Posts Tagged ‘gaming’

Dante’s Inferno interview: of marketing and Gods of War

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Dante’s Inferno has weathered its share of criticism for its aggressive marketing campaign, as well as its topical resemblance to the God of War titles. To be fair, much of that criticism came from us . Jonathan Knight, the game’s executive producer, was kind enough to talk to Ars about the game before its release. We picked his brain on the marketing campaign, dealing with a property with as much history as Dante’s Inferno , and why gaming can be a transitory art form. It was an interesting discussion, and proved that the game may not be as easily dismissed as we might have thought.

AMD reveals Fusion CPU+GPU, to challege Intel in laptops

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

SAN FRANCISCO—The “Llano” processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it’s not a GPU—instead, it’s a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an “application processor unit,” or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die. Details on the highly parallel vector hardware—the “GPU” part of the device—have yet to be disclosed, but AMD is focusing today’s revelations on the CPU part of the design. In a nutshell, AMD has taken the “STARS” core that’s used in their current 45nm offerings, shrunk it to a new 32nm SOI high-K process, and added new power gating and dynamic power optimization capabilities to it. Each out-of-order core has a bit under 35 million transistors, and a 1MB L2 cache that’s not included in that number. AMD is targeting sub-3GHz operation, and a power consumption range of 2.5 to 25 watts.

feature: Daddy’s Home: Ars reviews Bioshock 2

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The world of Rapture has a lot in common with Jurassic Park . Both fictional places tried to create a sort of closed paradise, playing with nature to fulfill the needs of their respective creators. Both experiments went horribly wrong, making a point about the will of man. In popular culture, when reach exceeds grasp, people die terrible, action-packed deaths. Bioshock 2 takes place ten years after the events of the first game. I’ll keep this review spoiler-free for both games for those who are still playing through Bioshock due to various Steam sales, but allow me to say that things haven’t settled down since we last saw the underwater world of Rapture. Everyone is still breathing, you see lumbering riveters repairing damage to windows and other structures, and the Splicers are still hunting for ADAM and coming into contact with the Little Sisters and their hulking Big Daddy escorts. It’s a constant fight for survival, and as the frequent scenes of death prove, most are not successful. There is something of a power vacuum, however, and a few personalities have risen to try to fill it. Bioshock 2 is the story of a Big Daddy. You might call him the Big Daddy. The game begins with a violent act, and you wake up to a world even more violent now than how it was left at the end of the previous game. You have a single name on your lips: Eleanor.

EA hides Dante’s Inferno ads in source code of popular sites

// February 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The PR campaign for Dante’s Inferno has been quite the adventure. Booth babes were listed as prizes, game writers were sent $200 checks, and EA paid for “Christian” picketers to protest the game at E3. True, these things may have been controversial, but they were successful in their intent to get everyone talking about the game. The latest stunt is eerie, and gets bonus points for both creativity and giving the fans some fun bonuses.

Aliens vs. Predator demo shows promise, fails to sell game

// February 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Aliens vs Predator may very well be a good game, but the demo doesn’t do much to sell it. The demo is multiplayer-only and only showcases one map and one game mode: deathmatch. The servers are public and trying to find a game is an exercise in frustration. In over two hours spent with the PlayStation 3 version of the demo (it’s also available on the 360 and PC) I managed to play a scant three games. And one of those got disconnected. Ben had similar issues when trying to connect to the PC version.

Week in gaming: 20 games we want, Heavy Rain, MAG review

// February 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Did you know that the only game that’s acceptable to be looking forward to is  Halo: Reach ? We didn’t! Our list of 20 games we wanted to play in 2010 garnered a ton of readers, and a ton of controversy. StarCraft 2 didn’t make the list? We’re skeptical about a 2010 release date. Halo: Reach not our most anticipated game? It’s more Halo . If we left out your favorite game, it’s not too late to register your indignation. We also took a look at Sony’s massive shooter MAG , which seems to have caught a good amount of our community in its grasp. We look at the challenges Heavy Rain faces… and why they’re all good problems to have in terms of quality. We also take Razer’s newest mouse for a test drive. This is the week in gaming.

