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The level editor for Portal 2, Puzzle Maker, is suprisingly easy to use. It reduces the many variables involved in a Portal level to a few intuitive controls. The game also helps players use their intuitive understanding of physics to solve puzzles. Educators loved it, and there are already lots of
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While KS regular Yannick LeJacq was waxing with NIN front Trent Reznor about the soundtrack for the the new Call of Duty, Reznor made some apt observations about the differences between games and music: I walked into Treyarch studios and was just like, “Holy sh–!” It blew my mind that all of these p
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Halo 4 and Black Ops II are out this month, causing us to reflect on the appeal of first-person shooters. I tend to dismiss them, as I’m not a fan of shooting things without understanding them, but there’s no denying the adrenaline rush from a competitive multiplayer win. Stephen Totilo at The New Y
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Last night, after I beat the single-player campaign in Halo 4, a curious message appeared on the screen. It read: Every great journey begins with a single step. This is our beginning. Thanks for trusting us with the universe you love and joining us on this epic adventure. –343 Industries Yesterday,
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Videogames for charity is not a new thing. What is novel is making a game with the primary function of financial assistance. Seeds is an upcoming mobile app that does just this. [The game director’s] interest in microlending first came from a 2009 New York Times article entitled “Saving the World’s
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The promotions for Assassin’s Creed III made much of its Native American protagonist, but the game starts with a lengthy (and as our reviewer found, intolerable) prelude playing his British father. While a few applauded this contextual approach as necessary in hindsight, most players found it slow,
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You’ve played the polished levels that have been iteratively playtested; where you don’t get lost and you know exactly what you’re supposed to do. Some might consider this too obvious for a game, but in the world of architecture, this is precisely what buildings need. In an article about how neurosc
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The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops II is today. As it’s set in 2025, developer Treyarch wanted some help making a believable, yet “cool” futuristic shooter. Yannick LeJacq at the Wall Street Journal talked with the game’s military consultant, Peter Singer, about his role in helping develop the n
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Yup. That’s about right.
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So you’re walking around in Skyrim or Magicka or one of these medieval fantasy games, and there are lots of fires, and plenty of wooden furniture around these fires that seems to be perpetually flame retardant. Jeremy Antley at Play the Past reflected on these little inconsistencies, especially the
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Christopher Ketcham’s “antimonpolist history of Monopoly” at Harper’s is a great read, a mixture of economic and social theory with a board game everyone knows. There’s a section that describes how the original version of Monopoly, called The Landlord’s Game was designed to teach people the threats
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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