What’s better than winning virtual loot in Borderlands 2? How about winning real loot by collecting virtual loot in Borderlands 2? Beginning October 11th, Gearbox is going to give away $100,000 worth of swag to Borderlands 2 players in the Loot Hunt including $50,000 to one lucky Vault Hunter. By obtaining a special gun, and playing while connected to the internet, players will unlock the ability to take part in a Community Goal that will result in getting a contest entry for that day as well as in-game loot.
Basically, a Community Goal involves killing a special type of enemy with that day’s unique gun. If you guys cumulatively kill enough enemies singled out in the daily Community Goals, then you’ll unlock a Community Reward (read: uniquely super-awesome gun) at the week’s end!
Only US residents are eligible for the real rewards, but everyone can obtain the in-game loot by participating. The contest ends on Novemember 7th.
Sci-fi? Sure, I like it, but only the trashy stuff. Not so much trashy as phony. The kind I can dip into between shifts, read a few pages at a time, and then drop. Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don’t really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth, even when they’re about things that never have been and never will be. They’re truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind — and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there. Earth has something random, fickle about it — here a tree, there a wall or garden, over the horizon another horizon, beyond the mountain a valley … but not out there.
–Stanisław Lem, “Tales of Pirx the Pilot”
I have always thought that science fiction, despite being forever linked with fantasy in the “fantasy/sci fi” section of bookstores and libraries, was actually best appreciated by adults. Unlike traditional* fantasy, which is wrapped up in quests and knowledge acquisition which are essentially coming-of-age concerns that resonate best with adolescents and young adults, science fiction at its best challenges our notions of what is possible by stripping away all the things we find familiar, and thus letting us examine fundamental beliefs and assumptions we have spent a lifetime constructing. It also taps our fascination with the unknown, specifically, that of distance.
After the jump, how far is far? Continue reading →
The PlayStation 4 controller will have basic PC functionality. Sony’s Worldwide Studios honcho Shuhei Yoshida confirmed on Twitter that the DualShock 4’s basic button and analog stick controls will work on PC just by plugging it in the USB port. When asked if the controller would be recognized at the API level as a DualShock 4 by Windows after launch, Yoshida replied that people will have to “wait for [the] field report” for more details.
Sony will likely need to write additional software to enable the Touchpad and other features on the controller that would not be recognized natively. If that is done, then it’s likely that the PS4 controller could stand toe-to-toe with the Xbox One controller or even the newly revealed Steam controller for PC gaming.
It’s Starship Week! Which means we’re going to take a long adoring look at our favorite ways to travel the stars, from games, movies, and maybe even TV shows (books not eligible because nobody reads books anymore no matter how many clever spaceship names Iain Banks thought up). This week we’ll bring you a movie spaceship of the day every day, a series of articles from Dr. Bruce Geryk based on his experience crewing spaceships, videogame spaceship expert Brian Rubin’s list of top ten videogame ships, and more from some special contributors whose names you might recognize. Punch it, Chewie.
(Note that spaceships are too big to be contained in a single week. So according the laws of physics as proved by Einstein and other leading scientists, Starship Week actually lasts for two weeks.)
After the jump, your Starship Week hub Continue reading →
Alfonso Cuaron’s masterful sci-fi thriller, Gravity, lets us re-appreciate what it means to see movies in a theater. And Sandra Bullock. You can skip Gravity spoilers by rocketing to the 58-minute mark, where this week’s 3×3 hits on the issue of head injuries.
Next week: Captain Phillips
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Chris: Someone had to run the best stagecoach line before railroads. Someone made the best gas lamps before Edison. A similar sad fate belongs to Plague Of The Zombies, a decent enough picture from Hammer that’s more interesting for what came after than perhaps the actual film itself. There’s an important piece of zombie evolution present in this film. You could almost call it the zombie movie missing link, and for that alone it’s worth a look. Old school zombies to this point in time were of the deep trance, voodoo-created archetype. Plague’s zombies are voodo-created as well, but here you can see the kernel of some of the ideas Romero would establish with his zombie movies about zombies as mindless hungry shambling hordes.
Tom: I found the zombie element is the least interesting part of this movie. You’re right that Peter’s dream could easily be seen as an evolutionary link between traditional voodoo zombie movies and Romero’s zombie movies. But these zombies are just one piece of a larger puzzle, similar to the hounds in Hound of the Baskervilles. They’re a mystery to be solved. That’s why, for me, Plague of the Zombies works as an English mystery movie that happens to have zombies instead of a horror movie.
After the jump, elementary Continue reading →
Tom: Tomb of Ligeia stars the hardest working cat in show business. This movie can’t go five minutes without someone tossing the cat from offscreen. The big finale consists of about twenty cat tossings and then some cat wrestling. But even before then, the cat has to fight a whip. He also has to fight some sort of boat hook thing that will be used in fifteen years to stick the shark in Jaws to no effect. The cat gets mountain lion dialogue. He has to wear sunglasses. No joke. The cat is made to wear sunglasses. He’s sitting there sulking with the sunglasses on his face. “Not cool,” he seems to be saying.
