Monthly Archives: May 2015
SpaceX Certified by US Air Force for National Security Missions
The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) certificated SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch system for national security space missions, such as launching military satellites.
The successful conclusion of the two-year-long certification process means the private space transport company is now eligible to bid on national security missions against United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its Atlas 5.
“This is an important step toward bringing competition to National Security Space launch,” SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk said in a prepared statement. “We thank the Air Force for its confidence in us and look forward to serving it well.”
SpaceX can begin competing for projects in June when the Air Force is expected to open up launch service proposals for its next-generation GPS 3 satellites.
Comic Book Reviews for May 27, 2015
May closed out with a bang as far as new comic releases went. DC wrapped up their two month-long Convergence event with a final issue that reshaped the multiverse and a final wave of tie-ins. They also continued the new Injustice: Year Four saga with the second print issue and delivered the long-awaited penultimate chapter of The Sandman: Overture.. Marvel, meanwhile, debuted a number of new Secret Wars tie-ins, including several winners like Old Man Logan #1, Where Monsters Dwell #1 and Infinity Gauntlet #1.
Not to be outdone, Dark Horse kicked off the much-hyped comic book sequel to Fight Club, IDW continued building towards their next major Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles storyline, and Image launched yet another great indie series in the form of Ales Kot and Will Tempest's Material #1.
Oculus Rift and a PC to Run It May Cost $1,500 Total
When bought along with a VR-ready computer, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset may set consumers back a grand total of roughly $1,500 US, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said on Wednesday during Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
“We are looking at an all-in price, if you have to go out and actually need to buy a new computer and you’re going to buy the Rift … at most you should be in that $1,500 range,” Iribe said, according Re/code, adding he’d like the total price to eventually duck under the $1,000 US mark.
Earlier this month Oculus announced its recommended PC specs for an optimal VR experience. A PC with an Intel Core i5-4590 CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon 290X, and 8GB RAM is readily available in the $1,000 range today; based on Iribe's estimate, that would imply that the Oculus Rift consumer version itself should be in the $400 to $500 price range. That's more or less consistent with the $350 price of the most recent available headset, the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, and the large improvements in tracking technology and resolution we've seen in more recent prototypes.
Twitch Bans Streaming of Adults Only Rated Games
Live streaming video platform Twitch has updated its Rules of Conduct to prohibit the streaming of games rated Adults Only by the Entertainment Software Rating Board on its service.
“Our goal at Twitch is to create a safe, welcoming, inclusive community platform where everyone can feel comfortable and have fun,” the company wrote in a new post published on the official Twitch blog.
“Previously, we made game-specific decisions about which games would and would not be available for broadcast – sometimes due to overtly sexual content, sometimes due to gratuitous violence. This is unsustainable and unclear, generating only further confusion among Twitch broadcasters. We would like to make this policy as transparent as possible.”
Vivid Musify+Gamify Event Kicks off for Lovers of Music and Games
Do you love games? How about music? Would you be interested in an event that lets you explore the fluid boundaries between the two? Vivid Musify+Gamify has kicked off at Sydney’s Seymour Centre in Chippendale, and offers you the chance to do just that.
It invites you to physically experiment and explore how contemporary musical play and game play can coincide. Curated by Dr. Lian Loke and Dr. Ollie Bown, the event consists of two concerts and a free exhibition at the Seymour Centre in Chippendale. The immersive exhibition lets attendees interact with the installations and participate in the creation of music in a myriad of ways, from generating music to non-traditional video games.
Our Best and Worst E3 Memories – Podcast Unlocked
DOWNLOAD PODCAST UNLOCKED EPISODE 197
As E3 2015 approaches, each of our Xbox podcast crew shares his best – or worst – E3 memories. Plus: we get teased by Halo 3: ODST releasing for Xbox One (but ultimately it didn't), teased by a real baseball game on Xbox (nope, it doesn't have the MLB license), and more!
NOTES:
The Halo 3: ODST discussion starts at the 22:18 mark.
The Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings discussion starts at the 25:58 mark.
The Need for Speed/Criterion's "GoPro" game discussion starts at the 31:35 mark.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 for PS4 Suffering Performance Issues
Street Fighter has made the jump to PlayStation 4 but things aren't going well.
