Weekend Feature

They say you can tell a lot about a man by his apps.

Apple has opened up a wonderful can of worms by welcoming the development of anyone with time, skill, and innovation enough to program new applications for their iPhone and iPod touch. And just as they did with iTunes, they're acting as a gatekeeper between the producer and the user, and taking their share of every transaction (30%) while watching their hardware sales skyrocket.

It's an ingenious way to sell hardware: Make software, or in this case supervise the transfer of open development to the consumer, and everyone and their brother will want the manufactured device that it runs on.

The best part of this whole personal computing revolution is the idea of customization. Every user is different, and Apple has made it possible for everyone to enjoy their iPhone in their own way. Check out the list below and see where you fit in.

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As a public service to humanity, the G4 team got together to help explain videogames and gamer culture through the media of charts and graphs! Please enjoy our graphical representations of trends and minutia of videogames.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a really special weekend feature for you today. For the first time in our recorded history, we have found proof of an alternate universe. That's right, we now know of a parallel dimension that perfectly reflects our own, aside from a few minor (and some not-so-minor) differences. The said proof is a live blog from another E3, an E3 that never was, but so closely could have been. An E3 where the fanboys' deepest (and darkest) wishes actually can come to fruition.

Friends, fellow-travelers, readers of TheFeed, sit back and enjoy our adventure into a world so much like and yet so far from our own. Enjoy our alternate-reality version of E3 2008 via Live Blog.

MONDAY, JULY 14TH, 2008

MICROSOFT PRESS CONFERENCE

10:00 AM - Here we are, waiting for E3 to officially kick off. Any minute now, Microsoft will be taking the stage and letting us in on some awesome announcements. What will we have in store? New Motion controller? Mii-like avatars? Maybe a new Halo title? All questions will be answered in minutes.

10:17 AM - The energy here is palpable. Nothing's happened yet onstage, but everyone is waiting, stirring slightly from their excitement.

10:23 AM - I finished my bagel and and I have a little cream cheese left over in the tub.

INSTANT POLL: Would it be unseemly of me to finish off the cream cheese by swabbing the the remnants from the tub with my finger? If it helps you in choosing, I wash my hands at least ten times a day.

10:32 AM - AND E3 2008 IS UNDERWAY!!!! Don Mattrick has taken the stage and wastes no time getting to the boring stuff. Here are the deets:

• Xbox 360 are up in every terriroty (excluding Japan)
• Bill Gates will continue to have active role in day-to-day activities via Xbox Live Vision Cam.

10:50 AM - Finally, some game news! Here comes Cliffy B! Here comes Cliffy B!

10:55 AM - Back from the bathroom. Gears mastermind Cliff Bleszinski is on stage offering some sweet sweet Gears news. How sweet you ask? How about not only Gears 2, but Gears 2, 3, and 4?! And how about all three before the end of 2009?!!!

Following in the footsteps of The Matrix and Pirates of the Carribean, all three Gears sequels were produced simultaneously to allow for only three month separation in release dates. Hey, it worked well for the quality of those films, why not with this badass franchise, right?

11:15 AM - Okay, here we go. Time for the BIG announcement! The lights are going down. It's a trailer! It's a trailer! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

ANNOUNCED: MARATHON ORIGINS: HALO 4 from Bungie! This is it! OMG GOTY! It certainly looks like Microsoft has put the nail in the Sony's coffin and E3 has just started!

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The Dark Knight has officially hit theaters, and, unlike other comic-based movies--which are generally dismissed by film snobs--critics and fans alike seem to universally recognize that movie is about more than a man in a cape and cowl. It's as enthralling and morally complex as any film you'll see this year and improves upon 2005's monumental triumph, Batman Begins.

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Next week is E3 week, and our excitement is running dangerously high--our geek-meters are in the red and we're getting ready to melt the core. We want the weekend to be over sooner, and this week, we'll all be saying "Thank God it's Monday!" 

Here's an idea of what some of us at G4 are most excited about at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Co-Op Games: With games like Valve's Left 4 Dead, Capcom's Resident Evil 5, and Sony's LittleBigPlanet, it appears that this year's "big thing" in multiplayer is co-op gaming. Sure, tea bagging some sap in Halo 3 is still good for a laugh, but there is nothing quite as fulfilling as escaping an onslaught of fast-moving zombies without leaving anyone behind.

This year's E3 certainly seems to be the year of Co-Op gaming and nothing could have me more excited. In particular, the Co-op experience of trying to survive a classic zombie movie in Left 4 Dead is especially appealing. Also, finally being able to team up with my siblings in NY for a bi-coastal rock-splosion tour in Rock Band 2 is going to make my year!
--Jonathan Hunt

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There's an amazing art piece in Manhattan right now that allows anyone, free of charge, to "play" a building like you'd play a musical instrument. It's an audio installation conceived by David Byrne of Talking Heads and David Byrne fame and carried out by Creative Time and the City of New York.

I happened to be in Manhattan recently and I got a chance to step up and play the building for myself. The experience was humbling to say the least. I found that my total lack of knowledge about the keys of a piano translated nicely to a poorly conducted symphony of random sounds. But more than that, I realized the limits of my own preconceptions of music.

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Recently, we at TheFeed were asked to cease using aliases and write our posts under our given names. After a few minutes of raucous ballyhoo and appeals to the powers-that-be, the writers of TheFeed resigned ourselves to saying goodbye to our much-beloved internet anonymity.

