Randomn3ss

I reported it here first… well, not first, but whatever, I reported it and I’m gonna link back to it. For those of you who spent the last 9 hours sleeping instead of PLAYING THE LATEST CHAPTER OF ONE OF THE BEST VIDEO GAME FRANCHISES OF ALL TIME, then you weren’t aware that Halo 3 from Microsoft and Bungie Games dropped at midnight. If most of your male and/or nerdy co-workers are absent today, it’s because they’ve been up all night shit-talking to 12-year-olds in Kansas via XBOX Live and shooting the shit out of each other in Slayer mode. Halo 3 is Microsoft’s core game (with Master Chief being it’s new hero) and they apparently had everyone at Bungie working their asses off to make this deadline. Well, they did, beating out RockStar Games (GTA4 got pushed back until freaking 2008) and making this the sure hit of 2007.

Sadly, I have not gotten the chance to try it out yet. My buddy Dan is picking it up after work and hopefully he won’t kick me off his front lawn where I will sit until he lets me in to play.

Here’s a screenshot from the game to hold you over until you get home from work:

A few days ago an Apple loving co-worker showed me a new piece of software installed on his MacBook Pro laptop, Mac Saber. While I don’t have an embarrassing video of my co-worker to share, a quick search on YouTube yielded this overly happy Mac geek.

It is based on the sudden motion sensor built into the new Mac laptops that essentially detects when the laptop has moved a significant amount and tells the computer to spin down the hard drive so no data is lost. The purpose for this being built was in case you dropped your laptop, it was smart enough to know it was being dropped and spin down the hard drive and park the read / write heads to prevent any physical damage to the platters inside the drive. Also for those idiots who insist on walking around with their laptops powered on and open.

This technology isn’t new, it has been used for years in digital cameras to auto-rotate an image. These sudden motion sensors can be setup to know what level is and 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. Additionally, they are used in video cameras and cell phones, so they’ve been around for a while.

Mac users tend to be a little more on the geeky side and being based on the UNIX kernel; all the UNIX geeks are now writing small little apps for Mac users as well.

Yesterday my co-worker installed a new, frighteningly more geeky game onto his laptop based on both the sudden motion sensors and the built in microphone, Tilt Scream Pong. While this is more of a one person Pong game, it is unique in that, like the name implies, you tilt the laptop to move the paddle around. After a few seconds the ball speeds up and a second one is introduced. When you feel that you need a little help, simply scream out and the paddle grows in size. The louder you scream, the bigger the paddle, the easier it gets to play the game, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. Take a look at this chick going nuts flailing her spendy laptop around and screaming like an idiot.

Generally speaking, moving a laptop around in this kind of manor while turned on is not the best of ideas, but leave it up to those silly Mac users to come up with a way to look amazingly stupid while doing so. I’d strongly advise that, should you install either of these, you do not use them in public nor make videos to upload to YouTube for all of us to laugh at.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

CNN.com: Microsoft Sets Launch Date for ‘Halo 3′

On Sept. 25, I will be hanging out with my buddies who have XBox 360s and ordering food and sitting in my own filth for approximately 36 hours watching/playing the final installment in what I consider to be one of the finest video game franchises… ever.

For a girl, I kind of don’t suck at Halo. I’m nasty with a sniper rifle, but cannot, for the life of me, play on “inverted,” which my hardcore gamer friends make fun of me for (they swear that “inverted” is the only true way to play the game). However, I take equal amounts of enjoyment in merely watching people play the game. Visually, it’s stunning… especially on an HDTV. The sountrack kicks ass and the video interludes and storyline are supercool. I also have heard rumors for years of a possible ‘Halo’ movie, which had better be made by someone other than the dudes who made ‘Doom,’ because that movie sucked (although the FPS at the end was kinda cool).

In addition, I apologize for the lack of verbal acuity in this post, but I need to talk like a 15-year-old boy when I talk about ‘Halo’ because that is what this game turns me into.

For those of you who also think MasterCheif is hot as hell, here you go:

Thanks to HaloSquad.com for the image!

If you were to compose a list of the Top 10 video games of all-time, what would your list consist of? Stanford professor Dr. Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collection at the school, has been pondering that exact question. Seeing as games and gaming systems are ephemeral (they don’t last forever, ya know?), Lowood, among others, has been pressing the Library of Congress to get involved in the preservation of the gaming industry’s iconic first releases. Recently, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Lowood announced his canon to the public along with his list of the 10 games to be preserved first.

The first 10 titles they would like to see covered are:

1. Spacewar!
2. Star Raiders
3. Zork
4. Tetris
5. SimCity
6. Super Mario Bros. 3
7. Civilization I/II
8. Doom
9. The Warcraft series
10. Sensible World of Soccer

Selecting only 10 games for a canon is never an easy thing. Everyone seems to have a gaming system that defined gaming for their generation. And we all know it’s really the games that make or break a system. Of course, those of you in my generation remember the release of the original Nintendo gaming system. We got two games in one AND they came with the system! Anyone up for a game of Duck Hunt?

Source: ARS Technica