Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
I Am An Adult Fan Of LEGO (AFOL) And I Love It.
I didn’t realize until I started paying attention to Tested more that maybe, just maybe, grown-ass men seeking out LEGO sets seems pretty man-childish. Wandering around a LEGO Store and picking out individual 50-piece sets might just seem a little weird to some. But why? I love LEGOs, you should, too!
Valentine’s Day: Candy, Cakes, Loneliness
It takes some effort to have neutral feelings on Valentine’s Day. You’re either in the ‘in-crowd’ or you’re outside living in a box with little more than your self-esteem. And candy. Lots and lots of candy. I suppose in that regard, V-Day is a victory for everyone. But in the way it actually matters, the love part, it’s also a defeat. A big one.
Apple: We Are Drunk On Power. Also: We’re Suing You.
The ghost of John Sculley haunts the halls of Cupertino. As Apple descended from greatness during his reign in the late 80s and early 90s against the rising tide of IBM-compatible personal computers, one of his clarion calls (borrowed from Jobs) was that Microsoft had stolen the look and feel of the first commercially available graphical user interface (GUI) from them. Developed for Lisa, an expensive disaster, and Macintosh, Steve Jobs’ pet project in the mid-80s, Apple believed that a mouse-driven interface – rather than a text-driven one – was their gift to humanity. In court, they fought that their GUI and its broad ‘look and feel’ was a good enough defense to fend off Microsoft’s increasingly-popular Windows operating system and extract hundreds of millions of dollars in victory dollars, if not more.
After six years, Apple lost that war, but they’ve learned enough to become litigious jerkheads as they’re now on top of the world.
Path. I Don’t Get It.
Wow, has it been that long already? Silicon Valley is falling in love with all these new social networking toys for this reason or that. In the case of Path, one of its founding backers is Napster creator Shawn Fanning. It seems that the service is trying to straddle the line between full-blown service, a la Facebook, and a simpler photo upload solution, like Instagram, with the intent of keeping your friends list to a smaller group of fifty. I understand how Path works; what I don’t understand is if there’s some middle space for this kind of network.
With Double Fine Funded, What Can’t Kickstarter Do?
Tim Schafer’s company hasn’t exactly lit up the charts with game sales. The former LucasArts game designer (the Monkey Island series, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) founded Double Fine in 2000 to create quirky games that only his imagination could generate. Their first game, Psychonauts, was batted from Microsoft to Majesco where it failed to gain an audience. Its Jack Black-starring follow-up, Brutal Legend, also failed to make money for EA. After a few Xbox Live Arcade releases, Tim really just wanted to make an adventure game like the good old days. So he went to Kickstarter.
Can Jeremy Renner Carry The Bourne Legacy?
Wow, so I remembered this thing. After The Bourne Ultimatum, the incredibly successful third movie in the espionage thriller series, director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon left the series for greener, uh, grass (which became the cool-ly received Green Zone). But Universal was leaving money on the table by not following up, so here comes The Bourne Legacy, sans an actual Jason Bourne. Instead, Jeremy Renner (you may remember him from the recently released Mission: Impossible flick) takes up the role of a Bourne-alike who now has to do devilish things for James’ old employer. And Ed Norton’s a bad guy? That’s cool.
But what about Jenner as the new Bourne? Hrm.
Xbox Live Indie Game Of The Week: Tacticolor
If you’ve been paying attention, you know I’ve been dying for a cool strategy game. It’s unfortunate that Microsoft doesn’t show more love to their XNA-powered indie developers, who toss games out at smartphone prices. The first title we want to show love for? Tacticolor.
Finally, The Death Of Used Gaming
You already know which side of this you’re on, but one side’s definitely going to win and the other side is definitely going to lose. Accessing games at any time via digital download is something that music — and to a shorter extent, movies — have had in their arsenal to instantly gratify customers. But unlike songs or movies, which are linear forms of entertainment that can be streamed second to second, games have always had a hurdle to conquer in that they must be (mostly) acquired locally in order to be run. With the PlayStation Vita allowing for downloadable games at cheaper rates over their pressed-plastic cousins on store shelves and Microsoft’s new Xbox rumored to have anti-used game tech (whatever sort that may be), it’s obvious that the days of used gaming are going to come to a crashing end soon. It could not come any sooner.
Windows 8 Killed The Start Menu Star
If Windows 8 could not come off as a more radical departure from its traditional 9x-derived design, it’s only going to get weirder. While rumored for some time, Microsoft will be releasing the ‘Consumer Preview’ of their newest operating system officially without a Start menu. Yes, a hallmark of the Windows environment will be going away and I couldn’t be more excited.
Just Cause 2 Retrospective: Racing Around The Best Game of 2010
If you missed the best game of 2010, that’s a shame, because it was called Just Cause 2. in this piece, I race around the entirety of the island nation of Panau, through its various biomes, jacking a half dozen vehicles in the process, and causing a little bit of havoc. Just a little bit, though.
