I admit it: I'm crazy about Mass Effect 3's voice command potential. I tried it out at CES 2012 this year, and found the feature to be much more than a gimmick. X-Play likes it too, as you can see from the below video in which Jessica Chobot takes a look at Mass Effect 3 for Kinect.
Click the cut for an even more in-depth look at Kinect-powered Mass Effect 3 under the cut.
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G4's Jessica Chobot went all the way to CES to get her hands on the Wii U. Nintendo's next console is still a bit of a mystery, but one thing is for sure, it works. Take a look at some of the "experiences" Nintendo is offering like Chase Me, Battle Me, Panorama, and a HD Zelda demo.
As nerds, we are constantly beset by an insatiable technolust; one that can be fed but never satisfied. There’s always a cooler TV, a better console, a crisper speaker; and then the next best thing hits a month later. Nowhere is this lust harder to subdue than on the floor of CES, where I was surrounded on all sides by an unimaginable collection of the coolest new technologies imaginable. So like any good nerd, I began fantasizing about which electronics I would put in my game room at home and before long I had built the perfect gaming room. You know, for a month or two.
Samsung UNES8000 – The Big Picture
I’ve long been a fan of Samsung TVs, and am grateful to see they are committed to constantly improving their design. Their newest TV revealed at CES 2012, the UNES8000 is as sleek and sexy as many of their current lineup but with some major changes. The TV comes with a standard LED screen that will support 3D viewing. The screen is gorgeous and comes almost all the way to the end—with only a paper thin border around the outside.
But by far the most promising feature is the Kinect-esque camera subtly placed on the top of the TV. I was told the camera reads faces and hand motions in order to carry out functions. Essentially it will be a Kinect for every moment you don’t have your Xbox on—and it will allow for one less controller cluttering up your coffee table. As the centerpiece of the perfect living room, the TV is obviously the one thing you can’t screw up. And Samsung apparently knows it.
Some guys fetishize cars, reading Road and Track and dreaming of a Maserati, where others are into their computers, lovingly replacing graphics cards and processors to squeeze a bit more power out of them. But there's a certain breed of dude out there who is very, very into luggage.
Bag-heads (as I call them) tend to feel very strongly about the products that come from a company called Tumi. A Tumi representative at CES 2012 described it to me like this: "Tumi is like Coach for the discerning traveler."
Or how about this example: A certain G4 executive, who I won't name for fear of losing my job, told me that he's been known to take aimless trips to high-end retailers in order to just gaze at Tumi bags. No intention of buying a valise or anything, mind you. He just wanted to look. Whatever turns your crank, I guess.
I don’t get toys for Christmas anymore. And that’s fine. I got a really nice Swiss Army watch this year and was probably more excited than the one time I got the green Power Ranger. But if anything could possibly reanimate my desire for toys, it’s the AR Drone 2.0 from Parrot.
We all saw the original AR Drone in ads or every dammed Brookstone from here to Manila, and we all had the same question: “did you guys not see Terminator?” Apparently not, as the team at Parrot seems destined to improving this machine to the point of its eventual use as a deadly hunter of human resistance fighters.
Last week we went to Las Vegas for CES and we brought back all of that knowledge to you on this week's Feedback. Morgan Webb filled in as host since Blair Herter was on special assignment in Thailand*. Jessica Chobot, Stephen Johnson and Mike D'Alonzo rounded out the rest of the panel.
CES is the public's chance to check out the future of tech. There were PCs, tablets and smart TVS, but our favorite thing there was refrigerator. Check out this week's episode to find out why!
The AUDIO MP3 of this episode of FEEDBACK is available here: Right-click and Save.
There’s no denying that Mad Catz has "second run" reputation to many seasoned gamers. The Mad Catz controller was the one your mom mistakenly bought for you for Christmas and the one you always made you friends use when they came over to play N64. Recently, however, the company has been working hard to turn around their reputation of making second-class controllers. And with this year’s lineup, they’re on the right path.
The first peripherals I saw were Mad Catz’ latest line of fight sticks for both Street Fighter X Tekken and SoulCalibur V. The fight sticks are both designed to the specifications of Capcom and Namco’s button/stick layouts, and even the buttons are placed at just the right angle to resemble the original arcade machines. Designed for comfort and stability, the sticks offer a nice wrist rest and feature sturdy (and for some smaller gamers, a bit too heavy) construction.
A lot of the gaming products at CES seem designed to smash your face in with awesomeness, whether it’s garish 3D OEM televisions or never-seen before tablet-devices, but Haptic tech company ViviTouch’s impressive technology is more subtle, but portends huge changes in the way we will play games.
The company behind ViviTouch (Artificial Muscle, a subsidiary of Bayer MaterialScience) is doing something really cool with an aspect of gaming you most likely take for granted: The rumble pack. If you’re a cutting edge gamer, you probably play games on a 1080p television, with sound provided by a 7.1 Dolby stereo system, but the rumble technology on your controller is essentially the same as it was 15 years ago on the PlayStation One – just an on-off switch that shakes your palm. ViviTouch, on the other hand, aims to translate thousands of sensations into a “versatile language of feedback.”
Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show brings the latest and greatest technical innovations together under one roof. In some cases, the products shown are far-off concept demonstrations, designed to help us invision what our lives might be like using that type of product in the future, and others are things that will be on store shelves in a matter of weeks. Regardless of the timing, CES always gets us excited for what's to come, whether it be right around the corner or tens of years in the making.
