Articles about Gaming

Windows 7 has some great games (by Microsoft’s standards, anyway), with a lot of interesting options. But the standard programs display only a fraction of what’s available, and enabling a hidden “Debug” menu can give you access to a variety of new cheats, interface tweaks and other settings.

If you’re a chess novice, for instance, you can set Chess Titans to play itself while you watch and try to anticipate each move. Interface options allow you to rotate the board, display different views, and more. Hearts also has a built-in “autoplay” option, and the new settings mean you can play the game yourself but use the “Show Hands” option to cheat by peeking at your opponents cards.

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After attracting attention with news about its upcoming gaming tablet, Wikipad has made available the most important specs for their Wikipad tablet. According to a press release, it will be released at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2012 and it will be made available through worldwide major retailers.

Even though the Wikipad debuted last January at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, not much was known about it. Most of the specs were unknown until today. The tablet is powered by an nVidia Tegra 3 1.4GHz quad-core processor paired with 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 520MHz GPU, while the internal storage capacity will be at least 16GB. It has a 10.1-inch IPS display with a 16:10, 1280x800 resolution. It weighs 560 grams, and the thickness is 8.6 mm. Power comes from a 23.56Wh battery, which supposedly offers 8 hours of video playback and 6 hours of gaming time. An 8 megapixel rear-facing camera along with a 2 megapixel forward-facing camera are also included. To back up the "gaming" claim, the Wikipad tablet will come with a gaming controller add-on, which attaches itself to the Wikipad at the bottom through a proprietary connector. It will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box.

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Vizio's Co-Star is one of the first new set top boxes in the second generation of Google TV. It's small, it's powerful, it's the cheapest Google TV yet, and it went up for pre-order today directly from Vizio.

In addition to the Google TV feature package, the Vizio Co-Star includes the OnLive gaming service, making it equal parts connected set-top box, and streaming video game console.

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On Day 3 of the Con, I spoke with two voice actors behind popular animated series "Red vs Blue", which is based on Microsoft's Halo series games. You know them as Agent Carolina and Agent Washington.

The story Xbox gamers experience isn't enough, if 10 seasons of "Red vs Blue" is any indication. Episode 6 is live now. Uh-oh, Jen Brown suggests big trouble awaits Agent Carolina.

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Today, Comic-Con ends here in San Diego. I'm headed downtown for my fourth day in a couple of hours. I've chronicled the show on Google+ and really should have posted here, too. To rectify this terrible oversight, I picked three video interviews most likely to appeal to BetaNews readers. First up: Zach Johnson, creator of online multiplayer game Kingdom of Loathing.

Johnson can't quite finish KoL, which has been in beta for nine years. He signed autographs for an hour on Day 2 of the Con, and I could barely approach the booth. The fan base is hugely devoted, such that KoL is, as I understand, profitable based just on donations. There's more to come. A new game launched, coincidently, as the event opened. Johnson promises this one won't stay in beta as long.

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Open-source RTS games aren’t generally known for having quality graphics, even when finished, so you probably wouldn’t expect too much from an alpha build. Which is why 0 A.D. is a real surprise, thanks to visuals that are more impressive than many commercial products.

Okay, it’s true, the program has been in alpha for a very long time (running on Windows, the Mac and Linux must make for a complex development process), but the attention to detail is still impressive. Your citizens are people, not anonymous blobs. Buildings look as though like people live in them, with seating areas, pots and vases scattered around. And they live in a realistic and complex world, so for instance a desert will have sand, rocks, animals, perhaps palm trees which cast true shadows.

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Non-profit organization the Video Game History Museum is trying to preserve and share the record of video game development, culture and history. The museum is a concept that sprouted out of the 30-plus years of old video game consoles from collectors at the Classic Gaming Expo, which has grown in size for the last 13 years since 1999.

The attendees have come together to start the museum to show the passion, work, effort and failures of the video game industry, which has profoundly changed our culture since the first games of Asteroid (in computer labs of universities) or Pong (stand up arcade in bars) in the 1970s. One of its directors, Joe Santulli gives, us the run down of the hopes for a physical location inside the pop-up museum at E3 2012.

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At the Microsoft E3 2012 Press Conference Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi talked about a rather amazing brand partnership, introducing Stefan Olander, Nike vice president. The Nike+ service, already made famous for its partnerships with Apple, and the ability to help track your workouts and keep you motivated to stay fit, is coming to the Xbox 360. Olander came on to show us the history of Nike+ and the goals of Nike to help empower the athlete in everyone to reach their peak of performance. A demo of footage of a title called Nike+ Kinect Training hit the jumbo screen with flashes of CGI models inter-spliced with live action human models demonstrating moves -- even flash of a screenshot showing the Nike+ app on a Windows Phone tracking a workout.

But not much else was talked about. Would Nike+ track you as you played all kinect titles? Would you know just how many calories you might have lost while shaking your money maker to the dance moves of Dance Central 3? Would you be able to know you not only saved the world with the Mutant, Magic, and Technology infused powers in Avengers: Battle For Earth? What about the workout you get from a magical onslaught you wrought upon the hoards of baddies in Fable: the Journey?

