Rob LeFebvre - page 40

Warhammer 40,0000 is nothing if not crazily over-the-top, as this new trailer for a first-person shooter set in the far-future setting of the game universe shows.

This is the first video captured exclusively within the game engine, Unreal Engine 4, showing off all the lighting and texture effects in great detail.

In this game from developer Streum On Studio, you’ll play as a Librarian of the Deathwing, an elite force of hugely-armored badasses from the future who are trapped in a Space Hulk, a massive derelict space ship drifting in the outer reaches of the galaxy. You’ll take on hordes of Genestealers, the Alien-like enemies who are out to, well, kill you dead.

Check out the trailer below.

“Die, fish. Die! Die, shark!”

That’s what one goggled attendee shouts near the end of Sony’s new video (below) showing people’s reaction to its not-yet-released virtual reality headset, codenamed Project Morpheus, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a couple weeks back in Los Angeles.

He and many other gamers got the chance to try out Sony’s answer to the Oculus Rift at the expo, and boy is it weird to watch them from the outside.

It’s hard to show what VR is really all about without, you know, actually having you wear the headsets. VR rigs like Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus have an uphill battle to convince the rank and file that VR is going to be compelling enough to shell out even more money for their gaming systems.

Sony opted to show us people from the outside, and I’m not sure it’s any more compelling than a 2D video of the VR games on offer right now.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 is coming to theaters this November, and the propaganda public relations machinery is getting in its first swing.

In a new trailer posted on YouTube Wednesday and embedded below, you’ll get to see Donald Sutherland as President Snow, the creepy dictator-like leader of Panem, the totalitarian state that runs the teens-killing-teens Hunger Games as a way to control the means of production via fear and sweeping promises of security.

It’s a creepy trailer that looks like a propaganda film, with President Snow mouthing platitudes and a brainwashed Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutcherson, standing at Snow’s right hand, staring up into the sky (or ceiling).

With summertime here in the northern hemisphere, it’s definitely time to get outdoors and sample all that the world has to offer.

Of course, if Steam or GoG.com have anything to say about it, you’ll stay inside working on your pasty complexion playing all these amazing games for very little money.

Both gaming digital distribution platforms have their respective summer sales on right now, and you can grab some amazing games without emptying your wallet. All of the games below are playable on Mac or PC, so pick your poison.

Just lay off the sunscreen, ok?

The sequel to one of our favorite games is headed to iOS this July 2. Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution 2 will be a premium title for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, so get ready to strategize your way to victory with new leaders Churchill and Kennedy on the go.

This is the first Civ game developed especially for mobile devices with new gameplay and controls that work well on touch screens. You’ll get the same core strategic and tactical joy the series is known for, but with more user-friendly controls and interface. You’ll also get some new historical leaders — like Churchill and Kennedy — who will take their place alongside favorites Ghandi, Lincoln, and Napoleon.

Sookie, Bill, Jason, LaFayette, Sam, and Jessica are back in the final season of True Blood, HBO’s killer vampire drama that’s in its seventh and final season.

We’re here to watch the writers and actors raise the stakes for the residents of Bon Temps as they try to make sense of a world terrorized by infected Hepatitis V vampires and the human bigotry of the small southern town in the series inspired by Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries novels.

If you missed the first six seasons, be warned: there’s a ton of spoilers here. If you want to catch up on the basics, though, head over to our monstrous six-season recap and then come on back, y’all, hear?

Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress and telepath who can read your every thought. This hasn’t made her feel welcome in the tiny Southern town full of bigots and racists where she lives. Worse yet, she’s fallen for a vampire, Bill Compton, who’s a champion for other vamps to “come out of the coffin” and live peacefully alongside humans. Oh, and werewolves, shape-shifters, witches and fairies are real, too.

HBO’s True Blood is a fun, sexy romp through an engaging universe of characters and supernatural goings on. Based on the best-selling novels of Charlaine Harris, True Blood heads into its seventh and final season tonight, and we don’t want to miss a minute.

LOS ANGELES — Free-to-play games don’t enjoy the same cache as games that cost money right out of the gate. Sure, they’re at the top of the “making money” charts, as gamers download freebies by the bucketful (and apparently purchase loads of virtual stuff from them), but ask any gamer what they think of them and they’ll typically give you a blank, slightly annoyed stare.

So I honestly didn’t hold out much hope that I’d see anything super-interesting at an Electronic Entertainment Expo luncheon sponsored by free-to-play mobile game maker DeNA last week.

However, the developer showed off a couple of pretty damn good games at the event. We saw the recently released Transformers tie-in game and several others, including Peter Molyneux’s latest effort, Godus. But what really stuck out for me were Royal Defenders and WARP.

Every once in a while, it’s good to take a step back from the more intense flavors of gaming available on your iPhone or iPad and just play a game that’s pure fun.

