Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
‘Papers, Please’ Is An Incredibly Fun Exercise In Interactive Banality
Come back when your passport isn’t expired!
Is it weird to say that I’ve been more eager to return to Papers, Please than any other game I’ve played in the past few months? It’s 1982 in a fictional country beyond the Iron Curtain and you’ve just received the incredible opportunity to be plucked from your village to serve an immigration inspector. With the dollars you’ll earn, you’ll be able to help your family survive the brutal winter. With some primitive tools and a keen sense of observation, it’s your job to make sure that the right people make it back into your country and the bad ones stay out.
Richard Garriott Is Spot On When He Says Most Game Designers “Just Really Suck” These Days
Ground Control to Major… Richard…
If he weren’t so busy peddling his new Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar, a romp that harkens back to his golden era, you’d be forgiven for not knowing who Richard Garriott is. A recent space tourist and arguably the creator of the computer RPG with the Ultima series, Garriott’s been pretty quiet on the games front since he left EA, Origin – the company he founded – and Ultima over a decade ago. His only major title in the interim was Tabula Rasa, an ambitious, but unwieldy MMO that served as a crown jewel in NCSoft’s Korean MMO invasion of America. It was shut down within a year and a half. So why is this Garriott guy talking so much smack about game designers? Because, well, he’s right.
Sign Me Up: Next Xbox To Require Game Installations
As rumored, discs will become useless upon installation. …rock on!
It may sound like I’m joking, but this latest big rumor about the next Xbox has me absolutely giddy. Per some leaked Durango SDK documentation, Durango being the code name for the Microsoft’s new console, you’ll be required to install every last one of your titles on an included, sizable hard drive. Considering this is something I already do, I welcome our new used game-smiting overlords.
Nvidia Shows Off Realistic Ocean Simulator For New Games, Already Makes Me Sick
I got this notion that the motion of your ocean means “small craft advisory”.
In what may be the most technically exciting physics demonstrations I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the most jarring that will ever hit my stomach, Nvidia showed off their new ocean simulation at the ongoing GPU Technology Conference. At this point, I’m not sure why Nvidia doesn’t just co-opt the whole event considering their dominance, but I’ll just let things play out. I’ve included a video below courtesy of The Verge and it is frightening to think that a game would dare to set a first-person shooter on a vessel in the rocky waters they’re generating here.
Hacking Never Paid This Well: Facebook Makes $1.1 Million Per Employee
No wonder their employees are so happy.
It only takes a little bit of analysis, but the results are pretty shocking. Take Facebook’s $5.089 billion revenue last year, divide it amongst its 4,600 employees, and you wind up with roughly $1.1 million per employee. That’s from Zuckerberg on down to the cafeteria workers. That’s obviously not what they’re being paid, but it puts the productivity of Facebook’s workers into perspective.
Why Do People Want Smart Watches?
That band is probably worth more than the iPod.
It’s strange to believe that it only took a single Apple unveil to cause this whole smart watch craze to materialize. Oh, I don’t doubt that technologists and manufacturers have been planning their own ‘enlightened’, internet-connected wristwear for some time, but when Steve Jobs came on stage to unveil the second-most recent iPod Nano, featuring a massive hinge on the back, it wasn’t long until people were speculating about the inevitable wristband accessory.
Pre-order ‘BioShock Infinite’ On Steam, Get Original ‘BioShock’, ‘XCOM: Enemy Unknown’ For Free
Now that’s a deal!
While we’re super busy trash-talking BioShock Infinite‘s release strategy, let’s talk about how awesome BioShock Infinite and its release strategy are. If you’re buying the game for PC, you really have no excuse to not buy it on Steam because of the rewards that have come down.
‘Bastion’ Creators Bring Us A Dystopic Sword-filled Future With ‘Transistor’
I’m no expert at holding swords and such, but that doesn’t look like an effective way to dispatch robots.
Supergiant Games, the guys who brought us 2011’s artsy fantasy fighter Bastion are back with another fantastic looking action title set in a well-produced dystopic future. After nearly being killed by a group of assailants, the Transistor, the giant sword with extraordinary power that you see above, falls into the hands of a young woman, says Supergiant’s Greg Kasavin. We’ve got the teaser trailer below.
‘Strip Search’ Recap: Season 1, Episode 6 “Pushing Buttons”
Things get intense!
Hoo boy! We’re now onto our second major challenge for our Strip Search contestants and it is a doozy! Not even an elimination round with Jerry and Mike can quite hold up to this.
‘BioShock Infinite’s First Review Goes To IGN, Rest Of Us Pretty Irritated
Hell hath no fury like a reviewer scorned.
In a move that harkens back to the days of print magazines – and probably before that – IGN has been granted an exclusive first review of BioShock Infinite this Thursday night. This falls way ahead of the purported embargo for every other reviewing agent, which isn’t until next Monday. Of course, when you have gaming journalists like Geoff Keighley, Adam Sessler, and a rash of others crowing about the agreement, you know something’s a big deal.
