Hardware and Technology

Sony has announced their next generation console; Playstation 4. It features a supercharged architecture, X86 CPU, 8GB Memory and a local storage HDD. The new DualShock 4 controller features a touch input, interaction with a stereo camera, headphone jack, a light bar and a share button.

The share button is a simple way to share your experience with friends. This ranges from pictures and videos of what your playing, so peers can spectate and talk. Another interesting function is the ability to take over a game someone else is playing. Instead of watching a walkthrough to pass a level, Playstation 4 will allow a professional gamer or friend to help you out.

Upon switching on PS4 you can continue on from when you last played. Facebook will be a part of the socializing experience and players will have profile pages, showing recent activity.  

You can also play any game before you purchase it, even while it's downloading. This is powered by the Cloud service known as Gaikai and Sony will be working with UStream. Games will also be updated in the background and you'll be able to play them remotely on Playstation Vita. The service is said to work with Smartphone's, tablets and PS3.Trophies have returned and the same goes for add on content.

George Bush has just been re-elected as president! The Mars reconnaissance orbiter has just launched! And the 2012 olympics have just been awarded to London! That’s right, reader, you’ve been taken on a magical journey back to 2005, the year this humble video gaming hack reckons the industry turned on its axis irreversibly. Why? The launch of the Xbox 360, the first of the current generation consoles to see the light of day outside of the darkened, dingy labs in which they were probably all created.

Remember SOPA? Sorry if i've brought up any purposefully-repressed memories. Fortunately, the world saw some kind of sense (or more likely certain members of congress saw that popular opinion was so against the acts that there was little money to be made from them), and it was put to bed. But it seems corporations' war against people sharing stuff has merely swapped battlegrounds, and it is now the games industry whose freedom is potentially to be restricted.

A quick look over to IGN today and any casual browser of the internet will be beset by rumours that the next generation of consoles, most specifically the Xbox 720, could introduce a feature which locks games to a single owner. The upshot of this is that we will no longer be able to buy pre-owned games, or lend games to a friend.

I suppose the ideology behind this is sound enough. You want a game, you pay for the game, and the people who made the game get the money, thus allowing them to make more games and continue the industries happy cycle. However, in order for games to be sold, they need retailers. And figures show that the most popular game retailer over here in the UK, the imaginitively titled 'GAME', makes more money from pre-owned game sales than it does from original sales. And even then, GAME and its rivals are struggling. Many GAME shops have had to be closed in the last year, due to sales being stolen from them by cheaper online services like Amazon. If we cut away the majority of these stores' income, then games won't have a place to be sold, and no matter what ideology you use, that will never be a good thing for the industry. 

After the success La Noire it seems like it’s about time an effort was made to make the facial expressions more realistic, or in some cases give facial expressions.

Since La Noires’ release people have been talking about it, trying to figure out if suspects are lying or not and reacting accordingly. Largely were they looking you in the eye, nervous twitch etc, which was possible with facial mapping and gave more of a feeling that you were trying to outwit a person not a pre-rendered robot. Playing this game was really a break from the norm, using actor’s facial expressions in that much detail. Sometimes you were lucky to get a moving mouth, eyes and eye brows. Seems obvious when you realise that they have been using people to get physical movements right for years.

People have commented that when you watch a movie in a couple hours people have laughed, cried, been scared or angry. In gaming mostly you get stoic main character, then gets annoyed and then goes on a killing spree for 30 hours or however long the game is. Certain types in the UK media like to use this two dimensional example to bad mouth gamers. These people also never heard of Heavy Rain, where you take several roles with different characters. As much depth as Heavy Rain has it really lacked in facial area as far as communicating tough personal decisions that each character went through.

Xbox 360 and PS3 owners will be able to play Batman: Arkham City in stereoscopic and anaglyphic (red and blue/green glasses) 3D, when it releases in the UK on October 21st 2011.  In other words anyone who invested into a 3D TV can don their shutter glasses, for a stereoscopic experience of breath taking environments in Arkham City.