While we're still waiting on flying cars and a food replicator that will make you a hamburger out of nothing, there were still a lot of very impressive gadgets showcased at CES 2012. While most of these were aimed at improving the household or enhancing entertainment offerings, it got us thinking about what would happen if they were applied to the world of gaming. Below, we've compiled a list of CES 2012 innovations which, if utilized correctly, could change the gaming industry in the future.
Echo Nest Teams With Twitter
What It Is: Echo Nest is the company behind the popular music app Spotify. They've teamed up with Twitter in order to integrate tweets into music apps. For example, if you were listening to The Decemberists, you might get tweets from lead signer Colin Meloy.
What it could mean for gaming: Imagine that while you're downloading the latest Gears of War map pack, you're seeing tweets from famed Epic developer Cliff Bleszinski, or even other game devs who are tweeting about Gears. Sony and Microsoft seem keen on cramming Twitter in wherever they can, and this is just about the most useful application of the service we can think of. It's targeted, relevant, and actually helpful, all things that Twitter is generally not known for. See? We're already making strides towards a utopia!
Alan Wake's American Nightmare is not just a cookie cutter sequel of Remedy Entertainment's cult hit Alan Wake. The direction of the upcoming title takes a drastic shift in tone from the first game and it will now be a downloadable title only available on XBLA. We got to check out American Nightmare at CES 2012, here's a snippet from our latest preview.
Remedy has gotten creative with their shadowy ghouls, and during just these two levels I saw a number of the new monsters sure to spook even the most sound of mind. The Spliter—predictably—splits in two every time it’s hit with your beam of light, forcing you to kill it off quickly or risk being overwhelmed. The Grenadier is the first Alan Wake enemy to actually run away from the player, throwing shadowy grenades behind him. There is also a massive monster of a man carrying a buzz saw while seemingly taking no damage. And as dawn approached in the ghost town, a creature who split into a flock of deadly black birds haunted me restlessly.
Grab your flashlight and read our entire Alan Wake's American Nightmare preview.
It's Thursday, the best day of the week! Not because it's almost Friday, not because it's Thirsty Thursday at my local bar, but because it's the day we get to see the newest episode of The MMO Report. This week Casey will drop some knowledge about the Firefly MMO that's not as dead as we thought, DC Universe Online's one year anniversary and their 8th content update, and we'll learn how Casey's lineage is being passed on to the next generation in Uncle Casey's Mail Bag! I fear for the future of the human race.
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CES may provide the chance to look at the latest gadgets, but it also gives us a preview of upcoming videogames, which, let's be honest, is why we're all here.
In this preview, TheFeed's own Stephen A. Johnson takes a look at the upcoming Xbox Live Houseparty title I Am Alive. From Steve's preview:
"The plot of this downloadable, third-person game is bare bones and basic: Some unspecified cataclysm involving earthquakes has struck the planet and killed nearly everyone, and the main character must traverse a dangerous, nightmare-scape in a quest to reunite with his wife and child. Not a terribly original concept, but an affecting one nonetheless.
Now, you might be expecting zombies, or aliens, but nope. I Am Alive is survival-horror without the supernatural. Enemies are simply other people, driven to madness and extremes by a worldwide collapse. It’s not cheery, but it’s a powerful idea. Think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road instead of The Road Warrior."
Check out the rest of Steve's I Am Alive CES 2012 Preview.
I admit that I was extremely skeptical about Razer's Project Fiona PC gaming tablet when I first heard about it, but after seeing it run The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim on ultra high settings I must say that I'm really impressed. Tech blog Destructoid got a video of the tablet playing Skyrim on ultra high settings at 1280x800 resolution and while it did have a few framerate issues, once they turned the game down to high settings it ran perfectly. Just watch this video for confirmation.
I still think that the design of the tablet is a bit whack, but I'm almost speechless to see the device running such a demanding game so flawlessly. I've definitely taken a new stance on Project Fiona after seeing this impressive tech demo.
If you want to know more about the PC gaming tablet, check out our own hands-on impressions of Project Fiona from CES 2012.
Source: Destructoid via VG247
I’m going to tell you a story about an impressive, overclocked computer for gamers that I saw at CES 2012, so sit back and enjoy the tale of Origin’s new Genesis PC, a computer so powerful, it bends both space and time. Well, maybe not that powerful, but definitely powerful enough to play Crysis 2 at full settings.
Boasting 12 Gigs of RAM, an EVGA 3GZB GTX580 graphics card, and running an Intel Core 3960X 3.3 GH Hex-Core processor overclocked to 5.3GHz-5.7GHz, the Genesis is one powerful machine. So powerful, it’s cooled to -40 degrees by Origin’s “Cryogenic Liquid Cooling” system, presumably to prevent it from spontaneously bursting into flames.
In trying to express the power of the PC, Origin COO and co-founder Hector Penton, and CEO and co-founder Kevin Wasielewski quoted stats and benchmark test numbers that were surprisingly impressive.
We've been hard at work covering CES 2012, but no one has been putting in more hours looking at gadgets than Attack of the Show's Kevin Pereira.
In the video below, he shares some of his favorite products and innovations from CES 2012 including the amazing Samsung Super OLED TVs that stretch from edge-to-edge, the Lytro Light Field Camera that revolutionizes the way we think about photography, and the Aurasma Augmented Reality App that allows you to overlay multimedia onto everyday objects.
Kevin talks about all of these things and more. Check it out!
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