Joseph Bernstein

The news that Texas Instruments is adding color to its ubiquitous graphing calculators brought streaming back a torrent of gaming memories. What Dan Rubinstein never realized as he struggled to communicate to me the principles of trigonometry was that I was engaged in the management of a large-scale

Well, this story just about made my day. Scientists have figured out a way for humans and rats to interact at scale, meaning, the human’s movements control a rat-sized robot in a pen with the rat, and the rat’s movements control a human-sized “beamed” avatar.  Professor Mandayam Srinivasan, author o

From Ben Robinson’s terrific piece in Deadspin today about the Big Buck World Championsihp.

I doubt this is what EA had in mind when they touted Warfighter as the most versimilar military shooter ever made: Seven members of the secretive Navy SEAL Team 6, including one involved in the mission to get Osama bin Laden, have been punished for disclosing classified information, senior Navy offi

News of Grand Theft Auto V‘s enormous size has set the internet atwitter today. So, just how big is “bigger than RDR, San Andreas, and GTA IV“? According to highly scientific internet forums, Red Dead Redemption is 28 square miles, San Andreas is 13.6 square miles, and GTA IV is 6.8 square miles. Th

The age of the great local multiplayer game is long past. The NBA Jams, the Goldeneyes, the Mario Karts; pushed aside by faster internet connections and faster machines. Counterstrike and Team Fortress and World of Warcraft have immeasurably enriched our gaming lives, but something has been lost, to

Drip Drip, the new time management game from Imminent Games, puts you in the role of an elite drip collector [who] manages the Disaster Response Team. With a team of tools and water collecting and building fixing skills, travel across the USA and visit 24 exciting cities on your mission to ensure th

Very cool news: The system, developed by a team led by Lotfi Merabet of Harvard Medical School and Jaime Sánchez of the University of Chile, is called the Audiobased Environment Simulator and uses only audio-based cues to allow blind users to learn about the layout of a previously unfamiliar buildin

Why has game music lagged behind other aspects of presentation so much? This the central question of a wonderful deep dive on Gamasutra about the state of cinematic scoring in games. The money graf: As we dip into the uncanny valley and emerge on the other side at nearly photo-realistic visuals, it’

There is a new Far Cry game, and today a new Far Cry trailer, which predictably asks us to consider how much violence we would be willing to commit in order to do… something. This is the latest in a series of games that have become a type: the game that asks players to consider their implication in

Have you ever had a friend who is just good at every game she or she lays his or her hands on? So have we. Aren’t they annoying? Anyhow, there may be a biological basis for why they are just so damn good. Scientists at the University of Illinois measured electrical activity in the brains of test sub

And four of them are indies: The balance between Triple-A, traditionally developed games and independently developed games is starting tosway. The closest Triple-A game to make it to the Top Five was Mass Effect 3, with a score of 93, with Dishonored not too far behind with 92. Even so, the top game

Old people reactin’ to newfangled stuff is a tried and true formula for SRS LAFFS, and these wrinkly folks getting all riled up about the new Call of Duty game sure hits the spot. Things to watch for include the guy who does a double point and the guy who makes the old-timey two-fisted machine gun “

Here at Kill Screen, we’re in favor of expanding your consciousness legally, through the great works of the Western canon, rigorous and intellectually generous debate, really spicy food and the occasional runner’s high. Justin Amirkhani, a former Kill Screen intern, decided to take this process a st

Wedbush research analyst Michael Pachter after more bad news from the developer of Darksiders.

It’s not news that the mainstream horror game is in a bad way: Resident Evil 6 was an atrocity, Silent Hill hasn’t been relevant in years, and the Dead Space series (which, to be fair, is excellent) seems to be moving in more of a pure-action direciton. At FMV, Matt Butler takes heart in a groundswe

Friday’s news that Rockstar did not demonstably base GTA: San Andreas main character CJ on the appearance and life story of Cypress Hill backup singer Michael “Shagg” Washington (and that parent company Take Two was not liable) made us do several things. First, we listened to Insane in the Brain. Th

As core gaming continues its transformation into a handful of increasingly bland blockbuster series, it is wonderful to be reminded just how truly weird mainstream gaming was in the 1990s. Wednesday brings the release of the Toejam and Earl Collection for Xbox Live Arcade, which comprises the origin

Pid is the new puzzle-platform game from the Swedish indie developer Might and Delight, and both of those qualities are fully represented. The delight is obvious: you play in a weird and wonderful Jetsons-inspired world as a little lost astronaut named Kurt. The game’s dry and clean aesthetic, its s

The Halo 4 soundtrack is number 50 on the Billboard charts, making it the highest a game has ever risen there. Honestly? Flunk that noise. Can you party to it? The Hotline: Miami soundtrack is free on Soundcloud thanks to the continued munificence of Cactus, the game’s creator. I dare you to listen