Unwinnable

EA revealed the new Battlefield game at GDC 2013. You can watch the same 17-minute trailer online that the press was shown in an AMC movie theater, but imagine the power of the new Frostbite 3 engine blown up huge on a movie screen. Seagulls weave in circles in the sky and the motion is smooth and organic. When we take cover behind a cement block, the gradations of light and shadow in the pockmarked surface are subtle. The God beams from the setting sun are soft and diffused. (more…)

Imagine a sweat-packed meat club full of electric-veined twenty-somethings raising their arms to fluorescent lights like a million little joysticks, bellowing joy at a projected moving image. The bass vibrates from the stage, filling the bodies with animalistic desire and rage, every bit as one with the fleeting hero in front of them. The hero grits teeth and cries tears of concentration, his fingers slip wet over WASD, and his every movement provides pain and ecstasy and an explosion of colors.

Projected onto the wall, huge and pulsating: Hotline Miami.
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It’s that time of the year again, folks. Thousands of people are trekking to San Diego to experience the biggest comic convention in the U.S. Companies roll out limited exclusives just for this show that almost always command a high price on the secondary market. This year there are some truly hot prospects. (more…)

At their I/O developers’ conference last week, Google announced and unveiled the latest version of its Android OS, v4.1 – Jellybean, as expected. Of course, given I/O’s position as a developers’ conference, Google saw fit to get it into as many hands as possible right away. This way, apps can take advantage of the new features as soon as the OS is released to manufacturers and Nexus device owners in a few weeks, so an emulator image was included in the latest software development kit. And, as expect, hackers have taken that SDK image and have started porting it to phones, the Galaxy Nexus being the first one.

A developer preview of a new OS that isn’t 100% optimized for my phone? I’m in! (more…)

First: Unwinnable columnist Chris Dahlen wrote Mark of the Ninja. Second: Chris asked me once, out of the blue, to bend my freelance librarian skills toward finding him some historical books on ninja. I thought it was weird (who wants to read about ninja that can’t, like, fly?), but, you know, it’s Dahlen. So I did. (more…)

I have a love/hate relationship with E3. On the one hand, it’s fun to see and try out new games I’m interested in or curious about and there are (usually) a few surprises coming out of the show that are worth at least a modicum of excitement. At the same time, E3 can be, and often is, obnoxiously bloated and corporate. The cynic in me sees it as a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of glitz and hype from all manner of peddlers in business suits, flanked by attractive women with ostentatious displays of tanks and dragons and sports cars all designed to get you to buy in to the same game you bought last year. (more…)

The week after E3 2011 must have been insufferable for everyone I knew back home. There I was, at the bar, at a D&D game, at a coffee shop, at the taco truck, going on about the just-announced Wii U – and I didn’t make a damn bit of sense. (more…)