Grub, sequel to the hit game from independent game studio Pixowl, Greedy Grub, is one of those purely fun experiences that just begs to be played.

Last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, I got a chance to try this delightful little Snake-style game out on the developer’s iPad, and was enchanted by the visuals right off the bat.

Take a look at the video below to see what I mean.

In 2K’s upcoming game, Evolve, I was a monster.

It was my job to stalk the surrounding map, eating smaller creatures in order to build up my armor and get evolution points, which would let me add and strengthen my special monstrous abilities.

I had to do this while being hunted by a team of four humans, each with their own specialty: the heavily armored, damage-dealing Assault class, the crafty Trapper with her energy-field dome to fence me in, the Support class, with a variety of ranged weapons, and the Medic, who kept healing those bastards as I hit them with my own smart bombs, electric attacks and sharp claws.

It was a heady, scary time, but I persevered. I flew up to the sky, hurling furious attacks upon their heads. I ran away, hiding behind huge rock columns to avoid their deadly assault. I ate and evolved.

Then, after about 20 minutes of furious action, I died, the victim of their unwarranted greed and violence.

I loved playing Evolve, and so will you. Check out the trailer below to see the Kraken, the second monster revealed for the upcoming console and PC game.

Chances are you’ve heard of Tamagotchi, the little handheld virtual pets that took over the world during the first decade of the 2000s, selling more than 76 million little egg-shaped devices as of 2010.

Hatch is one of the many virtual pet apps out there, but it’s an adorable one. You may even recognize the little Fugu creature from its own Facebook Messenger sticker series.

Virtual pets aren’t anything new to the iOS ecosystem, but this new collaboration between Hatch and super-popular video game Pocket God is something new. If you’ve ever thought about doing more with that little digital pal in your pocket, now might be the time. Check out the launch video below for more.

I’ve been using a USB 3 external hard drive to backup my Macbook Pro for a while now, and have been pleased with its reliability and fast data transfer speed. I also love that it powers itself via the USB port, letting me live a little more power cord free.

When I received the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt SSD drive for review, I thought, “well, it’s pretty, but how much better can it be?” It’s just as small, powers itself via Thunderbolt (or USB) and has plenty of space on it, just like my current drive.

Then I ran a few tests and pulled up a drive speed test app on my Mac. I was blown away by the speed difference. This is one blazing fast hard drive. And, yeah, it still looks great.

As a gamer, I want a controller with buttons. I lust after this new product category like I do any new gadget that I think will improve my gaming experience. I think that if you play games with any frequency, you’ll want them too.

Unfortunately, I also think the majority of mobile gamers are making do just fine with touch interfaces, thank you very much, and that these lust-worthy devices will soon find their way to the dustbin for most who buy them. Not because the controllers, including one that straps to the sides of your iPad mini like the loving embrace of an alien face-hugger, aren’t any good. On the contrary, these are solid, high-quality gaming peripherals that will make certain types of console-like games (platformers, open-world sandbox games, first-person shooters) much easier to play.

Halfbrick Studios, the folks behind massively popular endless-runner Jetpack Joyride have decided that the best way to get you to play their games is to give them away for a grand total of nothing.

The Brisbane-based game development studio was founded in 2001, and has gone on to make a ton of popular games across iOS and other platforms, including fruit-slashing hit Fruit Ninja and tongue-in-cheek giant robot game Colossatron.

There’s also Fruit Ninja Puss in Boots, the endless-runner Monster Dash, the song-creation game Band Stars, dual-stick shooter favorite Age of Zombies, and the wacky Fish Out of Water, where you get to flick various marine creatures across the top of the ocean for distance and style-based high scores.

All of these games will work on your iPhone or iPad, and — since you’re buying them at the free price now — you will own them into perpetuity.

You can grab any one of Halfbrick’s premium games for nothing right now, so head on over.

Source: iTunes

Jose Torres, CEO of Boogio, wants you to track your fitness with the most obvious part of your body: your feet.

“We’ve got 60,000 layers of sensitivity in the Boogio,” he told Cult of Mac at last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, “so we can track gravitational force, inner balance, and three different acceleration forces of your feet.”

The new trailer for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana, has us chomping at the galactic bit for the full movie, due out in theaters August 1. There’s plenty of action in this new preview, along with some fantastic moments between our protagonists.

With Bradley Cooper as wisecracking badass raccoon Rocket and Vin Diesel as giant, flower-giving tree-thug Groot, the upcoming flick from the makers of Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers is promising a lot to moviegoers; let’s hope it’s worth the wait.

If you haven’t gotten enough of disgruntled avians from Rovio’s hit series Angry Birds, what with last week’s Angry Birds Epic or the well-received Angry Birds Star Wars mobile games, then this news is for you.

Rovio has teamed up with Hasbro to mashup its own quirky mobile gaming franchise with yet another pop-culture phenomenon, the Transformers. And not the Michael Bay hyper-CGI movies, either. This looks to be a full-on 1980s cartoon take on the “robots in disguise” theme, complete with birds disguised as robots that can turn into cars and airplanes.

