Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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The beauty of the Internet is that it demands instant analysis of every single development to come out of Peoria. The Nintendo 3DS —out of Kyoto, which is not Peoria, I’m afraid—was announced overnight, time zone permitting. It will debut at E3 in June, and it will forever change the way you and I… do something . Something video game-related, methinks. If one thing’s certain, it does mean that 3D is here to stay. I’m sorry. Say what you will about Avatar , but it made quite a bit of scratch. Then CES came around, in January, and every single TV manufacturer held presentation after presentation, laser light show after laser light show, trumpeting their fancy 3D TVs. None of the TVs are compatible with each other, so if you buy Company A’s TV and your neighbor buys Company B’s, y’all can’t get together to watch the World Cup in 3D—the glasses won’t allow it. The GameCube barely displaced any water—what did it have, those Metroid games, Resident Evil 4 , a couple of Mario games? It did well enough, but compared to the PS2 (and Xbox , I guess) the GameCube was sorta a disappointment. Granted, comparing any other video game system to the PS2 is like comparing a light bulb to the sun, but you can only beat what’s put in front of you. Wii ! Yup, Nintendo got tired of the hardware race, so it slapped a Bluetooth sensor bar to white shelled GameCube, called it Wii, then sat back and let the money a-roll in. It completely changed gaming. Now, rather than relying upon the “hardcores” to buy the latest Earthbound , Nintendo could convince Grandma and Grandpa, and your girlfriend, to play Wii Sports till their arms fall off. You’ll note that it took Sony and Microsoft a few years before they realized, “Hey, this motion control business is quite nifty. Maybe we should get in on it?” And they have! I have no time for motion control—you can pry my mouse and keyboard from my cold, dead hands~!—but clearly there’s money to be made here. If Sony and Microsoft can’t make money selling Fling Paint , then there’s no money to publish things like God of War and Fable . So this 3DS thing (here’s the full English press release )… Nintendo describes it as letting you play games “with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” As someone who wears glasses—I’m blind as a bat, and nowhere near as cuddly—, let me be the nine millionth to say “Obrigado!” The 3D TVs at CES were largely pants, but I did get to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 3D (thanks to some sort of Nvidia trickery ) a few weeks ago. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but if given the option, provided it’s affordable—I’m not buying a $1,000 monitor and glasses and a new video card!—then why not? Nothing wrong, per se, with a little added depth as I try to left-click over a Bad Guy’s face. The 3DS, which should come out around this time next year, will be backwards compatible with your current DS library. My DS library is quite small ( Chrono Trigger and those Final Fantasy remakes), so I could give a toss about backwards compatibility, but I’m sure there’s those of you who have more than a few games, games that you wouldn’t want to “lose” when upgrading to the 3DS. Upgrading may not even be the right word, since the 3DS is totally new hardware. It’s not like going from the DS Lite to the DSi , or from the DSi to the DSi XL . The point is, this is Nintendo saying, “Hi guys! Remember how we made motion control cool, bringing it to the masses? We’re going to do the same thing with 3D now. Kthxbye!” And now we wait for Sony to announce a 3D PSP of some sort…
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
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Just a friendly heads-up, gents. A few months ago, I mentioned the release of Zygor 2.0 for World of Warcraft . Zygor, of course, is an in-game leveling guide that makes going from level 1 to level 80 pretty painless. Crushingly boring and repetitive—much of the sense of adventure is lost following step-by-step, but that’s the same with any strategy guide—but painless nonetheless. Anyhow, the guide is on sale this week , and if you were ever thinking about getting it, but were put off by its price, well… The guide sits in-game, like any other add-on, and uses the waypoint system to tell you where to go. “Talk to Man A, collect Quest, kill 10 boars. Talk to Man B, collect Quest, find 5 items. Talk to Woman A, collect Quest, go back to Man A and Man B to turn in Quests.” It’s all nice and legal per the letter of the law, also knows as the Blizzard EULA. It’s no different than playing Final Fantasy with a strategy guide by your side, or, to bring this into the year 2010, with a netbook by your side on GameFaqs. I should probably mention the price at some point. For the duration of this sale, which ends on the 24th, you can get both guides for $50 (down from $100) or $25 each for the Alliance or Horde guide. (The guides are sold separately.) I don’t know, I thought it was worth mentioning. Carry on.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
