Nothing too surprising about this — it’s an open secret that Bungie and Microsoft were never able to merge their corporate cultures successfully, to put it ridiculously mildly. One wonders if Bungie was under pressure to puke out more Halo sequels,but wanted to work on new IP…who knows. What is clear: Bungie got a much-needed infusion …
News
BioShock Shocker: It’s Actually As Good They Say It Is
You’ve gotta earn your BioShock: the download’s free on Xbox Live, but it’ll take about 12 hours of your life – or your XBox’s life — to actually secure the data, give or take a month. To my surprise, the results turned out to be unbelievably worth it.
The premise is nonsensical — I’ve read that this game was a tough sell to …
Sony Wants to Sell Surplus PS3 Computing Power. Who Will Say Them Nay?
What is it with Sony having good ideas lately? It’s getting harder to make fun of them. Apparently they’re having so much success with their Folding@Home project (which uses spare processing power on PS3’s to do computation-intensive protein folding simulations for the good of mankind) that Sony is exploring the idea of selling some of …
Those Top 10 Video Games Again
I’m going to — as we say here in corporate America — “circle back” to a post from last week about that list of the 10 most important video games that came out last week.
Some interesting comments on this one. I put my alternative nominees out there, and so did you. Your comments are in quotes, my annotations are in parens:
— …
The 10 Most Important Video Games
Last week a Stanford librarian and a rather distinguished four-member committee released a list of the 10 most important video games of all time, recommending them for enshrinement in the Library of Congress. (Yes, this was last week. What, I was on vacation.) The New York Times has the story here. The list went as follows:
* …
Douglas Hofstadter II: Return of the Golden Braid
Freshly back from vacation, I’m going to “kick things off” with a pro forma link to some piece I wrote for the magazine! Actually this is a hugely important piece to me, in a personal way, because it’s about Douglas Hofstadter, the guy who wrote Godel, Escher, Bach (no, we’re not doing umlauts today), an incredibly brilliant, funny …
Update: More on Sony’s Playstation Home
Here’s the demo:
OK, so this is cooler than I expected (though the Second Life-meets-XBox Live thing was essentially correct): a fairly clean, sane 3D environment for socializing, multi-player matchmaking, and sharing media. All to a chill-out ambient soundtrack, narrated by some chick with an anglo-australian accent.
For …
Gaming News: Sony Makes a Move Online, Apple Maybe Sorta Does Something
There’s an incredibly vague piece in the New York Times today about Playstation Home, Sony’s answer to Xbox Live. “As players progress through a game, they will unlock various virtual prizes that they can then show off to friends and rivals, the executives said.” According to an earlier Kotaku post, this is implemented as a little …
Firefly News: It’s Always Summer…in My Heart
(More bits and pieces today, as I continue to cope with a debilitating illness and a brutal deadline, both. Keep those cards and letters coming.)
I’m a sick Firefly fan. I barely watched it when it was on — lay its premature death at my feet, go ahead, I didn’t ‘get’ it — but I wore out the DVD set. And now I always get a pleasant …
Now Available in Paper-vision: My Piece on 300
My piece on 300 is in this week’s Time. You can shell out for the print edition, or you can enjoy its pallid digital ghost here.
I knew I wanted to write about 300 the minute I saw the trailer — the minute I saw the shot where the Spartans are slowly, inexorably backing the Persians off a seaside ledge — bodies tumble off the ledge …
Sure, When Britney Shaves Her Head, It’s News. But When I Do It…
I just had to say that, and now I’ve said it, and we can all move on.
Barenaked Ladies have released a video featuring a pretty impressive all-star cast of YouTube celebrities. Brookers and Geriatric1927, together at last! (Am I the last person on the Net to find out that Geriatric1927’s real name is Peter Oakley? When did that come …
Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill
I reviewed it. I reviewed it here.
It’s interesting to watch reviewers chew on this book — the New York Times liked it here and didn’t much care for it here. Partly because of Hill’s parentage — he’s Stephen King’s son — but partly because Hill isn’t a wordsmith. Book reviewers — and I’m one — like writers who toss out lapidary …