Sigh.

LOS ANGELES — Drop this tactical-style vest onto your shoulders and fasten it high on your chest, and you’re suddenly feeling the action. Using audio-based haptic technology (the kind of rumbling vibrations that you’ll find in any video gaming controller), the KOR-FX turns the audio in the game into rumbles you can feel.

The makers of this new gaming peripheral have a few prototypes set up on the show floor at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, and they’ll let all comers come and try a demo.

“Some people want to wear this thing lower on their chest, but up high is what stimulates the limbic system,” Seth Fandetti, CEO of Immerz (the makers of the KOR-FX) told us onsite at the expo. “It’s more than just feeling bullets hit you; it’s a whole immersive experience.”

Instead of trotting out the cliché question, “Are games art?,” an exhibit at the Electronic Entertainment Expo aims to explore the actual artwork from upcoming and recently announced video games.

Long gone are the pixellated abstracts of yesteryear: these are fully realized, gorgeous works of art in various styles, hung for all to see in the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the Expo takes place this week.

Developing today’s graphics-rich video games –mobile, console, or PC — takes a lot of time, talent, and passion, and the images above show the kind of artistic energy that is put into them. From the painterly styles of artwork from Assassin’s Creed Unity and Destiny to the poster illustration of The Banner Saga and Sunset Overdrive, there’s a lot to like in the images above.

All photos by Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

LOS ANGELES — Microsoft has faced a perception problem ever since last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. At this year’s E3 media briefing, however, everything the company said, did or showed was aimed squarely at fixing things.

“We listened to you, the gamers,” said Xbox director Phil Spencer to the crowd gathered here Monday. “This year, we’re only focusing on games.”

The next 90 minutes brought a fast-paced, booming litany of games, games, games. The wristbands given to every attendee at the Galen Auditorium flashed with colored lights to complement the onscreen demos and video game trailers. The speakers filled the room with so much sound that the hairs on the sides of my head moved when the explosions happened. And there were a lot of explosions.

When my kids and I walked into a coffee shop one sunny day last month, we were greeted by a row of tables holding laptops with gaming demos.

My son gravitated toward the biggest display, a huge TV screen with a giant, face-obscuring set of goggles set in front of it. This was the Oculus Rift, the latest fad gaming device that places two stereoscopic images in front of your eyes to simulate virtual reality.

He slid the massive black eyewear onto his face, picked up the connected Xbox controller, and started moving his head around. The rest of us could see the game on the TV — an abstract shooting gallery in three dimensions, with my boy at the center, first-person style.

After about five minutes of waving his head around and pressing buttons on the controller, my son pushed the goggles up and off his head and said, “Dad, I think I’m going to be sick.”

The sad part of buying a new console is not having enough games to play on it. That’s been the case with all three new next generation gaming machines released recently, but the trend is perhaps most noticeable with Sony’s new box, the PlayStation 4.

I purchased Sony’s hot new console on the day it came out, but the number of big new games I can run on it can easily be counted on one hand.

Sony looks to fill this gap next week at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, and it’s just released a staggeringly huge list of games (much bigger than the usual console-style announcement we’ve seen in years past) that we can look forward to seeing at their booth on the show floor, including over 40 games for the PlayStation 4 console itself.

As a huge fan of Vertigo Comics’ Hellblazer, about hard-bitten wise-cracking paranormal detective John Constantine, I’m warily excited about the upcoming TV series on NBC. Wary because of the totally off-base movie of the same name. Excited because, well, it looks like they got a bunch of things about the character and universe in which he lives “right.”

“I think as with the source material,” says series lead Matt Ryan in an interview with IGN, “there’s so much to draw from in terms of the character and the balance of humor and wit and dark and gritty. It’s great, because John has this kind of real sarcastic, ironic British wit. It’s funny, but at the same time it’s serious and dark and gritty. It’s got it all, I think.”

At first glance, the trailer (below) looks like the show creators understand more of the character than the 2005 movie starring Keanu Reeves ever did, including emo angels, a world-weary John Constantine and his famous trench coat.

When we’re looking for comics in our local nerd den, we’re often overwhelmed by the quantity of new titles each week. That’s not even counting the back issues and collected series in trade paperback format.

So we asked some of the most alpha nerds we know: the folks at Industrial Toys, a game development team (Midnight Star) with a who’s-who pedigree in geek. There’s CEO Alex Seropian, the co-founder of Bungie games (Marathon, Halo), Tim Harris, part owner of Alley Cat Comics in Chicago, John Scalzi, best-selling science fiction author, and Mike Choi, a veteran comic book artist in his own right.

Harris and Seropian, along with art director Aaron Marroquin and senior graphic designer Sarah Chiappetta, chimed in to our request with the comic books that they think are the best in the bin.