General Gaming Article |
- The Game Boy: Game Endings Aren't Bad – They're Just Misunderstood
- Fractal Design Announces New Six-Channel Fan Controller
- Coming Soon: Affordable Wi-Fi Blocking Wallpaper
- Harry Potter Series Coming To Amazon Kindle Owners' Lending Library
- Windows RT's Browser Handling is a "Return to the Digital Dark Ages," Mozilla Says
- Kepler Keeps on Coming as Nvidia Officially Introduces GeForce GTX 670
- Amazon to Add a Dash of Color to eBook Readers in Second Half of 2012
- Wi-Fi Alliance to Begin Passpoint Certification Program Next Month
- Irrational Games Delays BioShock Infinite to 2013; Will Skip E3
| The Game Boy: Game Endings Aren't Bad – They're Just Misunderstood Posted: 10 May 2012 12:39 PM PDT
Hey, remember that whole Mass Effect 3 ending thing? Mercifully, I don't plan on giving it any further attention beyond that sentence. But it did – in its less oppressively obnoxious moments – give rise to a renewed discussion about videogame endings. The general consensus? It's the point where even the mightiest fall, tumbling from a perch of lofty regard to the turgid depths of disappointment. BioShock, Fallout 3, Knights of The Old Republic II – even the most beloved franchises have proven all-too-capable of heinous back-stabbery at the 11th hour. And those are only the standouts. Plenty of other series have committed last-second crimes both large and small, so you could be forgiven for thinking we're in the midst of an epidemic fatal specifically to fond memories. Where, after all, is your satisfaction-fueled victory lap? Why, instead, is there an angry mob waiting at the finish line, pitchforks, torches, and voices raised in a howling thunder of angry regret? Why do games seem incapable of producing satisfying endings? That's the question many gamers have been asking themselves, and they've yet to uncover an answer. Perhaps that's because they're asking the wrong question. "Why do so many endings suck?" is a half-formed thought. Yes, we now understand that it probably won't fly with fans if their send off is a closure-free cliffhanger in which the hero and villain stare each other down, banter cryptically, and then clash blades/guns/Pokemon, only to be cut off mid-sentence by a "To be continued. In two years. Maybe. If this one meets publisher expectations for the fiscal quarter." But, in grumbling about flops and bellyflops and probably flip-flops, we're missing an incredibly key point: games are – and have already proven to be – capable of incredible endings. Some of the most moving, memorable final moments I've ever encountered – regardless of medium – have come from games, and most of them hedged their bets on particularly potent tools from gaming's bag of tricks. The most basic of these techniques, of course, is the possibility of multiple endings. But that, in itself, isn't really so spectacular. Some of gaming's most interesting finales have emerged from developers' awareness of that potential last-second possibility smorgasbord. Endings, after all, don't have to be opposing forces, locked in an eternal tug-of-war between "good," "bad," and Silent Hill 2's dog ending (aka, "best"). What happens when we consider these things frayed ends of the same rope? That's where we get endings like those in Bastion and indie survival-horror hit Lone Survivor. I've already discussed Bastion at (possibly excessive) length, but in both cases, there are multiple equally valid endings, each feeding into and informing the others. The full picture only becomes clear when you've assembled jigsaw pieces from both sides of the story.
Lone Survivor, especially, uses that necessary repetition to amazing effect in conjunction with gaming's most obvious end-of-the-line exclamation point: the player's experience of actually, you know, playing the game. (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.) At first, I approached the game like I would any other zombie apocalypse fight-or-flight-in-fright situation: Did it move? Shoot it. Did it then say, "Wait, stop shooting me"? Shoot it again anyway. Did it follow with "I'm still alive, somewhat miraculously, and am willing to forgive you – possibly because of blood-loss-related delirium"? Hm, that's a toughie. Flip a coin. Heads: shoot. Tails: flip another coin. And it was miserable. My masked avatar's body was as beaten and broken as his incredibly fragile mind. Meanwhile, progressing became incredibly difficult for me as a player. Ammo was in short supply, as were food and drink (yes, it's a survival-horror game with actual survival) and means to get back to my apartment for precious, frequently necessary sleep. I got extremely frustrated, and eventually, I just sort of gave up. I became all at once cynical, despondent, and hopeless. And my character echoed those feelings. He complained of exhaustion every time he got out of bed. Momentary glances into mirrors were met with laments of "I'm such a mess" or "I don't even recognize myself anymore." I met a couple other characters who'd somehow avoided the horrific flesh monster mutation that was seeping the nation, but they wanted supplies. How the hell did they expect me to lend them a helping hand when I could barely even take care of myself? Eventually, I managed to make a mad, desperate dash for the game's finish, and I was treated to a confusing hallucination in which my character ultimately took his own life. It was a powerfully fitting final scene, to be sure, but it also felt empty. I felt like I was missing something. So I tried again. Violence, I decided, would be my last resort. I was patient and methodical – venturing from my apartment only as far as I knew food and stealthier routes would allow. It took time, but my character kept his cool – and so did I. At that point, Lone Survivor ceased to be a game about zombies for me. I became obsessed with keeping this desperately feeble human being happy. And it worked. He became confident and capable. Toward the end, I even had an excess of supplies, so I spread the wealth to characters less fortunate than my own. This time, my ending hallucination featured a couple of the same pieces of key imagery and some incredibly similar lines, but the context, mood, and end result were entirely different. One ending, then, was not complete without the other. But neither would've been nearly so powerful if I hadn't sat side-by-side with my character on that irritating, amazing emotional rollercoaster. (END SPOILERS.)
