Where PCs Will be in Five Years

Forgive my skepticism about tablets completely overtaking desktops since laptops have been trying to do so since the 1990s. Odds are, desktops simply won't go away, at least not in the near future due to their raw processing power when compared to laptops. There are still 3 trends affecting desktops that will affect the ways that PCs operate in years to come.

1. Portable Desktops.

While not as portable as a laptop, a portable desktop combines both mobility and the power of a desktop PC. As technology increases, electronics will continuously grow smaller and yet people still enjoy what's familiar to them. The key to advancement is evolution rather than revolution and even though tablets may eventually sell more that desktops, desktops aren't going away. One company is already cornering the market on this and I fully expect others to do follow suit with regards to portable desktops. LanSlide Gaming PCs offer gaming PCs are relatively inexpensive prices (inexpensive when compared to Alienware and Origin but still incredibly pricey and beyond what most people ware willing to pay for a computer) that are incredibly small in diameter and are designed to be carried by backpack. As processors and graphics cards keep growing smaller with the exception of the cutting edge technologies, the tiniest of mini-towers will soon be the standard size of desktops in years to come and hopefully this portability will be part of cheaper and more accessible units.

2. Multi-Core GPUs

The Radeon HD 6990 may be the most powerful card on the market today but it is the future of graphics technology. It's not recommended for purchase as no game will require a card this powerful and by the time that this processing power is needed, there will be cards both newer and cheaper that will be just as powerful if not more. still, the multicore GPU technology will most likely be utilized by programs in coming decades when it's no longer bleeding edge.

3. Graphene Processors

As peak silicon approaches, more powerful processors won't stop being made. Instead, newer processors will be made out of graphene and based on IBM's newest experimental processor, not only does it look like IBM is going to be competing with AMD and Intel for control of the consumer market, but 155 GHz multi-core processors are going to be the norm within only a few short years, far surpassing what silicon is capable of. Expect the new generation of PCs to boot almost instantaneously and be able to install programs within seconds, far surpassing what today's four and six-core users think even possible.

Review of Mortal Kombat 2011

If somebody told me five years ago that Mavel vs. Capcom 3 was going to be a accessible fighting game rather than a game that appeals only to the fighting elite and that Mortal Kombat was going to be a technical fighter suitable for tournament play, I would have laughed my ass off. But here we are in 2011, the year when the FBI finally declassified the existence of aliens, making this officially the year when pigs fly and all that never seemed possible actually happens.
After Mortal Kombat 3, the series began to focus more on graphics than gameplay and as a result alienated many of the series' original fans, turning Mortal Kombat into the bane of the hardcore fighting game community. By the time that the developers actually made a real genuine competitive fighting engine, it was unfortunately a marketing abomination that nobody wanted which ended up being the final nail in the coffin for a struggling Midway Games. Fast-forward to 2011 and forget over a decade worth of sub-par Mortal Kombat games. Mortal Kombat 2011 is everything that Mortal Kombat 4 and later should have been.

MK2011 plays like an evolution of Mortal Kombat 3 with a few new quirks thrown in that the series should have incorporated a long time ago. The game now includes a meter that allow for EX moves and super combos which were ignored by the series for years but have finally made their way into Mortal Kombat. The results are surprisingly good for ideas that the dev team didn’t try out until recently given how the flow of every match is determined by how a player uses the super meter. While EXing specials for increased speed and damage among other effects is useful, the ability to end a combo with a super is probably the most satisfying part of MK2011. Supers not only hit for an insane amount of damage, they also show the insides of your opponent shattering as intestines rupture, skulls break open and spinal cords are snapped. When used well in a combo, these attacks can drain over half your enemy's health.

Ramming home the mix of old and new would be the returning roster of classic characters without any new additions to the roster as well as classic stages and remixed music of previous MK games. Fans who abandoned the series after MK4 will feel more at home with the new MK than players who began with the previous console generation's games which may alienate some fans but more than likely they'll be won over the the presentation and solid gameplay despite the loss of 3D movement. While on the topic of nostalgia, both the, “Toasty” guy and babalities make a return, some of the latter are strangely adorable and a nice break from the extreme violence of the game's fatalities.

What's also great is that a game with this large of a roster manages to actually be as diverse as it is. Each character plays completely differently. Whether you want to projectile spam with Shang Tsung or Reptile or focus on grappling with Jax, every single fighter archetype is represented with most characters being some sort of hybrid. The cast is for the most part well balanced with very few exploitable abilities that I could find and every character having a significant weakness that can be exploited.

