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Eyeballistic E3 Coverage

June 8th, 2010

By Joseph Tresca

e3logo 253x300 Eyeballistic E3 Coverage

Well it’s been a crazy month. We were hacked, then after some back and forth with our host we decided for the sake of our readers and for the sake of the future of Eyeballistic, it would be best if we just found a new host with better security and a willingness to resolve things faster. Today marks the first day on that new server and I can tell you now that we are going to be better than ever.

Eyeballistic will be bring you exclusive interviews, video footage and exclusive content directly from the L.A. convention center where E3 2010 is set to rock the gaming world once again. In the few days leading up to the event, we’ll tell you what games we’ll be seeing behind closed doors and why we’re excited about them. While at the show, be sure to follow our minute by minute coverage of E3. You’ll feel as though you are right there with us. Thanks again for your patience. E3 can not come soon enough!

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State of the Industry

April 12th, 2010

By Brandon Miller

So as the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo approaches, I thought it might make some sense to take a snap shot of the industry and grade the performance of the big three up until this point.

Nintendo

While the world patiently awaits the arrival of the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo DS continues to dominate the handheld market. It doesn’t have the strongest processor, but there is no denying that the ever expanding game library continues to appeal particularly to Japanese gamers. I expect the 3DS to continue this trend while offering a wider appeal.

Meanwhile the Nintendo Wii is still number 1 in the console race. The Wii has almost single-handedly captured the casual gaming market. As of late though sales have finally started to decline. The next generation Wii will need to be much more than just a Wii in high definition if Nintendo wants to continue to be number one.

Grade: B+

Microsoft

Their is no denying the impact that the Xbox 360 has had on this generation of consoles. Once a newcomer to the market, Microsoft has proved their marketing and software savy. Aside from releasing the Xbox 360 with faulty hardware, there is very little to criticise about Microsofts game plan. They captured both the hearts and minds of the hardcore gamer this generation and with the release of Natal, Microsoft is threatening to take a piece of Nintendos casual marketshare.

Grade: A

Sony

How the mighty have fallen. Once the undisputed king of video games Sony has only recently started to get its mojo back. The PS3 was released too late and it was too expensive. Remarkably stupid comments from Sony executives did nothing to help their image. Sony honestly couldn’t have had a worse start.

Likewise the PSP never truly had the support that gamers were expecting even though it clearly had more capable hardware than its competition.

When we fast forward to today, we see a Sony that has completely reinvented itself. The PS3 slim and the release of several exclusive games with graphics which are simply unparalleled in the industry, are major factors contributing to Sonys recent success.

Marketing for their systems has improved 10 fold and the much needed price drop has seen Sonys PS3 outsell even the mighty Nintendo Wii. Meanwhile the PSP slim model is still overpriced for market consumption. It could use a price drop and a few more exclusives announced at a E3 but if I had to guess, I’d say Sony will be switiching focus to the impending PSP2.

Grade: B+

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Eyeballistic iPad Review

April 6th, 2010

By Brandon Miller

Picture 241 300x280 Eyeballistic iPad Review

Magical? Revolutionary? No the iPad will not change your life. It isn’t the technological masterpiece that the iPhone was. It’s not the game changer that the iPod was either. What it is, is the most beautifully design portable device that you’ll ever lay your eyes on. While it is not without some faults it certainly succeeds in filling the gap between portable devices and laptops.

First of all the screen is absolutely brilliant. It’s bright, colorful and rivals that of an HDTV screen. The multi-touch display is responsive just as you would expect. If there is any negative here it is that the black border running around the edge of the screen is a bit too thick. Everything moves on screen at a pretty snappy speed with the 1GHz A4 processor doing a very respectable job.

The iPad uses a special operating system which has a few advantages over the iPhone/iPod Touch OS. First since the interactive area is much larger it supports features such as in-app pop-up windows, multiple interactive spaces, and of course iBook store support. These may sound like minor differences, but I can tell you first hand that they make a big difference in terms of usability. You won’t have the all too familiar problem with having to tap interface buttons more than once to interact.

