New Rising Media Christmas Gift Guide: Game
Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Halo... Granted, 2012 like countless other years within this generation of gaming has bore witness to many of the usual suspects within our industry. But don't let that fool you, because there's still plenty of gaming goodness found within just waiting to be uncovered in time for Christmas. From epic naval battles in Assassin's Creed III, to the long-awaited return of a certain Master Chief, and the epic close to one of this generation's finest series. Not to mention the launch of the successor to one of the best-selling home consoles ever. Yes, 2012 was another fantastic year for games.
'The Phantom Pain' Conspiracy. Metal Gear Solid V All But Confirmed In Trailer And PR Analysis
Without a doubt, this has to be some of the greatest viral marketing I have seen this year, as 'Joakim N. Mogren' has been slowly leaking details to the public about The Phantom Pain: a game unveiled at the VGAs, which bares a striking resemblence to a certain Kojima's Metal Gear universe.
Living Room PC's Are Coming, To Compete With Next-Gen Consoles Says Gabe Newell
Rumours of the so-called 'Steam Box' – a console-like PC for the living room, powered by Valve's cherished gaming service – have been floating around the Internet for many months now, but that's all they've ever been: rumours. Now, we might just have the kind of evidence we were looking for that the company behind Half-Life and Portal are at least thinking about a PC/Console hybrid, ready to compete with the likes of the PS4 and Xbox 720.
'Pokémon 3D' Remakes Gold/Silver As First-Person RPG
It's fair to say that a 3D Pokemon game for home consoles has been at the top of fans' lists ever since the original released. This isn't quite the game you've dreamt of; but it's the entire universe of Pokemon Gold/Silver, ready to be explored in all three dimensions.
Start-Up Green Throttle Set To Bring Mobile Gaming To The Big Screen
It seems a week doesn’t go by without another doomer-and-gloomer reporting facts and figures that try to infer console gaming is dying a slow death. There’s no denying the popularity of touch-screen gaming and the like has exploded in recent years, while services like OnLive remove our reliance on consoles in favour of cloud computing. Start-up Green Throttle Games, meanwhile, hopes a console-less future will come in another form: namely, our smartphones and tablets.
Valve Brings Steam To The Living Room With 'Big Picture'
A lot of talk gets slung around about what’s better, PC gaming or console. It's a debate that continues to rear its ugly head whenever gamers of different backgrounds/tastes are in the same vicinity (that is, once we leave our bedrooms), but it's also one that so often is settled when everyone can come to agree it's not necessarily what's 'better' per se, but one that boils down to what each feels most comfortable with. Valve's very latest addition to Steam, however, has the potential to blur the lines between the two. It's called 'Big Picture' and it's everything you love about Steam, in your living room.
Portal Ported To Graphing Calculators
Reddit user Builderboy2005 has created his own version Portal for use on Texas Instruments graphing calculators (the TI-83 and TI-84 specifically). While we have seen past works of porting video games to calculators, it's especially amazing to see the space-warping mechanics of Valve's hit game working on these devices.
Nintendo Announces The Wii Mini
Hot on the heels of the US launch of the Wii U (we're due to get hands-on with the console this Friday), Nintendo has lifted the curtain on a brand-new redesign of its predecessor, the Wii. Named the Wii Mini, Nintendo has so far been hesitant to reveal territories it will go on sale, with only a Canadian release on December 7 thus far confirmed. Still, just in time for the holidays, it's a pretty neat package.
#1ReasonWhy: Women Expose Sexism In The Video Game Industry On Twitter
Female video game fans, writers and professionals have taken to Twitter to express their thoughts on gender discrimination, online sexual harassment and inequality in the gaming world. It started over 24 hours ago, in response to Twitter user @Burning_Luke asking, "Why aren't there more female game creators?"
Football Manager Experience Lands 21-Year-Old Manager's Job
So you've taken Lincoln City from the Blue Square Premier all the way into the Premiership and beyond to European glory. What then? While we all like to admit we possess the talent-spotting expertise, the tactical awareness and team management calibre of a certain Jose Mourinho after a ten-hour, trophy-laden sesh on Football Manager, few will be able to match this.
Interview With Marc Laidlaw: The Writer Of Half-Life
Marc Laidlaw, the writer behind the Half-Life series, is probably aware of the impact he has made with his work; but not so to the magnitude of it. Check out our full interview with the mind behind one of the most influential games of the 20th century.
The Walking Dead: Episode Five – No Time Left Review
The concluding part to Telltale Games' The Walking Dead presents not only an end; but a beginning.
This may seem like the generic vague statement that; but its relevance is strong. One of the best games this year has come to its explosive finale, and a revolution of in-game storytelling has been introduced with it.
Lee Everett's narrative in No Time Left is emotional, terrifying, exciting, and tense all at once, making for a fitting conclusion that will affect even the most hardened of players.
*EDITOR'S NOTE:* While the storyline of No Time Left will not be spoiled in this review, I do write about key plot points from the previous episodes. If you have not played any of the series, you may want to refrain from reading, in order to keep it a surprise.
Chris Robert's Star Citizen Smashes Crowd-Funding Records
The creator of Wing Commander and Freelancer, Chris Roberts, has come back from hiatus with quite the ambitious new project in mind, Star Citizen. The game heralds itself as the proof PC gaming is still alive and well, and from the opening sequences of the graphics it’s easy to see how it couldn’t be on anything but.
Skyrim Running 100 Mods At One Time Looks Phenomenal
Bethesda’s Skyrim, released just last year, is far from a bad-looking game any which way you look at it, but even so the standard version of the game can not come anywhere close to the kind of visual fidelity arising from installing some of the more graphically-intense mods around. Taking it one step further, a gamer going by the name of ‘Unreal’ has posted some of the most absurdly-detailed, gloriously picturesque screenshots we’ve ever seen of the game, the result of hand-picking over 100 different mods from a list of over 800 he has installed on his PC rig.
'Faceshift' Delivers Markerless Motion Capture Via Kinect
So it might not deliver the kind of sophistication in motion-capture that was utilised by Team Bondi for its ground-breaking crime caper L.A. Noire – that, after all, relied on a studio set-up with 32 high-def cameras tracking a single actor’s face – but new facial animation software ‘Faceshift’ does more than an adequate job in replicating such techniques, and it relies solely on Microsoft’s Kinect.
Grand Theft Auto: RISE. Amazing Live Action Short Film
The second official trailer for Grand Theft Auto V isn't the only entertaining free-roaming crime video this week. Director Gevorg Karensky has created a live action short film inspired by the series, simply called RISE.
New Skyrim DLC Revealed: Dragonborn
Xbox players of Skyrim will be receiving an early Christmas present from Bethesda: the third DLC will be coming out on the 4th of December, and it looks awesome. Sadly there is no release date yet for PC or PS3.
Tom Hardy Attached To Lead Splinter Cell Movie
Bronson, Inception, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy actor and The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane, Tom Hardy has put pen to paper in signing up for the leading role in the upcoming videogame-to-movie adaptation Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, according to reports.
'Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie' Trailer Released
The Angry Video Game Nerd has been a hit sensation on the Internet for over one hundred episodes, and the first trailer for its film adaptation has been released.
University Researchers Use Xbox Kinect To Control Lasers
Researchers at the University of Dundee have used the Xbox 360 Kinect sensor to control optical tweezers, a set of laser beams used to manipulate particles.
Physicists control the particles through their body movements, which are read by a Kinect-based interface called "HoloHands." While not completely perfect yet, with a latency issue and the occasional misinterpration of the user's movements, the interface has been quite successfully tested moving silica particles.