Nokia Morph Concept Video

This, is the future. At least I hope it is. How awesome would this be?

Gurren Lagann Releases Today

Just thought I'd let you guys know, Gurren Lagann is officially released (in English) today. So... go buy it.

Destructoid - My Other Home

I know, I know. "Stop posting, already Austen! GEEZ!" I figured I'd let you guys in on my other blog that I regularly write on. It's my personal blog on Destructoid. Observe the hilarity here. I try my best to post the decent stuff on Divertissementz as well, but I like to leave it up to the other dudes to get some in too. ;D Enjoy.

Stuff White People Like... Are all gamers actually white?

So I was on my lunch break earlier today and I had on NPR (yeah, yeah. Laugh it up) and they had on a blogger by the name of Christian Lander. He was talking with Neal Conan about his "controversial" blog, Stuff White People Like. They started out talking about why is controversial and why some people were saying it was racist. And then they started talking about the things he actually blogged about, and the phone calls started pouring in. It was HILARIOUS! There were posts abouts everything from listening to NPR, threatening to move to Canada but never actually doing it, Mos Def, standing still at concerts, and expensive sandwiches.

And then two things occurred to me; (1) I'm freaking white! And (2), GAMERS are freaking white. I think about all of the conventions I've been to, namely PAX, and I swear, everyone around me is either white, or might as well be. What do you think, is it just me? Or could this guy's blog be named 'Stuff White People and Gamers Like"?

Linkage: Stuff White People Like

Truth Ads Most Insidious Thing on TV?

Am I the only one that notices that in every one of those "Truth anti-smoking" TV ads, despite whatever purportedly accurate statistics are stated, the people speaking out against smoking are portrayed in as negative an emotional light as possible? The first rule of advertising is to appeal to the viewer's emotions instead of their mind and when they're constantly making people against smoking appear rude, obnoxious, and generally like total freaks, one must question the real motives to this long running ad campaign. An ad campaign funded by tobacco companies. Is this a clear conspiracy to promote smoking while pretending to fight it or am I just seeing things?

Debate over at PA forum.

Audiosurf - Where did this game come from?

So I was going through the list of new releases on Steam the other day and came across this little gem called Audiosurf. I hadn't heard of it before so I downloaded the demo and started playing. What I found was amazing!

Audiosurf is a game based solely around music. According to the website, it's a music-adapting puzzle racer. (Wrap your mind around that!) You use your own music from your machine and literally ride the song. You can select different "racers", each racer is a different game mode and changes the object of the game. It's a lot of fun! Everything in the game, including the blocks coming at you, the track itself, and all of the silly Geometry Wars style explosions in the background are all done on the fly based on the music. If you've ever played with G-Force, this is a really fun interactive version of that!

Oh, and did I mention that it comes with the Orange Box soundtrack... for free?

In summary, open Steam, drop the $10 bucks and buy this game. You won't regret it.

Chrono Resurrection - What Could Have Been

Behold, a fan made recut of Chrono Trigger. It's in full 3D and has some spectacular visuals and an impressive art direction from a couple of noobs. I wish, oh MAN, I wish this would actually happen. Unfortunately for all of us, Square Enix would never let it happen. But in the mean time, there's no problem drooling over what could have been. Check it out:

Batman - Gotham Knight First Look

As I'm sure we all know by now, The Dark Knight comes out very very soon. But what you may not know is that just before the release of Dark Knight, we all get a little treat in the form of Batman - Gotham Knight. Basically the creators behind Batman got together and came up with six, loosely connected stories and gave them out to six different anime studios. You'll remember, this has been done before, and it was awesome. Today, we finally got a promo video showcasing some scenes from the upcoming animated release, and some commentary from the guys behind it. It's an interesting watch, to say the least. Enjoy.

I Wish I Was At GDC

Because I want to see this in person.

Fez... Pretty Much the Coolest Game Ever. Or at least the flippiest

GDC 2008: Lifelike Motion Capture Brought to Unreal Engine 3

I'm just going to post these videos so you can see. They are the most incredible motion capture I've ever seen for a video game. Which companies are currently implementing this into their games is not revealed, but we do know that there is a good chance we'll see this being used sometime before the close of the year. Yeah, I'm impressed too.

This is a direct quote that I thought might get your attention. Seriously, when I read this, my jaw LITERALLY dropped.
The Contour system generates so much data, Perlman says, that the full value of the rendering won't be apparent until hardware speeds improve. "With markers, you kind of get the resolution of what those markers are and that's it," Perlman says. "When a next-generation game system comes out, or they decide they want to do something for a feature film, you can't really use the data. With Contour, it's actually capturing the data at much higher resolutions than any system in the world, even for feature films, can currently use. What we do is we store that data away ... and when a next generation video game machine comes out and they want the data at higher resolution, they can."

Mova Contour Reality Capture in Unreal Engine 3 from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

Mova Contour Reality Capture - Gangster Demo (not real-time) from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.
-via Joystiq

HD Format Wars Are Officially OVER!