Since the iPad has the ability to support multiple interactive fields, viewing information by scrolling through the feeds on the screen feels perfectly natural. Since we’re talking about interactivity, the large screen keyboard is a dream. I found Apple’s word processing app, Pages to be extremely user friendly, though if I had to choose I’d probably still prefer to do heavy typing on a proper keyboard.

The iWork suite, which serves as Apple’s version of Office, also includes Numbers for spreadsheet creation and Keynote for presentations. Apple has created new iPad versions which do a serviceable job, but I think they will work much better for quick edits of already created documents.

Reading mail, browsing the internet and viewing photos are where the iPad’s strengths really come through. The convenience of the larger screen cannot be understated for these reasons, though the lack of Flash support in the Safari web browser is a disappointing exclusion. Although the processor speed is very quick, it can be noticeably slow when opening graphic intensive apps.

I’ve also noticed while browsing the web, some inconsistent Wi-Fi signals. A step in one direction or another can have the signal go from full bars to almost none. I do think this is a problem that can be alleviated with a firmware upgrade, though it should have been ironed out well before release.

The OS’s inability to run mulitple apps is also limiting, specifically with social networking applications. It just isn’t the step forward that it should have been, especially when there are phones which already have these abilities.

Lastly for the price, the iPad seems a bit too expensive for anyone not a member of the Apple fan club.
At the current price point it’s hard to justify the iPad since it’s not really an essential device like a cellular phone is.

Although there are some obvious shortcomings that will be improved with future iterations of the device, I think it’s a good step in the right direction. If Apple can reduce the price and improve some of the other issues, one day in the future it could be a real winner. Right now it’s just a sexy toy for the early adopters.

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Rape Game Stirs Controversy, Again and Again

April 6th, 2010

By Joseph Tresca

April 21, 2006 a game was released that simply takes things too far. The game is none other than the now infamous RapeLay and the company responsible for this trash is a called Illusion. If you haven’t heard about it yet, then consider yourself lucky. It means you haven’t been reminded that there is in this world an evil that exists which allows those who wish to fantasize and rape a young woman and her daughters, to fulfill their darkest wishes virtually.

In the story you play Kimura who must rape three girls in order Manaka (10 years old), Yuuko (24 years old) and Aoi (16 years old). The story begins with Kimura being arrested for groping Aio on a subway train. Because Kimura’s father is an important political figure, he manages to get his son released. He follows Manaka, the youngest (a 10 year old girl for love of God) and after getting off of the train, he traps her in a public bathroom and rapes her, taking pictures of her semen-covered naked body with his cell phone.

The next day he follows Yuuko, the mother, from her house to the train station where he fondles her on the train. Later Kimura follows her to the city park, when Manaka calls Yuuko on her cell phone. As per his plan, Manaka tells her that she is in the bushes at the park, and when Yuuko walks towards the bushes, Kimura ambushes her and ties her up. He then rapes her in the park, and takes pictures of her semen-covered naked body before handing her over to his gang of helpers. Absolutely disgusting.

The third day he follows Aoi, the oldest daughter, to the train station and shows her the photo of her tied up mother. Shocked, she can only follow his orders as he gropes her on the train. After getting off of the train, she asks Kimura why he is doing this, at which point she remembers he is the man who was arrested for molesting her when she was younger. The two get on a vehicle and with the help of his crew, Kimura takes her to a hotel which his family owns, and rapes her again taking photos.

If the storyline doesn’t make you want to vomit in your mouth a little bit, it only gets worse. The player can choose from a variety of sexual positions to force the girls into at his leisure. It includes reverse cowgirl, blowjobs, and threesomes. Watch out though, because you can “lose” the game by ignoring the internal ejaculation counter which measures how close the girls are to getting pregnant.

Now I’m certainly not the first person to write about this sick and twisted game. I should note that the game has been removed from store shelves completely in Japan as well as other parts of the world and I’d argue that it should never have been sold in the first place.

People are talking about the game once again since CNN recently caught on to it. Now I’ll admit there is clearly a bias shown in the story that CNN ran. But many Japanese people are outraged that a South Korean reporter would dare report on the game which portrays Japan as a godless, loveless country. Koreans, some Japanese people say, are taught to hate Japan’s people from birth. This may very well be true, but regardless of whether the reporter was one race or another, doesn’t change the fact the this game should receive all the negative criticism the world can possibly muster. Listen, I’m all for freedom of speech and expression, but if you release a game this morally repugnant than I say your company and anyone who defends it should be exposed. When someone from another country mentions the North American Man Boy Love Association, I hang my head in shame, because freedom is what allows disgusting groups like that to thrive and promote their illness. I don’t try and defend the indefensible. How anyone can defend this game in any way shape or form is absolutely beyond me.

