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Herbing My Car
Growing up the neighborhood eccentric was a guy named Herb. He wore loud pants (often bought from a yard sale) and would whistle and scat-sing as he strolled by, twirling a golf club modified into a walking stick. Herb always had a dalmatian by his side and usually a handful of redskin peanuts. Herb was…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Could You Rewrite Fight Night?
The concept behind Fight Night Champion’s narrative “Champion Mode” inspired me when I read of it. I looked forward to it as a breakthrough opportunity for the sports genre. But it served up a tray of disappointingly bland cookie-cut characters and conflicts, and the progression of your career was too short and too rigid. That…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Animal Crossing Deepens the Madness of Charlie Sheen
Say what you like about Charlie Sheen, he so completely owns the story of his downfall, it can’t even be considered a downfall. Anything mocking him comes off as an admiring meme. This Animal Crossing mashup is but the latest. Melding some of Sheen’s more off-the-wall quotes over placid scenes from the Nintendo social sim,…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Nominate Someone — or Some Game — for the Hall of Fame
Three video game titles will be enshrined along with the second class of honorees at the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa, which is seeking public input as it assembles nominees for final voting. Nominations close on March 15. A group as large as 18, comprised of living persons, organizations, and game…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 -
UncategorizedThis is Your Brain On Call of Duty
The technology behind popular brain-control games like Star War’s Force Trainer and Mindflex could make future video games more challenging, more frightening. Puzzlebox Jigsaw is a high-tech solution to tracking what people think about the games they play by reading a gamer’s mind as they play them. Puzzlebox’s Steve Castellotti created a system that uses…
By Brian Crecente Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Minecraft‘s Creator Says Piracy, Theft Aren’t the Same
Generally, those who create monster indie game hits don’t follow up by spouting, well, corporate attitudes about their games when in public. So the fact Markus “Notch” Persson has a more liberal view of the piracy issue isn’t that surprising. But he does have strong words for it. “Piracy is not theft,” he told the…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
A Key Is A Bridge In This Magical Game
Hanford Lemoore’s experimental game sounded bad at first. He was showing it today in San Francisco at Game Developers Conference and got as far as saying that it is a first-person game in which the only thing you can do is pick things up and put them down. A few minutes later, after he was…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
The Games of Tomorrow, in San Francisco Today
Kotaku’s reporting team is in its second day of news-wrangling at the 2011 Game Developers Conference, bringing back details, screens, footage and anything else bubbling up at one of the industry’s leading conferences. The conference is scheduled to last through tomorrow, but that won’t be the end of news coming back from San Francisco, For…
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 -
UncategorizedThe PlayStation Move Can Control Robots Too
Yesterday Sony unveiled Move.Me, a software application that allows hobbyists and academics access to the Move controller to do things like operating robots remotely. Today, we see the Move operating a robot remotely. While not quite as impressive as some of the things we’ve seen hobbyists do with Microsoft’s Kinect, moving a robot around remotely…
By Mike Fahey Published March 3, 2011 -
UncategorizedOne Of L.A. Noire‘s Murder Mysteries Is A GameStop Exclusive
There are a million stories in this naked city, but the Naked City story for L.A. Noire is only yours if you preorder the game through GameStop. Since L.A. Noire’s particular flavor of police investigation action is episodic, standalone cases make excellent preorder gifts. That’s what Rockstar Games is doing with Naked City, which sees…
By Mike Fahey Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
The Making Of Out Of This World And The Infinite Fax Attack
Eric Chahi, the creator of moody landmark adventure game Out of This World (aka Another World), once fought with his publisher, Interplay, via fax machine. Things got so bad at one point he attacked Interplay’s offices with the dreaded “infinite fax.” Chahi explained what an infinite fax was during his Out of This World post…
By Michael McWhertor Published March 3, 2011 -
UncategorizedKinect Can Control Octodad, The Octopus Who Puts On His Pants Two Limbs At A Time
Octodad is the video game tale of one suit-wearing dad whose wife and kids don’t realize he is an Octopus. Despite what its developers from DePaul University told me today at the Game Developers Conference, I’m sure it’s not a documentary. I’m also sure that they’ve created a Kinect demo of the game, because otherwise…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
A New Guild Wars 2 Class Emerges From The Shadows
Slipping through the shadows unseen, striking from the darkness with a relentless barrage of melee attacks, one could easily mistake the latest class revealed for Guild Wars 2 as some sort of assassin – and they wouldn’t be far off. So far we’ve seen two different flavors of casters and two heavily-armored fighter professions revealed…
By Mike Fahey Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Dead Island Is a Decade’s Worth of Zombie Games in One
There is blood on the wall, a smear that drags down to the floor, bits of hair swaying gently in the breeze. It’s not in the game booting up on the computer, but in the mock-bamboo and straw cabana in which I’m sitting, somewhere in an office tucked away in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The…
By Brian Crecente Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Microsoft’s SideWinder Gaming Hardware Isn’t Dead Yet
Has the long-lived SideWinder line of gaming-centric computer peripherals finally bitten the dust? Microsoft says it isn’t so. Microsoft’s been releasing computer gaming peripherals under the SideWinder brand for the better part of two decades, pushing out everything from flight sticks to elaborate force feedback steering wheels. The line was put on hiatus in 2003…
By Mike Fahey Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
One Version Of Portal 2 Can Be Controlled With Human Eyeballs
Half-Life and Left 4 Dead developer Valve has been toying with new ways to use biofeedback—heart rate, facial expressions, eye-tracking, levels of physical arousal—for years. What does that mean for the future of people who like Valve video games? How about controlling games with your eyes? Valve’s Mike Ambinder talked about the sundry ways the…
By Michael McWhertor Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
Dead Island Movie Deal In Works, But Not Quite Landed Yet
Days after the haunting, evocative trailer for Dead Island showed the world that little girls can die in zombie outbreaks too, rumors hit that the game had landed a movie deal. That’s not exactly true, the developers tell us. Variety reported that the producer behind The Mummy had bought the rights to a Dead Island…
By Brian Crecente Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
NCAA Football 12‘s Cover Goes Up For a Vote
Four collegiate standouts – Washington’s Jake Locker, Oklahoma’s Demarco Murray, Alabama’s Mark Ingram, and Nick Fairley of the national champion Auburn Tigers – are candidates for the cover of NCAA Football 12 in a fan-voting contest EA Sports is conducting via Facebook. The winner will be announced April 19.
By Owen Good Published March 3, 2011 - Uncategorized
A Plea For Games To Grow Up
After David Cage’s speech at the Game Developers Conference yesterday, I heard the chatter of people whose minds have been opened, lives possibly changed. There was a room full of video game creators and press, buzzing about Cage’s big ideas. One woman said her hand had cramped, she’d never written notes so furiously. Admirers swarmed…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011