What we’d do (in a perfect world) to fix the PSP Go

// February 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

There is a rumor making its way around the gaming blogs that Sony is planning on “relaunching” the PSP Go . Rumors come and go, and this is an admittedly shaky one, but it’s an interesting idea. The PSP Go has all but disappeared from the world of gaming. It exists, you can buy one in stores, but we have yet to hear any sales numbers. The system is rarely discussed. If people are buzzing about a possible relaunch, does that mean the original launch was a failure? Until we see some hard data one way or the other, we’ll likely never know. If we do see a new strategy from the corporate level for the device, on the other hand, that’s pretty compelling evidence that the original product plan didn’t work as well Sony had hoped. We  rather notoriously  didn’t like the original product. So let’s give Sony some free advice and take a look at what could be done for the hardware/strategy combo that would make the PSP Go a hit.

Mass Effect 2 text illegibility on SD TVs result of design decision

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Mass Effect 2 relies heavily on dialog and story to grab gamers, but many playing the game are having problems reading the text. The problem is most acute for those with standard-definition sets or those with smaller high-definition televisions. There is a 14-page thread in the official forum with gamers complaining about the text, and we’ve had readers e-mailing us about the problem as well. “I can barely make out what some of the words are, even on my friend’s HD TV it’s nearly microscopic, very annoying,” one annoyed gamer wrote. “On ME1 I enjoyed reading about planets and so forth, now I nearly go blind from trying to read blurry small text on ME2 .” Another gamer pointed out that the color of the text doesn’t help.”Most of the time the text is unreadable for me. Granted, I don’t have an HD TV… part of the problem I have isn’t the size of the text, but rather the color used. It would be nice if there were an option to change the colors.” If you’re hoping for a response and a fix, holding your breath would not seem to be a great strategy. “I’ve gotten a number of PMs about this. Messaging me more will not speed up the process. We are looking at the threads, but unless we necessarily have traction on it—we can’t post information we dont have,” Bioware’s Michael Gamble responded. It’s not looking good for gamers squinting to read the text. “I’ll have to talk to Casey about this (as any way to address it would have far reaching changes in the game), but please don’t expect any decisions or a fix in the near future (as we are supporting a number of issues at this time). This was a design choice, not a bug.” We reviewed the game on the 360, with a 56″ high definition television and had no problems. If you’re having issues reading the on-screen text, sound off and leave details on your display.

University finds free online classes don’t hurt enrollment

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Free online courses aren’t sapping enrollment numbers—in fact, they’re actually helping to spread the word. Those are the preliminary findings out of Brigham Young University, which experimented recently by granting free access to a selection of its distance learning courses. Though further study is needed in order to see whether there’s a significant impact, educators are beginning to see that offering free materials isn’t the end of the world after all. The university’s Independent Study offerings have been attractive to students who are unable to make class regularly, either due to geographic distance or because of scheduling conflicts. Its Open CourseWare section offers the general public six classes—three university courses and three high school courses—that anyone on the Web can step through. (May I personally recommend the Financial Planning course? A lot of people could use it these days.) Of course, you won’t get any credit for taking the course for free, and that’s why BYU hopes you’ll pony up the cash and enroll.

Wii Zelda a MotionPlus-exclusive, may be shown at E3

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

In traditional Nintendo fashion, the company has been very secretive about the upcoming Legend of Zelda game on the Wii. We knew it existed , but not much else. Now series producer Eiji Aonuma has revealed a few details about the upcoming game. Speaking to Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (via andriasang ), Aonuma revealed that he’s hoping to be able to show off the game at this year’s E3. This would mark the first look at the game, as up until now we’ve only seen a single piece of artwork . “I’d like to show something playable,” he said. And though Aonuma wasn’t able to provide a firm release date, he did say that he’s been pushing the development team for a 2010 release. Aonuma also confirmed that the game will require the Wii MotionPlus peripheral. “After actually making it compatible, it just feels so natural. Link’s sword and the controller that you’re holding become one,” he explained. Whether or not this means the game will be bundled with the peripheral remains to be seen. As good as Twilight Princess  was, this new Zelda will be the first in the series developed exclusively for the Wii. And given what a breath of fresh air Phantom Hourglass was when the series introduced a touchscreen control scheme, we’re more than a little excited to see what they can do with the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller. This year E3 will be taking place June 15-17. Zelda fans stay tuned.

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