Yeah, so for those of you who haven't heard yet. Toshiba announced earlier today that HD DVD is offially dead. Basically, that means it's over. Blu Ray is now the de facto HD format going forward.

For those of you who, sadly, chose HD DVD and are effectively screwed by this decision. I might make a few suggestions. One, stop buying HD DVDs like right now. Two, go buy yourself a dual format player to ease the transition pain. Or if you are going to simply delve head first into the HD world and would like to buy a decent Blu Ray player. May I suggest the Playstation 3. Regardless of how you feel about the gaming system aspect of the playstation 3, the fact remains that it's pretty much the cheapest Blu Ray player in existence. It updates itself on a fairly regular basis, and you get a gaming system to boot. Not a bad deal.

Also, for those 360 HD DVD add on owners out there; Don't worry. Microsoft isn't completely stupid. Rest assured they will be releasing a Blu Ray add-on in the not-so-distant future.

Hurray it's over!

The Talent Show

So earlier tonight our congregation (Greenburg Road) had a little talent show of sorts. It was fantastic! I honestly had no idea so many of our brothers and sisters had such incredible talent. For example, I knew Craig Edelman played the fiddle, but I had no idea how good he was. And Brad Dean was pure genius with his Nixon and Bobby Kennedy impressions. Spot on! But the one who stole the show, no doubt, was Manny Granadus. My goodness, that man has a fantastic voice. I kid you not, the second he started singing (albeit in spanish) everyone in the room looked up in pure shock that it wasn't a recording and he was actually singing. Amazing, brother, absolutely amazing.

I took quite a few pictures and I made a little compilation video so those who chose not to come could get a chance to see. Check out the pictures here. And the video is embedded below. Enjoy.

Indiana Jones IV Trailer!

Spore to Release 09.07.08

This spore announcement was made via a trailer on Spore's site. But September is so far away. and that doesn't leave me much time to play before StarCraft2. Oh well.

~Nephirij~

P.S. See Austen, I do post...

Behold.... Turok

Dino-sized dump here.







Yeah. Holy cow.

Get 'Lost' Thursday -- The crap is going on Edition

It's that time again! It's time to get back to smashing your head against a wall and pumping out some theories. Lost is back and hot dang is it turning out to be a good start to another amazing, mind blowing season.

Seeing as how I'm an avid fan and I'm sure there are many others out there who read Destructoid, I thought it would be fitting to start an ongoing post on Thursdays. The idea is to catch up on the newest episode and what we can hope to expect in the coming episode. I figure it'll be a good way to toss some theories around and see what comes of them.

First off, let's recap what happened towards the end of Season 3. By the way, if it wasn't obvious enough, SPOILERS FROLIC THROUGHOUT THIS POST. So towards the end of season 3, Locke had left and essentially joined The Others. He was a symbol of hope it seemed for a lot of The Others... except their "leader", Ben. Ben saw him as a threat and a challenge to his superiority over the rest of the Others. Ben was not being healed by the Island like Locke and it bothered him considerably. As time progressed, Locke heard more and more about a mysterious man named Jacob. He was apparently who Ben answered to, though for some unexplained reason only Ben could speak with him. At one point Locke and Ben get into a pissing contest and Ben agreed to take Locke to see Jacob. What we wound up seeing was, to this day, confusing and CLEARLY incredibly important to the furthering of the plot and the mystery of the Island. After Locke saw the craziness that was Jacob's cabin, Ben took him the ditch that held the remains of the DHARMA members that had been slaughtered during The Purge. Ben shot Locke and left him for dead.

Meanwhile, back at the survivor camp, Juliet has seemingly switched sides and is becoming more and more attached to Jack. We discover that Sun got pregnant on the Island by her husband, Jin. This is great news and yet bad news at the same time. It's great news because it's Jin's baby, and not that other guy. It's bad news because all women who get pregnant on the island DIE before they can carry the baby to term. There are also hints that two other women are pregnant but it is unclear who. There's a possibility that Kate is pregnant with Sawyer's baby. Dun dun dunnn!

Amongst all the drama that ensues, we discover that the Others are coming for the pregnant women to experiment on them. Juliet was recruited to do this initially but she pulls a fast one on Ben and tells the survivors about Ben's plan. For the first time they know exactly when and where the Others are going to be and Jack intends to take advantage of this.

Also, Desmond has had another future vision. This time he sees "rescue" and believes it to be his long lost, super rich, Irish girlfriend Penny. He leads a group consisting of Jin, Hurley and Charlie out into the jungle. Unfortunately, Desmond changes his vision by saving Charlie from suffering a brutal arrow to the throat and therefore "changes" the events. They find a downed parachuter named Naomi who crashed her Helicopter into the ocean and ejected. She says she's from a freighter 80 nautical miles west of the island and they've come to rescue them. She has a satellite phone.