Now many people will say, the game is only sold to adults, so that makes it o.k. because it is for a mature audience only. I say where does it end? Why not allow child pornography then too? Some will say, why don’t you have a problem mercilessly murdering millions of soldiers in a popular first person shooter such as Call of Duty? Is murder not worse than rape? To those people I say rape is a deeply psychologically disturbing act of aggression. It can ruin a woman or a child’s life. It involves a stronger person attacking a weak and defenseless person. The context for which rape occurs is never ever honorable. It’s one person selfishly feeding their desires while another person is tortured and degraded. I can fight for my country against other armed soldiers. Sometimes killing is necessary to protect freedom. It IS o.k. to kill someone to defend loved ones or to defend yourself. You’ll notice that you’ll never play a game where the hero is terrorist? Because terrorists attack those who could not defend themselves. There is no honor in that. If for some reason you are among the misguided or evil who think Rapelay is good for the industry or the world, then I ask you what other types of games would you like to see? Are you Jewish? Would you like to play a game where you are a Nazi who cooks defenseless Jews in ovens while in World War II concentration camps? Are you African American or Black? Why not create a game where you are members of the KKK trapping and hanging men, women and children? Are you Japanese? How about a game where you get to choose exactly when and where in Japan you’d like to drop an Atomic bomb, disintegrating millions of innocent people. I could keep going until I find something that I’m sure will resonate with you and your culture. There is a reason these games are not created, and if you are too stupid, selfish or just plain evil to understand that, then you deserve the wrath and shame that comes with being societal misanthrope.

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The Impact of Cloud Computing

April 5th, 2010

By Brandon Miller

One day in the not so distant future you’ll wake up wanting to play a video game. With a few minutes to kill before you head out to work, you’ll turn on your gaming system and instantly be presented with an array of games to choose from. Strategy, FPS, TPS, MMO it’ll all be there. You select the game you wish to play and instantly hop right into the action. There will be almost no detectable loading time and the game’s graphics will easily rival the best special effects Hollywood has to offer. The coffee has finished brewing and you realize you have but 5 minutes before you’ll be late to work. You’ll pause the game, turn on your portable device and log in to the exact same experience via your mobile phone. It’ll be the exact same game, with exactly the same graphics, saved in exactly the same spot you left off from. Now you are ready to continue playing once you reach the train station.

It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but the experience I described above will be here much sooner than you
might think. What I’ve described is all made possible with the power of cloud computing and I truly believe it is the future.

What is it?

First what exactly is cloud computing? It’s using the power of the internet to link multiple computers together which is also known as a process called grid computing. If you’ve ever used Sony’s folding at home on the PS3 you’ve already witnesses a glimpse of the power involved.

Cloud computing takes a cluster of computers and uses their combined processing power to solve a particular task. Combine enough of these computers together and couple them with a low latency, high speed internet connection, and you have a cloud computing game system. Just imagine a cluster of super computers run by Microsoft or Sony specifically made to dole out the most incredible graphics and effects which would then be recieved by a modestly powered input device and little more than a screen.

How soon can we expect it?

As we speak Google has already begun the process of upgrading high speed internet connections with the potential to download large chunks of data faster than you can imagine. Gig per second internet connections will have the capacity to send ultra high definition movies to your television screen in seconds.

Who sees the future?

Google, onLive, Microsoft and Sony are all preparing for this wave of technology which benefits everyone. Software developers are offered a platform with almost limitless power. Studios will no longer lose money to piracy and game rentals or resale will become a thing of the past. Manufacturing cost will all but be eliminated and more of consumers dollars will go directly to the studios talent. Consumers will benefit from lower cost games because so many of the middle men will be cut out.

So when will we see this technology? Within the next 12 years. Once all of the high speed internet pieces are in place, the cloud computing revolution will begin.

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