the touchpad to be erratic.
In performance, the 2560p is solid. It features a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-2540M to the Toshiba's 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-2620M, and the two trade benchmarks win within fairly close proximity, save Premiere Pro, where the HP was 21 percent faster than the Toshiba. Like the Toshiba, the HP features single-channel RAM and thus scored lower than our zero-point in Quake III. Upgrading the HP 2560p is supremely easy, as the entire underside slides off without removing a single screw. Inside, you'll find a 2.5-inch drive bay presently occupied by a 160GB SSD, an empty RAM slot, and an open Mini PCIe slot. Another nice feature is the Elite Premium Support that comes included with the purchase of this notebook. It entitles owners to free 24/7 tech support from a dedicated Elite team, although it's anyone's guess what happens to that should HP actually spin off its computer division. In our battery rundown test, the 2560p lasted four and a half hours playing a video file in a continuous loop. That's a decent runtime, but a far cry from the Toshiba's showing. With its sturdy build, strong performance, and upgrade-friendliness, the HP 2560p is certainly appealing. But when it comes to performance and portability, we're partial to the Toshiba R830's lighter carry weight, longer battery life, and lower price. $1,800, www.hp.com |
| Doom 3 Source Code Released Under GPL License Posted: 23 Nov 2011 09:59 AM PST
Well, to be fair, they released most of the source code: according to Gamasutra, you won't find any game data in the files because they are still subject to the EULA. The ReadMe.txt file for the source code mentions another function that was included in the original game, but missing here: The Doom 3 GPL source code release does not include functionality enabling rendering of stencil shadows via the "depth fail" method, a functionality commonly known as "Carmack's Reverse". So what are you waiting for, open source lovers? Go download the Doom 3 GPL source code over at GitHub. |
| Having Performance Issues in Batman: Arkham City? Stop Using DirectX 11, Publisher Says Posted: 23 Nov 2011 09:23 AM PST
That's right, the only available solution right now is to run the game with DX9 instead of DX11. That's a tough pill to swallow for such a highly anticipated game, and news of the issue/solution was understandably met with some contempt by Arkham City forum members. "I'm sorry if I come up as rude, but how in the HELL did this get past beta testing? Pretty much every user is having problems with the performance in DX11 and you guys didn't detect it (you had a month to 'polish the PC release' as well)," one forum member complained. It is what it is, and Cataldo says an update/fix is in the works. In the meantime, if you're having issues you can find instructions for changing DX11 to DX9 here. |
Just a Holiday heads up for you all. Starting today, Google has added a raft of 
Amid all the doom and gloom around Spotify's profitability for artists, the service has been doing quite well by the numbers. Without disclosing the breakdown by nationality, Spotify has 
It's been a while, so you could be forgiven for letting it slip your mind, but Google is in the habit of censoring its auto-complete suggestions. Starting almost a year ago El Goog began removing suggestions for content relating to search terms like torrent, bittorrent, and RapidShare. According to TorrentFreak, a recent update to Google's search tools has 
Hot on the heels of our review of the Blu-ray-like Acer Revo RL100-UR20P – 
Let's face it: stock keyboards just won't cut it in Battlefield 3 or CoD: MW3, especially when you're caught flat-footed by attackers while in the midst of getting your virtual act together. Key jamming and ghosting can be a real problem with older or low-end keyboards, but not with the MK-85, a new offering from Swedish manufacturer QPAD. The company claims the MK-85 "is the world's first mechanical keyboard offering full N-key roll over via USB," so you can get your multi-key presses on without those pesky PS/2 cables.
We may call the glorious series of tubes the World Wide Web, but that doesn't mean you can view every website's content all around the globe. Many of the big name content providers – like 
Doom 3 might not have blown away interactive storytelling standards when it launched on the PC back in 2004, but it definitely raised the bar as far as visuals were concerned. Despite the awesome eye candy, the Internet quickly filled with mildly disgruntled gamers who griped that they could have made a better game by, say, changing up the monster closet-filled gameplay and adding a flashlight to weapons. Well, big talkers, here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is: yesterday, iD finally released Doom 3's source code, nearly seven years after the game launched.
If you're suffering performance issues with Batman: Arkham City on the PC, don't worry, you're not alone. Andy Cataldo, U.S. Community Manger for Turbine Inc. (acquired by publisher Warner Brothers in 2010), said that "after researching the matter, we found that running the game with DX11 is causing the performance issues." The solution? Don't run it in DX11 mode, silly.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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