Like the game of the year edition of Akrham Asylum,  gamers with a standard HDTV can also experience 3D. By wearing the anaglyphic red and blue/green 3D glasses.  It's not the same as stereoscopic 3D but it does the job on a budget. Check out our review of Arkham Asylum's anaglyphic experience here.

PC owners can also control the dark knight in 3D with Nvidia's 3D Vision PC's. The inclusion of PhysX and DirectX 11 effects, is an even better treat for PC gamers.  You can expect there to be more trash flowing in the streets and effects like fog to be present. Arkham City is getting closer to a game of the year award, with every announcement.  Check out yesterdays Mr. Freeze reveal right here.

For those of you who haven’t purchased the beast of a comic book game Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady has put the icing on the cake with the addition of 3D. Before your imagination runs wild after watching Avatar, (which uses stereoscopic 3D) don’t get your hypes up.

The GOTY (Game of the Year) edition of Arkham Asylum utilizes the old school red and green 3D glasses, which depicts an illusion of depth in the game. You’ll find that there are two 3D glasses in the games cover, giving the chance for one person to play in 3D and the other to watch.

Unfortunately none of the cutscenes are in 3D but the real time gameplay is. When you first don the glasses be prepared for a world of wooziness, as your eyes take time to adjust to the glasses. At a first glimpse you’ll notice that the only 3D effect in sight is on Batman, who has an outlined focus around him.

Other time’s the 3D effect is really showcased when you’re sitting on top of a gargoyle. If you look down you get an illusion of depth and the floor ends up looking like a long fall.

It wouldn’t be a GOTY edition without added features; all of the DLC challenge maps are included in the game. These maps range from the alley way in Gotham City to the Scarecrow’s maps.

The world’s biggest game show continues in LA with E3. It’s Sony’s turn to take to the stage and stake their claim for bragging rights for the next year of releases. 3D gaming is gets a real push and like Microsoft, motion control is going to be play a big part in the show. But will they be ignoring gamers in favour of the casual market too? We’ll tell you below while also looking at some proper games.

3D

As you’ve probably heard we’ve already had some patches to current games to make them 3D, namely: Pain, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, Super Stardust HD and WipEout HD. Sony said other publishers are working on more, by March 2011 we’ll have at least 20 3D titles. We’d suspect a mix of old and new games to get the 3D. Still, can you really save £1500 for a 3D TV by then?

Some games that are already confirmed as 3D at launch are: Gran Turismo 5, MotorStorm: Apocalypse, Sly Collection, Crysis 2, Mortal Kombat, Shaun White Skateboarding, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Tron Evolution and NBA 2K11. Unfortunately there are only a few fleeting glimpses of these games during the rest of the presentation. All three Sly PS2 games in HD? That’s pretty damn awesome.

Microsoft managed to pack 90 minutes with some tasty looking games and the newly named Kinect motion control camera. The slimline 360 makes a late appearance too. Here’s the Game Hub summary of what looked good and a bit of what didn’t.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

The Treyarch team have been busy with this one, it looks incredible. The level we’re shown seems to be set in Vietnam, starting in a dark, atmospheric, claustrophobic underground tunnel with some great lighting effects. It then opens up into the stark contrast of a sunlit jungle clearing before seamlessly throwing you into a helicopter to storm a river side base with machine gun and missile fire. It wasn’t clear if the player has full flight control or just control of aiming, we suspect the later. Normal gunplay looks like business as usual (yay!), but the awful ‘jam effect’ returns when you’re getting shot. 360 fans can smug it up too as all COD DLC will be coming to them first each time until 2012. Black Ops looks like a title unafraid to take on Modern Warfare 2, Halo Reach and Killzone 3, good times for shooter fans.

Despite the DS outselling its Sony rival and even the big consoles on a regular basis, Nintendo are determined to get one into every gamer’s (and their relative’s) hands. With the children's market sorted they’re going for the grownups in force.

Handheld console manufacturers just can’t help but fiddle around. With both the DS and PSP getting numerous make-overs over the last few years getting bigger, smaller, slidier but rarely cheaper.

So it’s surprising to say that this is one upgrade that looks pretty good. Adding all the extra functions of the still recent DSi and supersizing the console to fit in adult hands and give them a screen big enough to make all the extra features worthwhile for once. While still not exactly cheap, the console will retail at £150 which is only £10 more than the smaller DSi.