Elsewhere, on gaming's less traditional fringes, we find a coin with two incredibly disparate sides: 1) endings that only occur precisely when the player's ready and 2) endings that give the player no control whatsoever. The former happens all the time – though admittedly in all sorts very different forms. If you've ever unsubscribed from an MMO, for instance, that's about as close to a final act as you're liable to get without a post-credit scene where Samuel L. Jackson asks you to join The Avengers. I mean, when I quit World of Warcraft after years of play to focus on college, I bid farewell to a place, group of people, and portion of my life I'd really come to love. It signaled an end to far more than a simple piece of escapist entertainment for me. Honestly, at that point in my life, it was one of the more intensely personal things I'd ever done. On a somewhat similar note, I highly recommend that you read the final entry in Brendan Keogh's Toward Dawn Minecraft blog series. After spending more than a year chronicling his adventures in a single Minecraft world, Keogh decided to hang up his pick axe and settle down once and for all. I won't butcher the piece (which, again, I can't recommend enough) here, but the point remains the same: when we find games that really resonate with us on a personal level, they have a way of lingering – clinging to our skin and hair and the undersides of our fingernails until we scrub them away, only to feel oddly naked without them. The latter of the previous two categories, meanwhile, is still pretty small, but experimental darlings Passage and The Graveyard both focus on death by natural causes. In doing so, both make interesting (if short-lived and minimalistic) points about mortality and the frail nature of relationships, but imagine if that limit were applied to something slightly more robust. Shooter, adventure, MMO, something entirely new – it doesn't matter. In each case, every second would count. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Death's right around the corner. Games have taught us to treat death as a minor setback, so what happens when it's a foregone conclusion – or rather, the forgone conclusion? Decisions can't be taken back. How do you spend the minutes, hours, months, or even years until your character wastes away? Do you seek out unlimited power, weave your social threads into a comforting social sweater, or explore until your heart's content/has an attack? Do you try to do everything? I guess what I'm saying is, do you waste your time on web forums complaining about crappy videogame endings? Or do you cherish the great ones and marvel at how lucky you were to get the chance to experience them? |
| Fractal Design Announces New Six-Channel Fan Controller Posted: 10 May 2012 10:52 AM PDT With all the attention focused on the pixel-pumping prowess of the brand-spankin' new video cards being released by AMD and Nvidia these days, an important part of the equation may be getting glossed over: keeping the hardware running cool. Deep down in our inbox, barely visible through the flood of GTX 670-related press releases, we noticed a nugget of information that may be able to help hardcore system builders with their heating problems. Today, Fractal Design announced a new six-fan controller, the Adjust 108.
The Adjust 108 sports a brushed aluminum design with six sliders that use LED lights to convey fan speed information at a glance; low speed fans glow white while high RPMs turn the light blue. Each of the six channels can handle up to 36W of power, and the SATA-powered hardware consumes a single 5.25-inch drive bay. Unfortunately, Fractal Design didn't share any pricing or availability info, but the Adjust 108 is already up on the company's website. Show of hands: who's interested in manually (literally) controlling fan speed? |
| Coming Soon: Affordable Wi-Fi Blocking Wallpaper Posted: 10 May 2012 10:26 AM PDT
The silver triangle snowflake-esque design may or may not be your cup of tea, but the French publications L'Informaticien and The Connexion report that it's actually the wallpaper's secret sauce. The geometric shapes are coated in conductive ink made with silver particles that block three separate Wi-Fi frequencies. If you don't like it, the creators say slapping a layer of more eye-friendly wallpaper over it won't damage its signal-blocking capabilities. Tin-foil hat types may even want to coat the walls in Wi-Fi-blocking paint before applying the Wi-Fi blocking wallpaper to get twice the protection, or, er, something.
