Videogames highlights - August 2009
Likewise the improbable perspective to witness the extinction of joypads, mice & keyboards in the forthcoming (and faraway too) future I talked about the past month, the other pointless and ballyhooed media hype going strong these days is the one about ubiquitous digital delivery, ie the idea that sooner or later physical supports will be outclassed or replaced by on-line downloads on consoles and PC, it doesn’t mind if users have to deal with 50 Gigabytes or a few Megabytes sized games. It’s a complete nonsense, as Stardock CEO correctly points out in an interview with Shacknews.
PAX 2009, Ron Gilbert’s keynote
Ron Gilbert’s DeathSpank was already discussed in a previous post, but considering the personality (figurative) weight I think it’s adequate to complete the discussion by embedding the keynote’s videos (even if they aren’t so pretty to see) with which the legendary designer opened this year Penny Arcade Expo. Ron Gilbert is one of the noble fathers of modern games, so listening to what he says is simply an obligation for who would like to call himself a “videogamer”.
DeathSpank @PAX 2009, videogaming humour with style
A year after the official presentation during Penny Arcade Expo, Canadian developer Hothead Games and Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert have took the occasion of the new PAX edition to show the work done on their new title: DeathSpank, the legitimate but grumpy child of adventure and action RPG genres, leaves behind the mere shadows of the first trailers to put his face and his deeds in front of gamers.
BlizzCon 2009, Diablo III gets the new Monk class
As it always did in the past few years, on August 21 and 22 developer Blizzard gathered players and reporters around BlizzCon, the event held at the Anaheim Convention Center during which the lucky attenders have had the opportunity to see in action (and try with their hands) the novelties from the three major franchises of the company. Regarding Diablo III, the new and long awaited chapter of the hack’n slash saga par excellence, Blizzard showed the forth of the five character classes available to the player, the Monk.
Finally the upgrade to Firefox 3(.5.2)
Good things need time, I wrote in July 2008. For the upgrade of my Firefox installation to the last version available it took more than a year, hence instead of release 3.0 now I have a shiny Firefox 3.5.2 on the screen, no remorse for the switch, some little lack of intimacy with the minimal behavioural differences of the browser UI and so much relief for the end of an installation, test and refining operation that stole me an entire weekend and this past Monday morning.
Videogames highlights - July 2009
In this period there is a lot of talking about the new ways of interaction with entertainment devices and about the fact that things like Microsoft’s Project Natal would be destined, on the long run, to replace traditional controllers be they joypads, keyboards or mice. To me this seems more of an advertising nonsense than any other thing, the mouse lasted 40 years and there surely will be a valid reason to justify such a longevity. Of course, we’re all open to the future and tech evolution, but seeing myself playing to a remote descendant of one of the titles included in this videogaming compilation without a physical controller in my hands seems an unlikely perspective to say the least.
From the past to the future, the new bootkits menace
As security experts have already highlighted in this months and years, the trend of the most sophisticated malicious code is to be able to reach the lowest levels of the machine to infect, putting out of the game all the security mechanisms and gaining full control of the PC and the operating system. This trend embraces more and more the term “bootkit”, literally a bootable rootkit, on which the attentions of researchers and Assembly code enthusiasts have recently focused uncovering new, potential threats with an ancient heart and dangerous security flaws sold as malware-proof security measures.
Videogames highlights - June 2009
This is a recession period and the videogaming industry suffers too, with a sales drop of 23% during May (for USA), a thump unseen since 2007. And yet the executives from the major companies in the field talk about sustained growth for a business that, in 2012, will be 55 billion dollars worth overall. Meanwhile market researches describe a “new golden age for entertainment software” and videogames permanently reside in two third of the American households. That’s an ideal condition, I say, to gather some relevant contents in what should be the last installment of videogames highlights’ old cycle before the new, more minimalistic setup.
Videogames highlights - May 2009
Ok I admit it, I’m a certified liar because if my personal review of old classics goes on tirelessly the amount of time required for a post of the series Videogames highlights is always the same, nay it’s getting worse. That’s the reason why I’ll change formula here, and instead of a monstrous and rebellious blob (at least for me writing it) containing any sort of thing I return to a less rich but more selected collection of videogaming stuff of the past month. Hoping that the June post won’t be on-line on September :-/
The hotud.org admin: “Home of the Underdogs is still alive”
Lord Pall, administrator of the spiritual heir of abandonware site Home of the Underdogs, sent me an e-mail in the past days letting me know that works for pushing forward the almost-dead project of Sarinee Achavanuntakul continue at full pace. “We’re still alive with most of the games listed, a semblance of a community, and a nice chunk of user added listings and reviews“, Lord Pall writes, saying that there is still a lot of work to do but the site development goes on as expected.
