• Let’s talk about Diablo III

    So, after over a decade long wait, Diablo III was finally released yesterday, and pretty much everyone who has ever cared about video games is talking about it. Never…

  • Nine tips to improve your Diablo III experience

    Diablo III is out and people are either loving it or hating it. Personally, I haven’t made up my mind, but one thing that strikes all of us at…

  • Indie showcase: Cloud

    There’s been a lot of excitement lately over PSN indie hit Journey. The developers, Thatgamecompany, are renowned for whimsical art-y games and their first effort, Cloud, certainly deserves attention.

  • Risen 2: Dark Waters review

    Piranha Bytes kind of has a reputation for releasing RPGs that are on one hand masterfully ambitious, but on the other hand, painfully annoying. The two hands go “hand-in-hand”…

  • Review: Minecraft (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

    Minecraft is entirely what you make of it. Quite literally, I mean. Me, I made a lot of holes. Then I had a friend come over and join me,…

  • Indie showcase: Fotonica

    Fotonica is an abstract, first-person running game. Utilizing single-key controls, you take hold of a polygonal figure as he races through dream-like duo-chromatic landscapes and obstacle courses. The key…

Tropes vs Women in Video Games – a Kickstarter

Kickstarter is making waves in the gaming scene; every week there’s a new indie developer looking for funding via Kickstarter. The great thing about Kickstarter is that it’s a springboard for a plethora of different projects, and every now and then we get some really interesting goals cropping up. For example, there is a Kickstarter campaign for an online web series entitled Tropes vs Women in Video Games.

Anita Sarkeesian is no stranger to analysing pop culture’s preoccupation with presenting women in stereotyped roles. Her original web series, Tropes vs Women, covers mediums like films and books. Her new series will focus exclusively on video games and the how the industry portrays female characters, whether they’re leading ladies or tacked-on eye-candy.

Her Kickstarter has almost reached its goal, which is great news considering the subject matter. While analysing female representation in video games isn’t anything new, judging by her previous work Sarkeesian approaches the subject in a very accessible manner. She’s not trying to make you stop playing certain types of games, she’s merely getting you to think about the type of media you’re consuming. You can read more about the project here, or check out her website for her previous work.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei May 18, 2012
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Fantasy Friday: Alienware X51

Dell’s Alienware range makes a handful of laptops that cater to the gamer who needs performance and quality. From the tiny M11x netbook on steroids to the huge, huge M18xR2, there’s something for everyone who has about R15,000 stuffed under their mattress. For those of you who’ve decided that the Xbox or the PS3 sitting by your TV is lonely, there’s the X51 for you to consider.

Alienware’s X51 is the only small form-factor PC that could look at home with your regular entertainment systems and could even replace the need for a console for some people. The X51 is based off desktop parts and requires very little maintenance. Its fully upgradeable and also negates the need to buy Valve’s console box when it launches. Read on to see why you’d want one. 

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Posted by Wesley May 18, 2012
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Death is a total badass in this new Darksiders II trailer

Publisher THQ isn’t having the best run of luck at the moment. They’ve recently revealed that they’re looking to offload that stylishly gory hack and slash game Devil’s Third, which is a total bummer. Hopefully somebody snaffles that up because it was looking like a boatload of fun.

Luckily, Darksiders II is still looking rather healthy. Except for Death I guess, because he’s, well, dead really. Still! The game’s a ton of fun; I played it during a recent trip to Amsterdam, and you can read all about that in the current issue of NAG magazine. Alternatively you can read the interview I did with the game’s director, Marvin Donald, right over here.

To remind us that (in spite of the recent delay) Death lives, THQ and Vigil have unleashed the second part of their “Death Strikes” cinematic trailer. The action in the trailer is reminiscent of the section of the game I’ve played. Fans of Shadow of the Colossus should pay attention. Hit the jump for part 2; if you missed the first part you can find it here.

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Posted by Miklós Szecsei May 18, 2012
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38 Studios is dead in the water

Rhode Island based developer and publisher 38 Studios (the team behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning) looks to be in a dire financial situation. The company was founded in 2006 by baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. The Rhode Island government approved a loan of $75 million for 38 Studios as part of an Economic Development program – earlier this week, 38 Studios defaulted on the repayment to the tune of $1.25 million.

This default on payment has prompted the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation to investigate what’s happening with the studio and publisher. Since then, 38 Studios issued a cheque to the Economic Development Corporation, which was then returned to 38 Studios once the EDC learnt that there were insufficient funds in the developer’s account; the cheque would have bounced.

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Posted by Miklós Szecsei May 18, 2012
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Let’s watch a new clip from The Last of Us

Naughty Dog is making a game that doesn’t star Nathan Drake! But we knew that already. We also knew that The Last of Us has been keeping a low profile as we head towards the build-up to E3. Luckily, there’s a new clip from the game to remind us just how awesome things are looking.

On top of a new clip, we also get a new Ellie, the young, female heroine who we won’t actually control during the game. When we first met Ellie many people commented on how similar she looked and sounded to actress Ellen Page. The character is, in fact, being played by actress Ashley Johnson.

In an interview with website IGN, the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann claimed that the changes to Ellie were done so as to “better reflect [actress] Ashley’s personality, and also resemble a slightly younger teen more fitting to the story”. Hit the jump to see the clip; it’s some nail-biting stuff!