Now, Wi-Fi-blocking wallpaper has been done before, but this one has a couple of key characteristics that set it apart from its competitors. Price is one of them. Other Wi-Fi-proof wallpaper costs an arm and a leg but when the Finnish company Ahlstrom launches this product next year they expect it to cost "equivalent to that of a classic wallpaper mid-range." Smartphones work perfectly fine with the wallpaper, too -- texting, calling, mobile data and all. Only a handful of Wi-Fi frequencies are blocked. Now for the bad part: if you just coat your walls in the stuff, Wi-Fi signals could leak out through non-covered surfaces. That's fixable, but the fix entails covering your roof, floor and windows with the wallpaper. Sitting in a dark room may be boring, but hey, at least your home network will be safe from Google's prying eyes. Follow Brad on Google+ or Twitter Image credit: L'Informaticien |
| Harry Potter Series Coming To Amazon Kindle Owners' Lending Library Posted: 10 May 2012 10:14 AM PDT Attention, fellow muggles; you'll soon be able to get your fill of Harry Potter and his high-flying, Quidditch-playing Hogwarts buddies absolutely free -- at least if you own a Kindle and an Amazon Prime subscription. Today, Amazon announced that all seven of J.K. Rowling's blockbuster books are being added to the company's Kindle Owners' Lending Library as of June 19th.
The Harry Potter books became available for Kindle devices in March, but only kinda; you needed to buy the DRM-free e-books directly from Rowling's Pottermore e-bookstore, though you could find the titles through the Kindle store and have them pushed to your Kindle automatically. The new (and exclusive) lending deal announced today gives Amazon Prime members the ability to "check out" the e-books the same would you would at a physical library -- including the "free" part. There are some limitations, though; you're only allowed to check out one e-book a month, and you have to check one e-book back in before downloading another, although the e-books don't have return due dates. Over 145,000 are available in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, Amazon says. "Over a year, borrowing the Harry Potter books, plus a handful of additional titles, can alone be worth more than the $79 cost of Prime or a Kindle," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in the company's press release. "The Kindle Owners' Lending Library also has an innovative feature that's of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter – unlimited supply of each title – you never get put on a waiting list." It's a great addition for folks who've bought in to both the Kindle and the Amazon Prime ecosystem. Matter of fact, Amazon Prime's looking more attractive by the minute with all the books in the Kindle Lending Library and the bevy of movies and shows available for "free" streaming. Whaddaya think: is the service starting to shape up into something intriguing even for people who aren't interested in the Amazon Prime speedy shipping benefits? |
| Windows RT's Browser Handling is a "Return to the Digital Dark Ages," Mozilla Says Posted: 10 May 2012 07:06 AM PDT
"It's reported that Windows RT (the name Microsoft has given to Windows running on the ARM processor) will have two environments, a Windows Classic environment and a Metro environment for apps. However, Windows on ARM prohibits any browser except for Internet Explorer from running in the privileged 'Windows Classic' environment," Mozilla explains. "In practice, this means that only Internet Explorer will be able to perform many of the advanced computing functions vital to modern browsers in terms of speed, stability, and security to which users have grown accustomed. Given that IE can run in Windows on ARM, there is no technical reason to conclude other browsers can't do the same." The way Mozilla sees it, Microsoft's strong-arm behavior effectively excludes competing browsers from the platform, giving users just a single viable browser choice when running Windows in an ARM environment. If the reports are true and Microsoft doesn't reverse course, it could find itself defending its decision in court. "Because Windows on ARM relies upon so many traditional Windows assets, including brand, code, footprint, and experience, the decision to exclude other browsers may also have antitrust implications," Mozilla said. "If Windows on ARM is simply another version of Windows on new hardware, it also runs afoul of the EC browser choice commitments and seems to represent the very behavior the DOJ-Microsoft settlement sought to prohibit." Mozilla didn't come out and say it would be the one filing suit, or urging for an investigation, but if nothing changes between now and the time Windows 8 is released, it's a pretty safe bet Microsoft will have some explaining to do. |
| Kepler Keeps on Coming as Nvidia Officially Introduces GeForce GTX 670 Posted: 10 May 2012 06:34 AM PDT
"Plus, the GeForce GTX 670 ties the competition's much higher-priced flagship product on 25 of the world's most popular games and benchmarks, a testament to the overall performance efficiency of the Kepler architecture," Nvidia claims. In other words, the GTX 670 is all that a bag of chips, in Nvidia's eyes. Performance claims aside, the GTX 670 sports 1,344 CUDA cores, 112 texture units, and 32 ROP units. It has 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6,008MHz on a 256-bit bus resulting in 192.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GPU has a base clockspeed of 915MHz and a boost clockspeed of 980MHz. For comparison, the GTX 680 features a few more CUDA cores (1,536), more texture units (138), and a faster GPU (1,006MHz base, 1,058MHz boost). The GTX 680 is also a longer graphics card; the GTX 670 measures 9.5 inches long. Technically, the GTX 670 is available to purchase now, but like all Kepler cards, that's contingent on being to find the darn thing in stock. Image Credit: Nvidia |