DOSBox 0.73, interview with the developers
On the occasion of SourceForge.net’s project of the month award granted to DOSBox, I asked the crew behind the best PC/DOS emulator out there to reply to some questions about the project. The developers were busy with the last works on the new version of the emulator, thus the interview was changed to include some DOSBox 0.73 related features and finally in the past days the crew was kind enough to send me back the replies I was seeking for. There is no Big Scoop (tm) here nor I was asking for one, but I hope the conversation is an interesting reading anyway.
I have a banana in my pants. And a monkey over my head
Guybrush Threepwood wanted to be a pirate, but probably he would have never predicted that 20 years after his unsuccessful efforts to scrape up a decent crew, his many holes in the ground with no chest on the bottom and his merciless tendency to tell the same story about some ghost pirates again and again and again he would have always been in the same place, namely at about 3 meters under the ocean level or otherwise in some improbable swordfights where the tongue hurts, literally, much more than the sword.
Videogames highlights - April 2009
It’s pretty interesting, from the perspective of someone steadily busy in revisiting old videogaming myths and old computer stuff in general, to immerse once a mouth in a stream of promotional stuff from the upcoming or recently published games. You can get a rather effective idea of how much time have passed since you secretly believed to be one of the few “chosen” people to know about this thing called “videogame”, and how much historical consciousness is precious to fully enjoy the wonders the market offers nowadays.
The P2P psychodrama between The Pirate Bay and three strike law
Surely 2009 is the most sensitive year for peer-to-peer and the industry crusade against free on-line contents sharing. In Italy we have the previously discussed issues with the incompetence and obscene servility of our representatives, and moving the attention toward Europe things get even worse if possible. Two in particular are the noticeable questions of these weeks in Europe, the conviction of The Pirate Bay crew and the approval in France of the Sarkozy doctrine also known as three strike law or HADOPI law.
Italy vs. Internet, the impotence of reason against the ruling of indecency
The past weeks have marked an unparalleled escalation of the well known inadequacy and inability of the Italian institutions to deal with the Internet, to live their relation with digital technologies by following logic and rationality rather then emotionalism and violence. Conversely our “dear” rulers and members of Parliament have recently shot out a series of amendments, law drafts and opinions to make you goggle if you believe in the importance of Internet as a democratic tool.
The endless confrontation between HDD and SSD
In these months the storage market is going through a particularly vivid and interesting period: the SSD technology continues to break speed records still costing however an unacceptable amount of money per single Gigabyte, while the magnetic technology HDDs wink at eco-sustainability and increase the number of Gigabytes, nay Terabytes available for users data.
Videogames highlights - March 2009
Are videogames art? Personally I’m not convinced at all, and after 20 years of this hobby now become mainstream I think that the medium need different categories, and that in any case it is too much young to be defined with standards layered through the centuries. Besides this, what is sure is that the amount of promotional videogame contents released by software houses hasn’t lacked even in March, so I end the introduction right now and get on to dealing with the aforementioned contents.
Klaatu, barada, nikto, Conficker!
More than a week after the 1st of April, the day when the Internet stood still because according to the press the Conficker/Downup/Downadup/Kido worm could have destroyed the net, the infrastructures, civilized mankind and the entire planet things are going more or less as usual: Internet remains a dangerous place but it hasn’t exploded like a supernova, and bits are flowing quickly from a part to another one of the planet. The true novelty is that the botnet built up by one of the most complex malware ever finally shows what its true purpose is.
Rootkits penetrate the heart of the machine
Since, in 2005, the nasty commercial policies of Sony BMG uncovered the possibility to seize control on the operating system to hinder the normal working of the PC and peripherals, the evolution of rootkit software went through an unparalleled acceleration. The interest for the matter rose in research and among cyber-criminals gangs, with the result that can be esteemed in these days: rootkits have reached the lowest levels of electronic devices circuitry by infecting network routers, the BIOS and even the most privileged working mode of the x86 processors.
Browser war: Firefox wins, IE loses, Chrome has finally a plan
Maybe the bolt from the blue of the Chrome launch didn’t brought an awful market share figure to the newcomer, but the convulsions and the undoubted evolutive acceleration set off by the release of the made-in-Google browser are reverberating with increasing strength on the new war to control the access port to the worldwide network. Currently numbers are still on Mozilla’s and its red panda side, but in future things will become more complicated when Google will have played one of its best cards to turn Chrome from an oddity for few into a conquering force for the mainstream market.
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