Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
Sure, we’ve all heard countless stories of Apple’s iPhone. But there are some other companies out there coming out with new handsets too, like the one above, which Nokia unveiled today.
Continue reading “Oh la la: Nokia unveils the 7900 Crystal Prism”
You can roll in all the big numbers you can think of, but when it comes to technological progress, nothing turns more heads than something that looks really cool. That is why more people took interest in Microsoft Surface, the Apple iPhone and the Nintendo Wii than, well, uh… you see?
While Microsoft Surface is still a bit far from release and will cost more than the war funding, we are left to simply dream of such intuitive interfaces. The latest to roll in this line comes from a comparatively obscure “Cynergy Labs” who unveiled their top-secret weapon, codenamed Project Maestro.
As you will see in the video below, Project Maestro utilizes the Wiimote, Microsoft WPF, third party libraries, custom-built Minority Report-inspired gloves as well as costly hardware like that TV you see. The result is a demonic interface that you can control with your hands. In the air. As the guy in the video at Cynergy’s site says, it’s Microsoft Surface, without the Surface. (Microsoft Surface – Surface = Mircosoft? The mind boggles.)
In the video, you can see the guy demonstrating Maestro by cutting and throwing Mona Lisa around as well as showing his photos, much like Microsoft Surface. The sexy gloves cover only three of his fingers, and allow him to pinch and grab stuff on the screen. He also shows off his encounter with Microsoft, which is cute. I particularly like the half-professional, half-homemade style of the video.
What bothers me is that I can’t see any particularly useful applications of this. It’ll be cool for some games, especially sports titles, racing titles or maybe shooters; that is until your arms ache and you take that gamepad back. Sure, throwing photos around and dissecting Mona Lisa is fun, but it’s not worth the massive price tag. I’m sure you can’t do office work waving your hands in the air. Internet browsing should be okay, but it’ll wear you out and incorrect pointing will have you clicking the wrong button.
In movies it should be good, since you don’t need to reach for the remote to pause, rewind or fast forward – simple hand-movements should do the trick. But then it would really suck if you grab a soda and the sensor thinks you want it to stop playback. But it would be a’ight nonetheless, and the same applies to listening to music. It’ll be pretty cool if we use to it create sounds out of Air Guitar moves.
Got some more ideas for this sweet thing? Post them in the comments and we’ll try to blackmail the guys at Cynergy into implementing them!
Or, as Tyler Sigman states in his introduction:
Be warned: this feature is long and contains a lot of things that are suspiciously and unsettlingly math-like. Go check up on BRITNEY SPEARS or PARIS HILTON or AMY WINEHOUSE if you have a shorter attention span. (Take that, Search Engines!)
Okay, so the article is probably not for everyone. But if, like me, you relish busting out excel to figure out optimal talent point placement, have a calculator by your side whenever making a major decision in a game, and spent hours of calculation discovering the most efficient Pokemon team (take that, schoolyard bullies!), this is manna from heaven.
It’s also good to know that, abhorrent as game design can be in the turn-based space, there’s at least one guy who understands the basics (Mr. Sigman worked on Age of Empires DS).
Instead of using a video game as his example, Mr. Sigman turns to a board game he’s designing, which although is perhaps less appropriate to the Gamasutra setting, is useful for the simplicity of calculation that a lack of a computer requires. Check out the article here.
Yesterday I was invited to a plush London bar for a preview of the latest first-person shooter to enter the already crowded shooty genre. After sampling the deliciously free canapés and drinks on offer it was time for the serious business of guns, tanks and explosions, co-op style.
If you didn’t already figure it out, Conflict: Denied Ops is all about team-working with your army buddy. The buddies in question are the stealthy Lang and fast paced action-man, Graves trying to stop a dictatorship from getting hold of nukes.
Gamers can choose to switch between each soldier to get through the game. Lang is equipped with a sniper, while Graves the more trigger-happy of the two carries a machine gun.
Upon playing, the cut-scenes were impressive enough but it was the in-game action I was more eager to witness.
The first level has you trying to liberate a monastery from opposing militia, who like in Call of Duty 4 resemble the present stereotypical image of a terrorist. Also featuring was a face-off with a helicopter and a brief jaunt in a tank blowing up buildings and sniping enemy soldiers.
The option to switch soldiers does provide some element of team-working. At times I was unable to pick out far away soldiers, which was when Lang and his sniper came in handy.
When killed pressing the L2 button would make the soldier I wasn’t taking control of come and replenish my health with a boost of adrenalin.My major gripe with the co-op system was that on occasions my partner kept getting left behind and it was up to me to switch character and move him along with me.
Most of what was on offer was pretty standard war-based shooter fare, interlaced with a bit of co-op. At the moment it’s nothing special. The PS3 version did at times look a bit ps2-ish. Not a great start.
However the Xbox360 version looked much better. It just looked so much more crisp and moved more fluidly than its PS3 counterpart, which was playing alongside it. Even the controls felt smoother.
Pivotal, the developers were keen to point out the new ‘puncture technology- allowing gamers to blow holes in the scenery to create their own passages in the levels. The destruction didn’t seem too different from anything I’d previously seen in Red Faction on the PS2 or indeed the likes of Stranglehold.
Perhaps playing through just one level does not give a true indication of the game. What I can confirm is that Conflict: Denied Ops is a relatively solid shooter for those in love with the genre.
But during this first play provided very little, besides co-op that hasn’t been done by many others.
The game itself will be out on 12th February.
That means you’ll be seeing player interviews, the 2008 MLG Pro Circuit Competitions, streamed matches, scores, statistics and so on. We’re definitely not talking about an oddly-timed half-hour show talking about how gaming tournaments are so weird. We’re talking a full-fledged sports deal that puts the MLG actually into the major league.
Check out ESPN’s flashy new site for the newfound affiliation, where they’ve already got the show going, with fresh MLG news and Pro Circuit stuff. Those not in the know might also be interested in ESPN’s Video Games site, where they try to be real cool and pretend they are good at covering video games like other major sites we won’t mention here. Just kidding.
This event has a profound impact on gaming, perhaps the largest since Halo 3’s humongous sales. With nerdy gaming tournaments getting showtime on ESPN, you know that the mainstream-gaming gap is being filled slowly. And while some might be annoyed by that, the more optimistic among us will tell you that this can only mean more people play games, more people make games and hopefully, games become cheaper and better!
So much for Utopia.
The most impressive game from E3 2007 finally gets a release date.
Last week I mentioned Echochrome was arriving on the PSP on March 19. Now I can confirm it will arrive on the PlayStation Store as a downloadable PS3 game on the same day. The price has not been announced, but if Sony is selling the PSP version for 3,990 yen ($36) it will probably fall in the $25-$30 price range.
I know what some of you are thinking, “no fucking way am I paying 25-30 dollars for some tiny PSN game.” You, sir, are dead wrong. Echochrome’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before, the kind of game M.C. Escher would make if he could only draw stick figures. I play games to have this kind of mindbending experience, and just watching the trailer, it felt like I had sprained my brain. Don’t let the lo-fi graphics fool you: Echochrome is one of the most promising PSP and PS3 releases this year. At least, I think I’ll probably have more fun with it than MGS4 and GTA4. If the trailer below doesn’t convince you of its awesomeness, well, you have no soul.
