Games Archive

"It all began when a young man named George Hotz began to work on the PlayStation 3, trying to gain access to the machine in a way that made Sony uncomfortable. In response, Sony removed the OtherOS functionality of the PlayStation 3 in a mandatory update, and the hacking community was not happy with this decision, resulting in a sort of cold war. PS3 hackers have once again gained the upper hand: Linux has been returned to the PlayStation 3."

Somebody has just added the Portal gun to Minecraft. Your argument? It is now invalid.

After days and days of the Playstation Network being offline, Sony has announced it has taken the service down indefinitely. The cause is a lot more severe than previously thought: PSN has been systematically attacked, and personal information of all users has been stolen, possibly including credit card data. Sony is asking PSN users to keep close tabs on their credit card account statements. This has turned from a rather amusing slap on the wrist for Sony into a massive and truly epic security fail that could have tremendous consequences for millions and millions of people the world over.

Ah yes, this was pretty inevitable. Nintendo is facing dropping sales and earnings for another year, and as such, it should come as no surprise that they have just announced the Wii's successor. The Japanese gaming giant will unveil the machine during E3 in June, and the device is scheduled for release in 2012.

Engadget gets some hands-on time with a Playstation Phone but the big news is out of Tokyo where Sony held its "Playstation Meeting 2011" event where they introduced both Playstation gaming on Android and the PSP2, currently code named NGP.

"StarCraft, one of the most popular games ever made, also serves as the perfect proving ground for artificial intelligence. Here's the inside story of how a Berkeley team won the world's first StarCraft AI competition with code that can beat even pro-level human players."

All the recent hackery news regarding the Playstation 3 has culminated in the inevitable: the first custom firmware for the Playstation 3. KaKaRoTo, its creator, did not release his custom firmware; in fact, he released the tools so you can modify your own Playstation 3's firmware update package. The feature set is extremely limited - but that's kind of the point. He left most of it untouched, and refuses to implement anything related to piracy.

Ah, OnLive. This company is trying to bring streaming gaming to the mainstream, and has has just announced a pretty significant partnership with Vizio, the US' largest LCD TV seller. Vizo TVs, smartphones, tablets, and Blu-Ray players will all come equipped, out of the box, with OnLive's streaming service.

Sometimes, it's good to reminisce. To look back upon what came before us, in order to better understand what lies ahead. Last week, I bought a piece of computing history I missed out on, a piece I've desperately been wanting to have for a long time now. I bought what is most likely the best selling computer of all time.

Ah, Microsoft's Kinect. Now that the technology has been released into the wild, one thing becomes clear: hackers and programmers love it. It's already been hacked to work on Linux and the Mac, and the first interesting hobby projects are starting to appear. Since Microsoft has already stated it's selling Kinect at a profit, I'm going to make a bold statement: Microsoft is loving the hackery. Update: Turns out I was right - Microsoft has stated that Kinect was left open by design.

"The first person who figures out how to build an open-source driver for Microsoft's much-hyped new Kinect motion controller could win a USD 2000 bounty offered by a leading open-source hardware developer. Kinect is currently available solely for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and may well someday be extended to the Windows platform. But for New York-based Adafruit Industries, that's not enough. And that's why Adafruit - led by MIT Media Lab alum Limor Fried and Make magazine Senior Editor Phillip Torrone - is offering two grand to someone who can figure out how to decouple the hot new device from Microsoft's gaming machine." Bah, motion controllers. Evolutionary dead end. A shiny object already on its way out. People play games to unwind, not to look like idiots flailing their arms and legs around.

There are some things in this world that just happen. There's really no logical reason for it to happen, there's no explanation as to why it happens now, and not, say, three years ago. Minecraft is one those things. It's a game, but not entirely. It's digital Lego, but not entirely. It's impossible to explain what it is in words alone - you need to experience it. All I have to point to is this: someone has created a working 16bit ALU inside Minecraft. Which is a videogame. An ALU running inside a videogame running on a processor which has an ALU. In blocks. Wait, what?

"Duke Nukem Forever was announced in 1997, after its predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D, had rocked the PC market with a hero who liked kicking ass, hanging out with strippers, and murdering alien police officers that were, literally, pigs. It was inappropriate, raunchy, and amazing. It was also one of the games that gave 3D Realms the success that brought its destruction. Duke Nukem Forever began life as a completely self-funded game; its developer wanted nothing less than perfection, and would chase every update in technology in order to deliver it. The game saw monumental delays, suffered the slings and arrows of a gaming world that was first angry and then tolerant of its favorite whipping boy, had its home taken away, and has since risen from the dead. Is the public still interested in Duke Nukem? Hell yes it is. This is the story of the gaming industry's favorite joke, and how Duke may finally have the last laugh."

I've often harped on Apple for its policy regarding jailbreaking, but of course, Apple isn't the only company engaging in such practices. We already talked about Motorola, and now, we have Sony - already a company with a checkered past when it comes to consumer rights. As it turns out, Sony don't want you jailbreaking your their Playstation 3.