After the jump, Vincent Price in a supporting role Continue reading →
Chris: In May and June of 1960, two of Britain’s most famous and respected directors released films that centered around the murderous exploits of psychotic, troubled young men. One of those films–Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho–is considered one of the great, classic horror films of all time; a movie with scenes that are an essential part of Western popular culture and characters and settings recognized around the world.
After the jump, the other film Continue reading →
If you read Quarter to Three, you like old horror movies and card games and the original version of Majesty. That means you are probably terrible at the action genre known as brawlers, or beat ’em ups. You may be so out of touch that you think they are called fighting games. I’m here to tell you about a brawler even you can enjoy.
After the jump, destroy hordes of faceless goons without lifting more than one finger Continue reading →
You’re all excited about the power of the cloud, Kinect 2.0, and all the great stuff Microsoft says the Xbox One will deliver, so you snagged a preorder of the Xbox One Day One edition. Won’t your pals be jealous when they see your cool commemorative Day One controller while they’re stuck using the lame plain Xbox One controller? Maybe not. In fact, there may be a good chance they’ll be laughing at you. According to a report from GBM, some retailers are saying that there is no guarantee of getting a pre-ordered Day One edition console on day one. Best Buy and Target told GBM that they’ll do their best, but it’s out of their hands.
“Best Buy and other retailers holding pre-orders on the XBOX ONE: DAY ONE EDITION have no control over the number of units the manufacturer would provide on it’s release date, however, all retailers including Best Buy, are in constant communication with Microsoft so we may be able to comply and meet the demand of all these pre-orders. Should it occur that stocks would run out, the last customer on the waiting list will become the first customer in line for the shipment of the next batch of the XBOX ONE: DAY ONE EDITION.”
Microsoft stands by their November 22nd launch date for the Xbox One and has said that there should be no issues with pre-ordered supply for the Day One or regular console packages.
EA is exploring offline mode for SimCity. Patrick Buechner, General Manager for Maxis Emeryville, posted a “State of SimCity” article outlining where the controversial game stands seven months after launch. Buechner reiterated that the team reads and listens to fan input, citing the addition of the ability to raise and lower roads as an example of feedback leading to an improvement. On the subject of larger spaces, Buechner said the team investigated various ways to increase city size, but that it isn’t practical with the Glassbox engine. He did have some good news regarding the an offline mode being added to the game.
Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode. I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect. An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience.
Patrick Buechner ended the post by thanking fans for their passion and emphasizing his own commitment to the game.
Tom: This one was a triple heartbreaker for me. I quickly realized we weren’t watching that movie about the Goodyear Blimp ramming a football game. The second heartbreak came from my confusion that this was Black Sabbath, a horror anthology with one incredibly effective segment involving a nurse who has to sit up all night with the corpse of an old woman who’s just died. I rewatched that a few years ago and, oh boy, does it hold up! But this is not Black Sabbath. This is Black Sunday. And then my third heartbreak came after I called this up on Netflix and saw that I’d previously given it one star. You ever do that? Go to watch something on Netflix and see that you’ve already rated it and think to yourself, “I’ve seen this already?”
After the jump, I sure have. Continue reading →
The Minerva’s Den DLC for BioShock 2 is now available on Steam. Long trapped behind Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live, the DLC adds a self-contained episode to Tom’s favorite BioShock game. There’s also a patch for the base game that adds full controller support, removes all GFWL, and disables the Securom DRM. As an added treat, if you already have BioShock 2 on your Steam account, you got the DLC for free! It’s a BioShock miracle!
Update: The patch notes have been published. The key from any digital copy of BioShock 2 can now be used to add the game to your Steam library. You’ll get Minerva’s Den for free as well. Multiplayer comes with all map pack DLC and the XP progression has been tweaked to be “quicker and easier.”
Sony Online Entertainment is now offering players a way to purchase an immediate jump to level 85 in EverQuest II. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for an MMO to offer this since players have been buying and selling high-level character accounts for years. Senior Producer, Holly Longdale, explained that SOE is adding the so-called “Heroic Character” feature to EverQuest II in response to fan requests.
“Former players don’t want to play catch-up to Level 95, existing players don’t want to start over at Level 1 with their friends, and some players just want to get into high-end guilds and raids because that’s what they love to do. There’s been a lot of great feedback that led us to create Heroic Characters.”
“The goal is to provide a fun and easy option for existing and returning players to play or experiment with our characters and have immediate access to high-level content. And we think we’ve created a great program for everyone!”
Everyone can create a free jump-started character until October 15th during the “Hero’s Call” event. After that, it will cost real-world money to get a leveled character, but there will be a try before you buy option. SOE will allow you to check out a Heroic Character until level 86 for free.
This week you’re in for either a treat or an ordeal, depending on how you feel about recent games designed around the concept of a character as a deck of cards. Tom Chick, Rob Harvey, and first-timer Scott Lufkin talk about Card Hunter, Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game, and Sentinels of the Multiverse. And we furthermore welcome the creators of those games for an epic-length, star-studded podcast featuring Jon Chey, designer of Card Hunter; Mike Selinker, designer of Pathfinder; and Christopher Badell and Adam Rebottaro, the designers of Sentinels of the Multiverse. We hope you’ll enjoy the entire podcast, but you can skip to the Card Hunter interview at the 18:00 mark, the Pathfinder interview at the 1:14 mark, and the Sentinels interview at the 2:29 mark.
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