Back to the plan. Jack and Sayid work out the details and decide that they're going, literally, blow the crap out of the Others coming for the women. They go back to the Black Rock (you know that creepy, land locked, slave ship in "The Dark Zone"?) and grab some dynamite. They plant the dynamite in 3 of the tents that were supposedly to have the pregnant women in them sleeping away. Sayid, Bernard and Jin stay behind to set off the explosives as the rest of the survivors head to the radio tower that Danielle had recorded that message 16 years ago at.

Meanwhile back with the Others, Ben finds out about Juliet's treachery and is obviously pissed. He orders that they head out immediately and plans to meet the survivors head on himself. He brings his "daughter", Alex, along for the ride because he discovered that her boyfriend was the one who had informed the survivors of their coming early.

Desmond has another vision that Charlie will save them all by going to an underwater DHARMA station called the Looking Glass. They discover that they have to go down there to turn off the communications jamming in order for Naomi's satellite phone to work so they can be saved. Charlie volunteers, accepting the fact that he's going to die in order for them to live, especially his new love Claire.

Desmond accompanies Charlie out into the ocean. Charlie goes down to the station and finds that the station is being (wo)manned by two others who have been ordered by Ben to jam all communications. (We have yet to know why) Charlie is bound and they are panicking as how he knows about the station and the jamming.

Meanwhile, Ben meets up with the survivors and let's Jack know that Naomi is not who she says she is. And that she is dangerous. He says that if she is allowed to get her people on the Island, it will be the beginning of the end.

Charlie, with a little help from Desmond and Mikhail, saves the day by turning off the jamming and discovering an incoming transmission. He finds out that Penny has no idea who Naomi is and has no clue what the freighter is. Right as he finds this out Mikhail taps on the window from outside in the ocean holding a grenade in one hand and the pin in the other. Charlie quickly closes the hatch and ensures that the jamming stays off, saves Desmond from certain death and thus meets his ultimate fate.

This enables Naomi to get a lock on the freighter's signal. But OH SNAP Locke appears out of nowhere and throws a knife into her back. Jack grabs the phone and makes the call. Locke and Jack are now on opposing sides. Locke knows there's problems afoot, but Jack wants off the Island worse than anything. END SEASON 3.

Season 4
So far we've seen one episode of season 4: The Beginning of the End. In this episode we are presented with the introduction of the flash forward. We find out that there were 6 who got off the island. (The Oceanic Six) Of the six we know who 3 of them are. Hurley, Jack and Kate.

Jack has gone pretty much insane. He's grown a beard and is popping pills left and right. He also goes to a mysterious funeral for "neither a friend nor family member". Hurley is also having issues. The episode actually starts with Hurley running from the cops for no apparent reason. As the episode progresses we discover that he is seeing Charlie who has a message for him. A message that Hurley is needed back on the Island. Hurley goes back to the nuthouse. Oh yeah, and he gets a little lost meeting back with the other survivors on the island and sees "Jacob". And if I do say so myself, he looks an awful lot like Jack's dad. (hmmmm)



We don't know much about Kate, except that she is most likely living with someone.

Back to the "present", the Island is quickly being divided. The survivors are now broken into two different groups. A group that follows Locke who believe they need to stay on the Island, and a group that follow Jack, who want to leave.



So that's the recent happenings of Lost. What will happen in tonights' episode? Heck if I know. From what little can be told from the promos, it seems we'll get a bit more insight on the people from the freighter and what they're actually about. I can't wait. Check in next week for some theories on what's ACTUALLY going on and a recap of tonight's episode.

The Best Play of Super Bowl XLII

Yes, I was upset that the Patriots didn't win. I'm not a Patriots fan, mind you. It just would've been awesome to see the second perfect season ever. Instead the 1972 Dolphins cracked open a bottle of champagne and said "Ahhh, that's too bad". This was largely due to this insane play. Seriously, the Giant's quarterback must have been slathered in butter for this to have happened.

M. Night Shymalan's 'The Happening' Teaser

M. Night Shymalan's new movie, 'The Happening' has received very little publicity of late. However the trailer is being attached to 'Jumper' and was just leaked earlier this week. Mnightfans got their hands on it first and I just happened to find it.

The trailer is, of course, a teaser, but it at least gives you an idea of what the movie will be about. It looks pretty dark and fairly intense, but knowing Shymalan, it should be good either way. And most of the time, things are not as they seem in Shymalan movies and if memory serves, trailers are not to be believed. (See: Lady In The Water) Anyway, enough of my babbling. Check out the trailer.

The Best Of The Best Super Bowl Ads

Audi R8


Pepsi with Justin Timberlake


Doritos


Coca Cola


E*Trade

Sweet Video Of The Week == Gurren Lagann 300

There are those who know about Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And then there are those who SHOULD know about Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. For those who do know about it, you probably love it. And this video. This one's for you. It's kinda dorky since it's a fan compilation. But, to it's defense, it's an incredibly well done compilation. Basically, this guy combines footage from Gurren Lagann (one of the best animes of recent years) and the audio from the 300 trailer. Enjoy!