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Japanese video gaming powerhouse Square Enix has released a handful of hit titles for the iPhone already (including Final Fantasy I and II ), but the next one, an RPG named Chaos Rings, is poised to blow them all out of the water. Officially announced [JP] today, the game’s trailer shows absolutely amazing graphics. There will be five scenarios in the game, a turn-based battle system, boss fights, and “five 2-person teams that enter into a battle tournament to the death” (the game’s main storyline revolves around said tournament). Square Enix says Chaos Rings will be an original iPhone title with optimized touch controls. And it seems to have the best graphics seen on the iPhone so far. The company released the trailer for Chaos Rings just a few hours ago. It’s in Japanese, but that doesn’t matter too much in this case. Expect the title to hit the App Store “soon”, at the very least within this year (judging from the trailer, the game could be pretty much finished). Here it is: Via andriasang
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Friday, March 5th, 2010
GameSpot just published a video review of Final Fantasy XIII . It’s the first review of the localized version of the game (at least I think it is!), so I’m putting it up here. Let’s watch it. I mean, I’ll get the game regardless of the review. Square Enix could a complete piece of junk and I’d still buy it at this point. I will say: did the reviewer have a charisma removal surgery? Put some personality in your voice, for Pete’s sake.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
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As reported (and following Final Fantasy I and II , which are now available), the App Store will get another hit Japanese video game this month, Streetfighter IV . It will be the first mobile version of the Arcade game that so far was only ported to PS3, XBO360 and the PC. And today maker Capcom released the official trailer and a slew of new screenshots. The game will cost $9.99 and offer a total of eight characters (Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, M. Bison and Abel), nine less than the Arcade version. Here’s the trailer (watch out for the controls): Via Game Watch [JP]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Monday, March 1st, 2010
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Kobe Bryant: huge nerd . Granted, he’s probably the best basketball player since Michael Jordan—LeBron would really benefit from winning a ring or two—but if you’re traveling the country armed with a fully portable Xbox 360 and customized PSP, then yeah, you’re a huge nerd. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. You’ll recall that the NBA All-Star weekend was a few weeks ago, and the players all got a chance to mingle in various video game lounges. ESPN was there, and discovered that, yeah, a lot of these guys are complete gamers. The Chicago Bulls’ Taj Gibson, for example, listed Final Fantasy as one of his favorite video game series. Now, if Final Fantasy doesn’t scream “huge gamer!” then I don’t know what would. On the hardware front, you’ll find that Sony gave Chris Paul a PSP emblazoned with his CP3 logo, as seen here. 2K Sports even gave Kobe a briefcase with a built-in Xbox 360. When on the road, he and the guys spend the time playing a little NBA 2K 10 . I haven’t played a 2K Sports game since the original NFL 2K and NBA 2K for the DreamCast—are they any good? So if you think about it, we’re halfway to being multi-millionaire NBA players. All we need is to be a good nine inches taller and actually posses skills. via Destructoid
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
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From now on, you won’t even hear the black helicopters coming. Just a breath of wind rustling your blinds, and then — bag on the head! At least, that’ll be the case if the NSA gets hold of some of these Blue Edge rotor blades from Eurocopter. They’re not only shaped like a sword you might find in Final Fantasy XIII, but they have little mechanized flaps that are automatically adjusted in order to reduce the wup-wup-wup noise that results from the blade cutting through turbulent air. See? Hear, rather? If you’re interested in a more technical perspective, Autopia’s got it . There’s still a long way to go before these things are actually quiet enough to sneak up on you, but I’ll tell you what, I guarantee nature photographers are going to enjoy these things. Losing a few decibels means you can hover a couple hundred feet closer to your subject critter.