Out of the Park 15 is the absurd game baseball deserves
Learning to love an unlovable game.
Sports
2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is big, inclusive, and boring
A game of pomp and pomp. And pomp.
MLB ’14: The Show is a delightfully revisionist take on modern baseball
Talking about practice.
The March Madness of animated gif should prove spectacular
It’s mid-March, and that can only mean one thing: a flurry of other non-related contests using brackets in imitation of March Madness. T.GIF animation tourney, held March 22 through April 7, is one such tournament, and it’s amazing for a couple of reasons. One, because the name T.GIF hadn’t been tak
Science Fiction vs. Fantasy: Finally a March Madness bracket you care about
OK, that’s presumptuous and headline-grabby and probably not true at all. College basketball is a fine, fine sport, especially this time a year. It’s just I thought our readership would potentially get more out of i09’s amazing March Madness bracket, which pits your favorite sci-fi characters agains
Frozen Endzone might be the only football game I can endure
Robots, as usual, help.
Goofball Goals is to soccer what QWOP is to sprinting
Any goals scored are purely incidental.
Push Me Pull You is like Noby Noby Boy crossed with Human Centipede
Our intern David said Push Me Pull You reminded him of Human Centipede, which kept me from clicking the link for a good two days. But it turns out this was my mistake. It’s closer in spirit to Noby Noby Boy, a weird if non-eventful game about a cuddly caterpillar-looking-thing that you could stretch
Bobsledding is officially the worst Olympic sport, because math
We don’t often analyze the design of sports as closely as other types of games, but taking a closer look at some of the games at the Olympics suggests that maybe we should. Ben Blatt over at Slate looked at the statistics for Bobsledding kept by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation ba
The problem with sports games and realism
A call to reel it in, a little.
The fancy camera tech that will make League of Legends easier to watch
Riot Games are working on smart cameras that automatically follow the action on-screen in League of Legends, because sometimes you just want to kick back and watch esports, the way you would any other sport. This new feature, which they’ve been granted a patent for, aims to improve Spectator Mode, w
Hey Denver, playing Pokemon probably wasn’t the best way to prepare for the Super Bowl
As you know, the Denver Broncos just suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in Super Bowl history. Things turned ugly quickly and stayed that way. The Broncos couldn’t match the Seahawks’ intensity and didn’t seem particularly inspired to be playing in the biggest sports game of the year. One
Forget Madden, let’s simulate the Super Bowl using Smash Brothers
Someone had to. Well, maybe not. We did anyway.
D&D Yoga puts dungeon masters and yoga masters in sync
D&D Yoga is a tranquil exercise that takes a yoga class on a dungeon dive, which works far better than it has any right to. I mean, yoga is an ancient Buddhist practice that promotes flexibility and inner peace. Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop game that promotes sitting around a table for hours and s
Here’s hoping the new RBI Baseball game won’t just be another MLB 2K
Just weeks after 2K said they’re burying the MLB 2K franchise, we have an announcement for a new baseball videogame, and it’s a name children of the ‘80s might have nostalgic feelings for: RBI Baseball. What was debatably the best title of the NES era that involved smacking a red-laced ball over the
WWE 2K14 is the ideal simulation of whatever non-sport-thing wrestling is
Entertainment? We’re entertained, sure.
Ping pong meets Rez in this retina-burning prototype
Table tennis—with its lightweight white ball bouncing rhythmically across the net—makes the transition into a rhythm game surprisingly well. All that it takes is an interactive table rigged with sensors that produces geometric patterns and plays music when the ball hits. This was proven by the young
Wii Sports Club shows the beauty of fixing what’s not broken
Also on the docket, apparently: fucking up the proud state of Ohio.
In a loud week, Nintendo quietly reminds us of Wii Sports’ perfection
Playing hard the Hollywood way.
How NBA 2K14’s cuss-monitoring could clean up trolling
Admit it. If you’ve played a sports game, you’ve cussed at the ref. But with the new cuss-monitoring feature in NBA 2K14, you’d be wise to keep the potty language under your breath. The game uses voice recognition to listen out for profanity, and will call a technical foul when you go into a mini-ta
This futuristic machine is Rock’em Sock’em Robots for real
Johnathan Tippett wants to make a giant, human-operated Rock’em Sock’em robot. Well, kinda. He’s calling it Prosthesis, a 7000-pound, two-story-tall “anti-robot.” The Prosthesis runs off of lithium batteries, and is built for the purpose of racing, not fisticuffs, although only one leg of the frame
How Forza 5 uses the cloud to create more human A.I.
Forza Motorsport 5 is launching with the Xbox One, which means we will all soon be racing shiny expensive roadsters against a sentient supercomputer A.I. that’s based in the cloud, eyeing our every move. “First we have to see what it’s going to continue learning, once there’s a million people train
Battlefield 4’s commander mode gives videogames what they don’t need: a head coach
Will we be doing drills next?
NHL 14 rings in hockey season in Hell
What sport is this, exactly?
FIFA 14 is more realistic than ever
So where does that leave real soccer?