Soon, you may know our pain. While some would argue that this crazy virtual world of teh Internetz depends on anonymity, we all may soon find out what the 'nets will be like if everyone was suddenly held accountable for their words and virtual actions.

On May 15th, a Missouri woman was indicted on three charges of lying about who she was... to MySpace. The story leading to the accusations is long and twisted, and it begins with the death of a 13 year-old girl named Megan Meier—the girl who may change the internet forever.

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Here we are. The final Metal Gear feature before Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots finally releases on June 12th.

There will most likely be another spoiler-filled feature after I complete the game and have time to digest everything. It’ll be a nice way for us to discuss the game without having to worry about spoilers. If we see spoilers posted in this story, we will ban you with a vengeance. Please respect your fellow readers.

So now, here are some unanswered questions about Metal Gear as we go into Guns of the Patriots.

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On May 16th, we reported that the name Hitler had been banned from Nintendo's Mario Kart Wii online community. In short, if you were playing under a Mii with the word Hitler anywhere in its name, you would not be able to connect to Mario Kart WFC.

We're not debating Nintendo's decision to not allow Hitler on their network. It's the their network and it's their decision. However, is it fair to single out Hitler? Surely, he is not the only mass-murdering dictator in history, or even the 20th Century. What about the others?

TheFeed did some investigating and decided to test out some the 20th Century's other more infamous characters and see how the Mario Kart online community would welcome them. Here are the results of our test:

STALIN

Perhaps the biggest killer of the 20th Century. Poor record keeping in the Soviet Union during his rule has lead to wildly varying reports on the number actually dead as a result of his order. Conservative reports put it as low as 3 million, but the most liberal reports put it somewhere between 20 to 30 million. On average, most scholars agree that the number is somewhere between 10 to 20 million. Despite almost assuredly killing many more people than that little German fellow, Mario Kart WFC welcomed Stalin with open arms.

Death Toll: 10 to 20 Million
Mario Kart Status: ACCEPTED

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Last week we looked at the impact gaming is having on higher education, but that’s not the only way games are connecting to teaching.  Companies like Kaplan, best known for its standardized testing prep programs, are getting into the videogame arena.

Click the jump to see how.

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Amid the shadow of Grand Theft Auto IV and the growth of the industry, people are more aware of videogames than ever, but while the more alarmist wings of the mass media see games as a cesspool of violence, others see potential for sharing knowledge and helping society.

Recently, videogame developers and publishers have been teaming up with schools to legitimize video game creation as a serious form of media and creative expression. One of the most recent examples is the partnership struck between the Indiana University School of Education and software developer Vicious Cycle (Robotech: Battlecry, Dead Head Fred) for the use of Vicious Cycle’s Vicious Engine.

Hit the jump for the entire story.

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It’s time for Part 2 of my plot discussion for the Metal Gear franchise and I wanted to start off by thanking all of you for all your great comments. We managed to go over 100 comments without any negativity and totally avoided a flamewar! Give yourselves a round of applause.

If you haven’t already, go read Part 1 and get up to speed. We left off just before Metal Gear Solid 2 and that’s what I’ll be looking at today. Metal Gear Solid 2 is easily the most complicated game in the franchise and likely one that a lot of people didn’t like or even understand.

The gameplay summary will be light and I’ll try to focus on discussing the story and meaning of the game. Feel free to correct anything I got wrong as this is all from memory.

Again, keep the comments positive & don’t bring any PS3 vs. 360 spam in here. Let’s have another great conversation.

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The summer movie season is upon us again, and unless you count Harold and Kumar (and let’s be honest, who does), Iron Man will be the first summer blockbuster of the year. It seems like every time May rolls around we’re inundated with adaptations of books, comics, video games, remakes, and all other kinds of mindless cash-cow ideas thought up by some studio executive. So far this century has been very big on the comic book adaptations, giving us 3 Spiderman movies, 3 X-Men movies, 2 Fantastic Four movies, a Punisher movie, and soon to be 2 Hulk and Batman movies.

But the big one coming out this weekend is of course, Iron Man. Even from the get go, this movie seems to be a bit different from it’s predecessors. From the cast to the director to the special effects team, Iron Man is overflowing with talent. So will this movie equal the sum of its parts? Or will we have another neutered franchise to wash out the name of a classic comic book superhero? Click the Read More link to check out my full, in-depth, SPOILER FREE review of Iron Man.

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We've all got skeletons in our closet; things we regret, humble beginnings, crappy graphics. But as we look back it all fades in the rearview mirror as we speed down the highway of this crazy gaming franchise we call life. Speaking of driving, have you heard about Grand Theft Auto IV? It's coming out in a few days. Not important, anyway, here's a history on Grand Theft Auto.

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I picked up the MGS: Essential Collection and have replayed Metal Gear Solid 1-3 and now I’m even more excited about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

While reading your comments on the website, I’ve noticed that a lot of you think MGS isn’t anything special. I’ve seen complaints about cutscenes, gameplay, and how the story is “simple.” It’s probably the most complex story in videogames. A lot of people left the series after MGS2 and never played the genius that was MGS3.

What follows will be a discussion of the story of this epic franchise as well as questions for MGS4. There will be so many spoilers it isn’t even funny. You have been warned. I won’t even be able to cover the all of this series and that’s why I invite you all to participate in the comments section. Please, no PS3 vs. 360 spam.

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