Video Games

Not too long ago, we were all salivating at the release of NVIDIA's GTX 580 graphics card and scrambling to make the most of the world's fastest Direct X GPU. Now AMD has bounced back with the announcement that its new Radeon HD 6990 card has beaten NVIDIA's 3DMark 11 performance score in industry standard benchmark testing for a single graphics card. AMD says that its new powerhouse GPU is able to automatically unlock higher clock speeds, features technology aimed at giving gamers the best possible visual experience, and supports a number of different display options, including expanding the field of view over five monitors with Eyefinity technology. Read More

When I reviewed PlayStation Move last year, I named Killzone 3 as one of the games that would show us whether Move controllers were destined to gather dust in the cupboard or play an important role in the longevity of the PlayStation 3 platform. It is unquestionably the latter. Read More

It wasn’t all that long ago that rhythm-based games were sweeping all before them and plastic guitar controllers and drum kits were popping up in living rooms and bedrooms around the world at an astonishing rate. It seems many of those controllers are now gathering dust, leading Activision to announce it will “disband” its Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011. Read More

Sony unveiled the successor to the PSP at its PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo today. While Sony spokespeople continually referred to the device by its codename of Next Generation Portable (NGP), it's not yet clear whether this will be the name of the device when it is brought to market. Read More

A common criticism of single-player video games is that they isolate their players, shutting them off from anything or anyone that exists in the real world. Well, that certainly can’t be said of the lab-based “biotic games” created by Stanford University physicist Ingmar Riedel-Kruse – while they may be fashioned after arcade classics, his games require players to manipulate living microorganisms in real time. If you want to “kick” a soccer ball into a net, for instance, you have to get an actual paramecium to do it for you. Read More

One of the many things that Gran Turismo 5 is particularly good at is displaying the many shortcomings of Sony's Sixaxis and DualShock 3 controllers. Logitech's official Driving Force GT wheel is a fantastic solution for gamers on a budget, but the small plastic pedals leave a lot to be desired for many lounge-room racers. The latest racing wheel with official Gran Turismo cred is the Thrustmaster T500 RS, and it looks to set the benchmark for some time. Read More

Being wired for sound to a games console can be a somewhat restricting experience, especially if you're trying to release your inner rock star with games like Rock Band 3. Astro Gaming has taken its pro-gaming MixAmp audio technology and made it both wireless and home-friendly. Users of the MixAmp 5.8 system can plug in just about any pair of wired headphones to the wireless receiver and benefit from 7.1-channel Dolby Surround Sound and a virtually interference-free wireless connection to the transmitter. Read More

If you’ve seen something you’d prefer to forget, then playing Tetris might be just what you need – provided you do it within six hours. That’s the conclusion reached by a team of psychiatric researchers from Oxford University, led by Dr. Emily Holmes. In a study involving 60 test subjects, it was found that people who played the video game within six hours of viewing traumatic images had less of a tendency to experience flashbacks of those images afterward. It all has to do with the way in which the brain processes experiences. Read More

In the creation of the film Avatar, director James Cameron invented a system called Simul-cam. It allowed him to see the video output of the cameras, in real time, but with the human actors digitally altered to look like the alien creatures whom they were playing. The system also negated the need for a huge amount of animation – every performance was captured in all its blue-skinned, pointy-eared majesty as it happened, so it didn’t need to be created from scratch on a computer. Now, researchers from the University of Abertay Dundee have built on the techniques pioneered by Simul-cam to create a new system, that lets users act as their own cameraperson within a 3D environment. Read More