Grand Theft Auto VI Has an Official Trailer!Ten years after Grand Theft Auto V, we finally get a glimpse at the next episode of the Rockstar franchise that debuted in 1997. Take a look at Grand Theft Auto VI.The graphics are incredible- better than many animated movies, almost approaching live action film. It looks like a 21st century version of Miami Vice (the TV series), and indeed, Mefites dubbed it Florida Man: the Video Game. So did Farkers. This version has been in development for almost ten years. Alas, it will still be at least a year before the game is ready for your hot little hands. The release date will be sometime in 2025 only for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with no mention of a release date for PC. You may have to upgrade.
Indie Games Are All Different, Yet All the SameIf you know, you know. Indie games are built by developers with passion but without the resources of the major players. Try a new one out, and you'll be confronted with ancient fonts, motion blur, breaking the fourth wall, existential angst, unexpected/over-expected twists, bad art, and an overall feeling that this is just a beta test, and maybe the full game will be ready sometime in the future. But this is as good as it gets, and it really doesn't matter as long as you have fun playing it. When three guys in a dorm room have a great idea, there's nothing else to do but go ahead and build it, or else play it. Alasdair Beckett-King has obviously done quite a bit of playing these games, because he's got every detail pegged with frightening accuracy. Or at least every detail that will fit into a one-minute video.
A Random Compilation of Video Game TriviaVideo game developers have stories to tell about every game they've had a hand in designing. maybe it's about unsuccessfully battling a glitch that instead became a feature. Or working overtime to correct something you'd have never noticed in the first place. Or maybe like the Mario above, what you thought was a glitch had a practical reason behind it.
Frank Reynolds Goes Post-Apocalyptic in The Last of UsFrank Reynolds, one of the main characters in the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has no filter, and no morals. Played perfectly by Danny DeVito, he cannot exactly be described as a "beloved" character, but he's a fan favorite because he's so ridiculous in his loathsomeness. So it comes as a surprise that mashup master eli_handle_b․wav selected him to live in a video game, namely The Last of Us. Then again, maybe it's the perfect combination. The in-game universe is a depressing dystopia, and Frank lives a depressing dystopian life in IASIP. He fits right in, and even flourishes among the infected zombies because it gives him an opportunity to be violent. Frank gets a real kick out of smashing skulls and making snarky remarks about the other characters. Perfect! -via Born in Space
Controlling a Video Game with Your MindHow neat would it be to control your video game character just by thinking about the moves you want? Gamer and psychologist @perrikaryal has been working to make it happen. She wears an electroencephalogram (EEG) that detects electrical activity in the brain. Those signals are fed to software that's been trained to interpret those signals and translate them for the game controller. The most time-consuming part of the project was training the software to turn brain signals into the correct movements, which you can read about here. It doesn't take all that much time for people to learn how to use it, as we watch James Raynor with the Great Big Story film crew took a turn with it himself. The purpose of this technology is not just to allow gamers to give up the few body movements they actually perform, so they can use their hands to eat more Cheetos. This integrated technology could be used to allow people who are totally paralyzed to communicate. It could also make video games and other various computer applications accessible to people with a wide variety of disabilities. And we might learn more about our brains, too.
A Gallery of Firsts from Video Game HistoryThe history of video games is a rich subject. Even though the scope is barely more than 50 years, the innovations are many and the details go deep. You might be surprised to learn that the first video arcade game was not Pong. Oh, it was probably the first one you saw if you were around in the 1970s, but a game called Computer Space preceded it by a year. Pong just proved to be more popular. What video game was the first to have a female voice? The first video game in a movie? The first handheld video game? The first cheat code? Here's a hint: they are older than you might guess. Den of Geek did the digging, and presents us with 15 firsts in the video game world, featuring a stroll down memory lane for older gamers, and for those younger, a bunch of games you've never heard of that you might want to seek out for the sake of history. (Image credit:Atari, ASCII Entertainment Software, Inc., Bandai Namco)