So what does it do that we haven’t seen before on the DSi? Well not much to be honest. No Nintendo, new colours don’t count. There are only two colours available at launch, Wine Red and Dark Brown. It would seem Nintendo believe this the best strategy to attract the more ‘mature’ gamer, assuming they all like merlot and dirt.

It's now common knowledge among most gamers that the Wii is primarily a box for parties, novelty games and the quirkier titles that make up your games library.  There's nothing wrong with this, afterall the 360 and PS3 have got the more serious end of the market sown up very nicely with quality game after quality game.  Nintendo have made a spectacular success and fortune out of what the Wii is and the latest addition to the Party Box identity of the Wii comes in the shape of We Sing and 4 USB microphones.

We Sing follows in the footsteps of Singstar and Lips and definitively brings the karaoke genre to the Wii.  Up to 4 players can sing along at a time (apparently the first time this is possible) and some pretty cool features looks set to bring the title alive.

Coming with 30 tracks at launch (though I would expect more to be available via download later) and spanning a range of genres, they will include: 

UB40 – Red Red Wine
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own
Charles & Eddie – Would I lie To You?
Sugababes – Girls
OneRepublic (ft. Timbaland) – Apologize
Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
Shampoo - Trouble
Spice Girls - Wannabe
Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite
Moloko - Sing It Back
Lady GaGa - Poker Face
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Lily Allen - The Fear
Tom Jones - Delilah
Kylie Minogue - Loco-Motion
Roxette – It Must Of Been Love
The Automatic – Monster
Duffy – Mercy
Madness – Our House
James Morrison and Nelly Furtado – Broken Strings

Boy does that make me feel old.  As of today, this classic console has been entertaining the western world for 20 years. Well, America (just over 20 years for Japan and around 19 for Europe), see guys we’ve been the last in line for a while now.

With my ever-growing resentment towards my creaky Commodore 64 with its cassette loaded games and joystick, I probably wasn’t far off giving up on gaming and instead dedicating my life to something even less illustrious like sticker collections or even paying attention at school.

Early adopters and damn lucky kids at Christmas managed to get the Japanese Mega Drive, which really was the daddy as it played games from every corner of the world. Any half decent UK town would have a couple of indie game retailers, just full of obscure Japanese titles. One of which I bought and fell in love with, despite having no idea what the hell it was even called, I eventually learned it had the most excellent title of Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, which was remade for the west with an Egyptian style mummy lead character and renamed as Decap Attack.

Physical media and dedicated gaming consoles, we are told, are dying breeds.  And the prime suspect for their expected demise is “The Cloud”.  Cloud Gaming is on it's way and may shake up the gaming world for all of us so I'm taking a look in to this to see exactly what it is, and what it means for the gaming community.

The Cloud is already present in most of our daily lives. Every time you check your Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail emails via a web browser, you're accessing, retrieving and interacting with them stored in The Cloud. Most internet users have also interacted with The Cloud when using Google Docs in which your docs, spreadsheets and presentations are all edited online without ever being saved or used on your PC itself.  The analogy of 'The Cloud' is the 'place' where the files you view and use online are stored and means not only do we save our hard drives from the abuse of saving thousands of emails and documents, but also that we can access them anywhere on the world.

Looking at gaming, Cloud Gaming is set to cause one of the biggest shake ups of the way we play games since the early 1970's when the first dedicated gaming consoles hit the shelves.  The “Cloud Gaming” generation will not own physical media nor will they store video games on a hardrive. Instead, they'll connect via the internet to central servers, on which the games are stored and the processing required to run them takes place.  With all of the processing and media storage happening remotely, the only hardware the user will require is a PC with an internet connection and a 3rd party box to manage the flow of information from PC, through the internet to their servers, and then to receive that information back and translate it onto your TV or monitor.  With the industry leaders currently claiming to have all but eliminated latency (down to 1 millisecond), the gamer's interactions with the servers through the internet is planned to be as seamless and quick as interacting with a console in the same room.