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A Psychoactive Drug That’s Spread Through Unprotected Sex with Men
You’re a nefarious supervillian and you want to transform this city into a hive of mind-controlled minions. But you also need the element of surprise. Two new scientific studies offer a possible solution: behavior-changing proteins in sperm! [io9]
By Joel Johnson -
How to Ditch Slow Wireless Speeds and Go Completely Wired in Your Home (and Why You Should)
Wi-Fi provides a convenient way to connect the computers in your home without the hassle of wires, but Wi-Fi is also slow and unreliable compared to a wired connection. Here’s how to go wired where it counts. [Lifehacker]
By Joel Johnson -
Supremacy Shows Women Can Kick Ass
Women are a growing force in MMA fighting-and now they’re fighting onscreen in the new game Supremacy. According to its developers, this could help counteract the “princess in need of rescuing” stereotype that dominates portrayals of women in games. [Jezebel]
By Joel Johnson -
Casey the Bully-Breaking “Zangief Kid” Gets the Street Fighter Remix He Deserves
You may recall Casey Heynes, the chunky kid who was tired of being bullied and became an icon. Now he’s immortalized—overmortalized?—in this video that mixes back in all the sound and visual effects we all heard in our mind when we first watched Casey piledrive his bully into the schoolyard concrete. [via Calm Down Tom]
By Joel Johnson -
Co-op Gaming Between an iPad and iMac, Guerilla Bob-style
Forget “PC vs Console” wars. Now it’s going to be “iPad vs Mac”. (Keyboard and mouse forever!) Guerilla Bob is a simplistic, three-quarters-overhead shooter in the Ikari Warriors vein, but that’s not what makes it unique. It’s that the co-op shoot ’em up doesn’t just allow two iOS devices to team up, but supports full…
By Joel Johnson -
Why Does the iPad Need to Kill Consoles?
Rovio’s Angry Birds is huge. Cultural touchpoint. The sort of thing Jon Stewart can joke about on The Daily Show without qualification. But that doesn’t make Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka an expert on the videogame market. iPads aren’t killing consoles. All credit where it’s due: Angry Birds is a great game, worthy of its success.…
By Joel Johnson -
The iPad 2: Gizmodo‘s Complete Coverage
The iPad 2 is here. And yeah, it’s pretty great. Despite the early looks, we’re still finding surprises. Like? The screen is definitely better than the original iPad’s. That’s just the beginning. Here’s Gizmodo‘s ongoing iPad 2 coverage, from speedtests and graphics battles versus the original iPad to essential apps (and app deals), a possible…
By Joel Johnson -
A Brief Moment with Firefall, The Free Game That Wants To Be World of Warcraft with Guns
Orange County, California might be bland, confesses one developer of Red 5’s team-based shooter Firefall, but the game certainly is not. Armor-bound medics squirt now de rigueur healing ribbons that glow a pale green to extrude life back into teammates wearing primary yellow or red that’s too busy for G or B. I stood for…
By Joel Johnson -
Forlorn Band ‘The National’ Pens Original Dirge for Portal 2
There’s nothing but an announcement for now. And while pop songs in games are hardly new, considering how suited The National’s music is to a dirty, near-future landscape—and how Valve has already shown themselves how capable they are at integrating songs into a game in Portal 2—I think it’s okay to get a little excited…
By Joel Johnson -
Don’t Watch This: How Dragon Age 2 Ends
There’s more than just awkward sex in Dragon Age 2. There’s also, you know, a plot. Which ends in one of two forking paths. Even if you don’t have thirty hours plus to spend earning the ending yourself, you could still pick only one of these videos to watch. That’s sort of a game! Give…
By Joel Johnson -
iPad 2 “Built For Gaming”
John Gruber of Daring Fireball, reviewing the iPad 2, had a developer friend write a quick testing suite for the tablet’s upgraded graphics: For example, on my original iPad, with 200 on-screen sprites, the framerate dropped to 45 fps. On the iPad 2, with 400 on-screen sprites, the framerate remained at 65 fps. On the…
By Joel Johnson -
Epic Games’ New Unreal Engine—This Is What Next Gen Gaming Looks Like
Fresh off the surreptitiously filmed, embargo-breaking train, it’s the video footage of the engine that we previously showed you only in stills. This is the engine Epic describes as beyond what modern consoles can do. It’s just one of many signs that a new crop of consoles are coming ’round the bend. [VentureBeat]
By Joel Johnson -
Remembering Old Man Murray, the Website That Rebooted Games Journalism
Our friends at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the PC gaming partisans, uncovered a bit of a snarl in the Wikipedia page for now-primordeal gaming protoblog, Old Man Murray. An overzealous—or perhaps simply vindictive—Wikipedia editor had deemed the entry about OMM “unnotable” and fit for deletion. But within 24 hours, RPS had mustered such overwhelming support from…
By Joel Johnson
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