| Amazon to Add a Dash of Color to eBook Readers in Second Half of 2012 Posted: 10 May 2012 06:17 AM PDT
So called 'industry sources' tell DigiTimes that makers in the supply chain have already begun shipping related parts and components for these new color-capable eBook readers. The final product will sport multi-touch capacitive displays rather than those infrared touch panels found in existing mono-color eBook readers. Unfortunately that's all we have in the way of details; there's no mention of the other hardware or software, or whether it will share tablet-like features the way Barnes & Noble's Nook Color does. What we do know is that these devices will be joining a crowded lineup of Kindles that currently include:
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble's lineup looks like this:
Image Credit: Amazon |
| Wi-Fi Alliance to Begin Passpoint Certification Program Next Month Posted: 10 May 2012 05:56 AM PDT
Backed by device makers, mobile operators and service providers, the Passpoint program is centered on making it easy for users to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots. How easy you ask? The whole process—from network discovery and selection to authentication—will be automatic as long as both the hotspot and end user device are Passpoint-certified. "With Passpoint, devices automatically identify and join Wi-Fi networks, and users are not required to complete a cumbersome manual login process," the Wi-Fi Alliance said in a press release Tuesday. Passpoint can authenticate users using multiple credentials types, including Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)–based authentication, username/password combinations and certificate credentials. Further, the whole authentication process does not require a browser, making it ideal for CE devices that lack them. "Passpoint also automatically configures industry-standard WPA2 security protections without user intervention. Passpoint certification for network equipment and end user devices is expected to begin in June, and is based on the Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 Specification." Where service providers are concerned, the ability to use the same credentials for cellular and Wi-Fi authentication will allow them to easily offload traffic to Wi-Fi networks. That's not all, though. Among a host of other benefits, it will let them provide seamless roaming access to each other's subscribers. |
| Irrational Games Delays BioShock Infinite to 2013; Will Skip E3 Posted: 10 May 2012 05:54 AM PDT
"I won't kid you: BioShock Infinite is a very big game, and we're doing things that no one has ever done in a first-person shooter," Levine stated in an open letter to the public. "We had a similar experience with the original BioShock, which was delayed several months as our original ship date drew near. Why? Because the Big Daddies weren't the Big Daddies you've since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan's golf club didn't have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco." Levine said the same attention of detail also applies to BioShock Infinite, which ultimately means a "bit more waiting, but more importantly, it means an even better" game. BioShock Infinite was originally scheduled to ship in October, so barring any more push backs, this amounts to about a four-month delay. You won't get to see a whole lot until then. Take-Two Interactive and Irrational Games have decided not to show BioShock Infinite at any of the big events this summer, including E3 and Gamescom. "That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put into the box," Levine explained. Image Credit: Take-Two Interactive / Irrational Games |
Are all the stories about 
Mozilla isn't mincing words when it comes to Microsoft's decision to limit or restrict the behavior of non-Internet Explorer browsers in Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 intended for systems with ARM hardware inside. In a semi-angry blog post, Mozilla raged against reports that Internet Explorer will be the only browser allowed to run in the privileged 'Windows Classic' environment, calling the move "an unwelcome return to the digital dark ages where users and developers didn't have browser choices." Ouch.
Nvidia today rolled out the welcome mat for the newest addition to its Kepler family, the GeForce GTX 670. The new 670 is "engineered from the same DNA as the recently announced GTX 680," but is a more affordable part with prices starting at $399 for cards built around Nvidia's reference design. And according to Nvidia, the 670 is a full 45 percent faster in gaming performance than the closest competitive product (i.e., AMD's Radeon HD 7950).
There's a fine line between what separates an eBook reader from a full-fledged tablet, and it doesn't get any easier to discern when there are devices like the Kindle Fire. Is it a glorified eBook reader, a tablet, or a hybrid of both? Ask three different people and you might get three different answers. Be that as it may, Amazon is planning to muddy the waters even further by releasing a line of color eBook readers in the second half of this this year.
Wi-Fi Alliance's Passpoint initiative is about to get off the ground. According to the trade association, it 
Sorry BioShock fans, you'll have to sit back and wait for February 26, 2013 to roll around before getting your hands on BioShock Infinite. Take-Two Interactive on Wednesday | 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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