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Here at E3 Expo, nowhere on the general floor are any of the Sony Playstation Mobile certified devices. No one of the Sony PR team can even tell me anything. Even the head of the Playstation Digital Platforms, the team in charge of the Playstation Network Store and Playstation Plus can't answer my question: "Will games purchased on Playstation Mobile certified devices be playable on Playstation Vita or Playstation 3?"

But on the press- and developer-only second floor of the Sony E3 Booth stands this sad lonely unmanned glass covered case. It tells me NO TOUCH, but I have to take pictures. Now don't hate me if I'm wrong because I'm using deduction from display case association; from the looks of this case the Playstation Vita is considered one of the Playstation Mobile Certified devices, which would mean: If you purchase a Playstation Mobile Certified game that is a PSONE Classic or PS Mini title, it should be playable on all certifies Playstation Devices. Sony is always cagey with details, but I got two bits to bet on this one that I'm right.

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Hidden away in the middle of the concourse walkway between South and West halls of the Los Angeles Convection center sits this little corner display booth. Most people pass it by not knowing how big it might be to the future of gaming but as soon as I see who is there I have to stop and ask questions.

Gaikai is a service that started just two years ago -- at first thought of as nothing more than phantom console level vapor it is one of the two companies to announce "Cloud Gaming"; PC gaming via virtualization. Its first demo shows off high-end games from producers / developers EA and Red Project for titles like Mass Effect 3 or The Witcher 2. Using a web page Java applet client it runs on any Windows, Mac, or even Linux machine.

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One of Broadcom's goals for 2012 is to bring to market new hardware that supports the fifth-generation of Wi-Fi networking standards, 802.11ac. At CES 2012, Broadcom debuted its first 802.11ac chips, then rolled out more designs in the following months so device manufacturers could take advantage of the faster throughput the new standard allowed.

Asus, D-Link, Huawei, and LG all have announced plans to support 802.11ac with consumer hardware, and this week, Asus and Broadcom unveiled the first consumer-facing notebook computer to feature full 802.11ac compliance, the Asus ROG G75VW gaming notebook.

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At the the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 Sony Press Conference, Sony announced a big push for their mobile phone gaming platform for Android powered mobile devices. Once called Sony Playstation Suite, Sony is first changing the name to Playstation Mobile. The whole idea is about making it possible to allow access to PlayStation Classic games and other PlayStation titles on "PlayStation Certified" devices. This move expands the selection of access to Playstation games for mobile beyond the current Sony made Xperia phone and tablet line of Android devices.

Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe (SCEE) president, Andrew House, announced this on stage during the briefing as a big move, "That is promoting PlayStation Mobile for third-party Android Cellphone makers". House also unveiled the initiative's first third-party hardware partner is HTC. Not much more in the way of details besides this has been released. It's interesting that Sony would jump into this kind of bed.

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The stage is set at the Nokia theater. The large screen in the middle of the stage flickers with the logo of Nintendo before the familiar face of Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of Mario and Zelda, shows up with his pixie-like smile and innocent glee. Nintendo's opening act for today's E3 Expo press conference -- the Wii U update of the Gamecube classic Pikmin in Pikmin 3, setting the tone for the entire presentation.

This conference is about the games first, hardware accessories are a far second thought. The features of the Wii U hardware are only mentioned by Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, by saying "The Wii U will have YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video, but you can find out more about the console later, let's do a rundown of the new GamePad and get back to what's important, the games!"

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Ahead of the E3 Expo's first full day, Microsoft unveiled "Xbox SmartGlass", which is an app not a piece of glass. The agnostic application runs on Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8 -- and its synergy with the latter matters most to Microsoft.

In a platform that I can only say out-Wii's the Wii, SmartGlass will bring a large dynamic to games and to media playback. Some of the features look similar to Apple's Airplay by allowing users to send video and audio to the TV with a flick of a finger. But there's more -- particularly the content synchronization and integration SmartGlass brings among devices.

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Nintendo filled the lull of the Sunday before E3 -- typically slow with rehashed quick posts of news for most video game journalism. Rather than wait until its Tuesday keynote, Nintendo decided to jump the gun last minute, with details about new Wii U console, including several finalized product specs of the Wii U controllers. The news beat Microsoft and Sony as the first to wow with their console news, coming today.

Now simply called the "Wii U Gamepad", it has been polished down and made thinner, placing joy pads and buttons inward in off-set locations as to help with the ergonomics, adding handgrips on the bottom, making it slightly wider. But all these also make it similar to that of a traditional modern game controller / joy pad. The thumbsliders similar to what was on the Sony PlayStation Portable have been switched for analog thumbsticks, providing support L3 and R3 button presses as well, similar to Playstation and Xbox 360 joypad sticks. There has also been an update with more sensitive motion and gyroscope sensors rounding out the typical video game controller specs.

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