Users have reported numerous issues with Ultra Street Fighter IV after its launch on PS4 yesterday, according to EventHubs. Problems include a Juri glitch, which makes a copy of her appear on screen (as evidenced by the video posted to YouTube by user nsb5024, as seen below), as well as a separate issue where her fireballs are invisible. Guile also suffers a similar issue with his Sonic Booms.
9 Post-New 52 DC Comics We Can’t Wait to Read
With DC's Convergence takeover ending this week, it's time to look forward to June, the publisher's first month of post-New 52 comics. The New 52 branding might be gone, but half of DC's comics are continuing as normal while a slew of new comics debut at issue #1.
Of all the comics hitting in June, these are the nine we are most excited to read. Check out our list, then let us know what you're jazzed for in the comments.
A Text Message Could Crash Your iPhone
Owners of Apple's iPhone are facing a new crashing bug, which can be delivered by simply sending a text message.
Ars Technica reports that the "CoreText" bug is caused a combination of ASCII and unicode characters, starting with the word "effective." Receiving the text causes the iPhone to crash.
To prevent yourself from falling victim to the bug, you can go into your system settings and turn off text message previews (Notifications>Messages>Show Previews). That will keep you from having an instant crash upon receiving the message normally, but some users have reported that using the WhatsApp for messaging could also trigger the bug. The reports also claim Mac OS X is vulnerable, but only by using the Terminal.
Magnetic: Cage Closed Review
Magnetic: Cage Closed is a game where every second is a battle against loose jumping and even looser primary gimmick powers as you solve mindless puzzles. Unwieldy imprecision is at the core of Magnetic, and it makes for a terribly frustrating experience.
Originally created as a student project for developer Guru Games, Magnetic: Cage Closed is a puzzle-platformer with magnetic force as the primary gimmick. Stuck in some dystopian prison (for reasons that are never properly explained) and sentenced to death row, your character is given a chance at freedom if she can escape the twisted, sadistic warden’s experimental weapons laboratory by becoming the latest guinea pig for a new supertool: a magnet gun.
If that sounds like an intriguing premise, it is. The game was originally designed as Portal meets The Cube, and solving physics-based puzzles in a totalitarian prison environment sounds like an idea with legs. However, it's clear that Magnetic: Cage Closed doesn't have the personality or fresh perspective to pull this sort of material off. The primary villain, the warden, is GlaDos without any of that homicidal AI's charm or humor. And while the game has every right to tell a more serious story, it doesn't, despite many attempts. There's no nuance or subtlety to the villains, your environment, or your actions. Thus, the story is an "evil prison" with no context or heart pushing you forward.
The game's primary gimmick is magnetic attraction/repulsion. You're given a magnet gun--with three different power settings--that you can use to attract surfaces or repel them. You can use your gun to pick up boxes and then shoot them across the room. You can levitate across specialized magnetic pads and use those pads to fling yourself across rooms. But at every turn, it never felt like I was in true control of my movements and actions.
It's the little things that add up in Magnetic: Cage Closed's avalanche of missteps. Mid-puzzle checkpoints are a rarity, almost to the point of being non-existent. For many of the more-involved, late-game puzzles, you will play long sections of puzzles over and over again as you reach the spot where one botched jump or poorly executed magnetic repulsion flight means instant death through impalement or a slow death through chlorine gas poison.
At the beginning of the game, it's not an issue. Magnetic is simply dull. But the back half of the game featured multiple puzzles that I spent over half an hour on (and two that took over an hour) not because the puzzles were difficult to solve--puzzles are never more involved than "get boxes here"--but because the platforming refused to cooperate. Various "puzzles" rely on trial-and-error guessing instead of logic. You're required to shoot boxes at certain buttons surrounded by magnetic attraction/repulsion pads, which create magnetic fields around the button keeping you from shooting the box directly at the button. And that's cool...in theory. But what it ultimately comes to is figuring out early where exactly you need to shoot the box and then spending 10 minutes nailing the sweet spot.
The game also features "moral choices," but they're extremely simple. The first choice (arguably the most clever) involves simply pressing a button or not pressing a button within one minute. The rest are stale: sentence someone to certain death or don't (without ever putting a face to the person you're making a decision about); seek revenge or take a more selfless action. The choices could have been interesting, but you’re never given any context to make you care about why you're doing anything.
Magnetic: Cage Closed is not a puzzle platformer that will tickle your brain and push your problem-solving capabilities. Extreme repetition, poor controls, and a barely there story makes this game a dull proposition from start to finish.