Displaying items by tag: Gaming

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum and that is certainly true. Something will come along to fill the void if we let nature take its course. Unfortunately this law is a little mutated in the consumer electronics market and especially in the PC component world. Here is reads; the market cannot stand not having an “It” technology, so we much create one. It seems that the last few years we have been watching this happen.

AMD says it’s a VR thing now. Well ok, not really, but AMD is leveraging the increased memory bandwidth in their high-end R9 Fury cards to push both 4k and VR. They showed off the R9 Fury X dual-GPU reference design working for the first time at VRLA (Virtual Reality Los Angeles). This card will feature two 28nm Fiji GPUs plus an estimated 8GB of 2.5D HBM 1.0. The memory would be split between the two GPUs at 4GB each.

You know things are bad when you cannot afford to pay employees, but to miss payroll over the holidays seems just that much worse. However, that is what has happened to Red5 the developers behind Firefall. As is usually the case this event is not the first indication of financial troubles. In November the company laid off about 40 employees and then another 2-3 around the 23rd of December. Red6 was founded in 2005 and contained a number of Blizzard employees. Red5 was bought by a Chinese Publisher called The9 around 2010.

When Microsoft and Sony announced the move to x86-64 based gaming consoles some (pronounce that many) in the gaming community were more than a little annoyed that they would not be able to play their older games. Both companies hoped that the move would drive gaming innovation and also get people to buy new games as well as leave the option for developers to create new versions of older games with improved graphics. We saw both of these start to happen during the first few months of the Xbox One and PS4’s life. Now that things are settling down we are finally getting to a time when companies are going to circle back around to those older games.

During pre-show events at E3 Bethesda decided to release information about a few games including Dishonored 2, Fallout 4 and DOOM. All three of these games have been staples in the gaming community for a number of years and all three (if done right) can expect to continue their respective names well into the future.

Today I was asked why we do not attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). It was a valid question, but the answer is not really all that simple. If I had to be blunt I would say that we stopped covering E3 when it became one big misdirection. Over the years E3 changed from a real showcase for games and software and more of chance to show off games in a way that they will never end up for the consumer.

The idea of the “cloud” is nothing new and has, in fact, been around for a number of years in one form or another. The concept goes back to the use of small “dumb” terminals that were nothing more than display devices for com putting done in a central location. After it became possible to put more power into the systems we used the cloud faded into the back ground. With the production of mobile devices that did not typically have the same power and capacity as a desktop the cloud returned. It had a major resurgence when the smartphone and tablet leaped onto the scene and now it seems that everything is trying to become cloud based; including gaming.

After the success of the Hyper X Cloud Pro Gaming headset Kingston went back to the drawing board to make a product that would be a worthy successor. The question was, how do you top something that is that good? The Hyper X Cloud Pro was (and still is) an amazing headset. The sealed enclosures for the larger than normal drivers along with the tuning make them one of the best headsets you can get for the money. Kingston’s team decided that throwing in their own USB audio controller, complete with simulated surround and amp, would be a good start. We had the chance to play with a set during CES 2015 and also got one to bring home. Since then we have used them in multiple environments and with more audio sources than we can really put in a single article. So now we can tell you if the Hyper X Cloud Pro II is worthy of the name or not.

Half Life is one of those games, along with Doom and Castle Wolfenstein, which helped define an entire genre of games. It gave us a new type of hero as well, the crowbar toting MIT PHD Gordon Freeman. Since the games introduction fans have waited for each new chapter in the life of Dr. Freeman. Sadly we have never really gotten the “third” chapter in Freeman’s life, but there has always been the modding community to help keep u going. Back in 2012 a group called Black Mesa Source revamped the game from beginning to the Lambda Core level to the delight of many fans.

Over the last year or so the PC Gaming market has seen an interesting re-birth. Although many developers seem to have embraced the new x86 console craze the peripheral manufacturers for the PC did not get the memo. One company that has leapt into the fray is Tesoro, so far they have dropped more than one high-end headset, keyboard and other accessories for the gamer to enhance their experience. Today we have another one of their products in the lab, the Kuven Pro 5.1 gaming headset. Let’s listen in and see how they sound.