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Posted by Miklós Szecsei May 17, 2012
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AMD’s Trinity tested with OpenCL, does really well

For those of you who read my overview on AMD’s Trinity that launched two days ago, you might be interested in how OpenCL benefits you even if you’re not on the new platform with the “Devastator” GPU. Gaming aside, AMD’s biggest flaw is single-thread performance and an overall lack of computing muscle compared to Intel’s last-generation part, Sandy Bridge.

OpenCL looks to give customers heterogeneous computing abilities no matter the platform, allowing applications to take advantage of GPU acceleration together with your CPU to make short work of things like video encoding, photo editing and animation, to name a few workloads and AMD’s Bulldozer cores currently suck at. With Trinity, AMD has pushed forward their agenda to open the OpenCL standard to all applications that could use it and Anandtech showed the world how it could help Intel users, too.

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Posted by Wesley May 17, 2012
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EVGA announces a recall for the GTX670, offers upgrade

For those of you who already bought a GTX670 Superclock from EVGA (not likely, since you’d have to do it from the US as stocks are limited now), you mght want to check out your board’s batch number to see if you’re part of the unnumbered users who have a defective card. While there’s no information from EVGA about what the problem actually is or how to find it, the company has issued a recall for customers who bought their Superclocked series.

If you bought a GTX670 Superclock with the batch product number 02G-P3-2672-KR, you might want to stress out your card for a while and see if anything happens. It might be something, it might be nothing at all discernable to your eye. You might not even know you had a problem and you could go for years without knowing it was there until one day it smacks you in the face with a spade. Maybe you’re losing a few frames and your settings are at stock or the fan is too loud. At this point, if you’re desperate, you really could make up anything you want until you hit on the right fault. 

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Posted by Wesley May 17, 2012
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USS Enterprise will take $1 trillion, 20 years to build

I love being a geek. I’m allowed to indulge in my fantasies about high-end hardware, living in a universe dominated by Pokemon or being able tell people that crediting Thomas Edison for the creation of the lightbulb is a farce. It’s thanks to many geeks and deep thinkers that we have the Internet, computers and wonderful games like Diablo III to whittle away our free time with. But this geek takes it to new levels.

Wanna see me? Buy a telescope!

An anonymous electrical and systems engineer who calls himself “Dan”, nicknamed by the Internet as “Scotty”, has uploaded plans and details of how we could build a full-scale version of the starship USS Enterprise that takes us to the Red Planet in ninety days. And all with technology currently available to us.

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Posted by Wesley May 17, 2012
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This is how you do it

Who hunches for hours in front of a PC monitor, cramping their elbows and cultivating haemorrhoids? Not me, that’s not who. Although the keyboard and mouse are pictured here on a coffee table, they are moved onto my lap and a conveniently placed cushion once the real click-looting commences. This arrangement also puts me in range of my Xbox, so I can sign into Xbox LIVE and use the party voice chat because Diablo III doesn’t have it. Improvisation, people.

Posted by Tarryn van der Byl May 17, 2012
5 Comments

Court finds Wi-Fi network owner not guilty of pirating

Over in Finland there’s been a scuffle in court with the government and a Finnish woman that’s been going on since July 2010. The Finnish Anti-Piracy Centre monitors connections on al the ISPs in the country and found that there was some illegal filesharing happening on the lady owner’s network. Since the FAPC doesn’t like people sharing files illegally, it decided to sue her for an obscene amount of money, hoping to win the case and allow them to pursue more people who share files that are either protected IP or content deemed illegal by the government. That’s generally the same M.O. of the US-based RIAA – they take filesharers to court and sue them for thousands or millions of dollars in damage. And win, quite often.

The Finnish Anti-Piracy Centre (FAPC) wanted to claim €6000 from the woman (approximately R64,000) for some piracy that took place over a twelve-minute period. What was actually shared has never been mentioned outside the courts, but recently the case came to a head and the judge rules that the woman was not guilty. But what this means for other cases all around the planet is a bit unclear. 

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Posted by Wesley May 17, 2012
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Let’s talk about Diablo III

So, after over a decade long wait, Diablo III was finally released yesterday, and pretty much everyone who has ever cared about video games is talking about it. Never have my Facebook and Twitter feeds been overtaken by the release of a game to the extent that I’ve seen with Diablo III; the long awaited action-RPG sequel that has even retired ex-gamers dusting off their old gaming PCs, or in some cases, asking for advice on how to upgrade their PCs/laptops/Macbooks to play the game.

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Posted by Nic Simmonds May 17, 2012
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Activision vs EA case settled; West and Zampella still pending

As you all know, Activision and Electronic Arts aren’t exactly on speaking terms. Activision and former Infinity Ward main men Jason West and Vince Zampella aren’t on speaking terms either. West and Zampella were responsible for making the Modern Warfare series a household name. They were fired by Activision due to alleged insubordination. They then went to work for EA and that’s when things got even messier.

Activision accused EA of poaching West and Zampella – this was due to go to court but has since been resolved. Activision and EA are settling out of court, with the only official wording on the matter saying “Activision and EA have agreed to put this matter behind them”.

As for Activision versus West and Zampella, that bout of litigation continues. West and Zampella are seeking unpaid bonuses and royalties amounting to millions of dollars. Activision is saying that West and Zampella breached their contract and as such are not entitled to anything. Documents have since surfaced that implicate Activision in instigating an illegal hacking attempt into West and Zampella’s PCs so as to “dig up dirt”.

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Posted by Miklós Szecsei May 17, 2012
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