The graphics are every bit as impressive as the gameplay. Every single character is rendered both internally and externally, making the fatalities and supers as great to look at as they are gruesome. Meanwhile, the amount of detail put into each character model is also impressive. Characters deform over the course of the fight as eyes are ripped out of their sockets and muscle tissue becomes exposed while special effects are loaded with particles which only further proves that MK2011 is the best looking fighting game on this console generation yet. For as good as everything in this game looks, the best looking things in game are actually Kung Lao and Kitana's faces. They aren't as attractive as Liu Kang and Sonya's but they're certainly the most detailed face models that I've ever seen in any game.

The story mode is honestly better than I expected it to be. After suffering through abysmal writing in the previous two Mortal Kombats I was truly prepared for the worst but was thankfully proven wrong. The characters each have a distinct personality that is represented even better than in Mortal Kombat: Deception. I'm happy to see after years of neglect that the developers actually care about the lore gain. The story isn't as good as Blazblue's but it's on par with Soul Calibur IV's and certainly surpasses that of Street Fighter IV's bare bones storyline. The only downside is that some of the two on one fights and the final boss are incredibly unfair which means that new players who aren't familiar with fighting games would be better off playing the arcade mode to get used to the way the game plays before tackling the campaign.

The single player options are incredibly robust for a fighting game. In addition to the campaign and arcade modes, there's a Challenge Tower that is a series of 300 modified fights and odd minigames that should take at least a weekend to complete, a handful of which are incredibly challenging but most are simply fun diversions for players who bore of the vanilla game. Then there’s the return of the Krypt which was sadly missing from MKvsDC. It's great to be able to unlock additional content over the course of the game and not have everything available to me right off the bat. Sadly the rewards are only divided into concept art, music, costumes and additional fatalities, leaving none of the fun joke items from Deadly Alliance in the game but being able to unlock additional content is always a nice feature even if the rewards begin to feel predictable over time. Still, it's a good addition to the game and it's good to have it back even if it feels like it's been scaled back form what it once was.

Getting used to MK2011 is easy thanks to the solid controls which manage to work well with the 360's control stick. While there is definitely room for hardcore players to pull of ten hit combos, two newbies can still have just as much fun with the game by throwing projectiles at each other for the entire match. The game is as deep as those playing want it to be and it's suited well for both casual and hardcore playing although a more skilled player who invests more time with the game will utterly destroy a newbie who's picked up the game for the first time.

MK2011 also introduces a new tag mode where two players can play though arcade mode together or four players can trade blows during the same match without a need to pass the controller. Tag team works surprisingly well given that it's only been a feature of a handful of fighters in the past, with four player 2D fighters being even more of a rarity outside of Super Smash Bros. The ability to coordinate with a partner adds a new level of strategy to the game that most fighters lack and really helps this title stand out form the stiff competition from Namco, Capcom and Arc System Works.

Sadly, every rose has its thorns and in this case it's the online mode. While the online gameplay features some great ideas like King of the Hill mode which simulates the feeling of having a party at your place, it's made unplayable by lag. I found myself in nearly every online match not being able to perform combos that I could easily pull off offline, not because of a delay but because my button presses simply wouldn’t register. The lag is simply that bad. It's a shame since Blazblue had an absolutely perfect netcode and Super Street Fighter II HD Remix was almost as good in that regard. This makes MK2011's enjoyment dependent on how many gamer friends you have. If you're a hermit, you'll likely be turned off by the lousy and unreliable online mode while more social gamers will get months if not not more than a year of enjoyment from MK2011. In an age where the longevity of a fighting game depends on its online modes, MK2011 desperately needs a patch if it hope to have any sort of lasting impact which is a shame since the offline gameplay is just that good and MK2011 is bound to make a strong showing at both EVO and East Coast Throwdown this summer.

Lag issues aside, MK2011 is one of the best fighting games available for this generation of consoles . The fighting engine is solid, the roster balanced and the single player modes are surprisingly rewarding with more content than can be packed into a weekend and it only gets better with a friend. For those who's appetite wasn't sated by Blazblue and Street Fighter IV and want to play a polished, competitive balanced fighter or those who want to see the graphics processing power of the current console generation pushed to the limit, look no further.

Pros

+ Balanced yet diverse roster,

+ Strong single player mode

+ Four player tag team is a blast

+ Intricate yet accessible fighting system

+ Genuinely good story

+ Challenge Tower is as amusing and often funny as it is fun

Cons

- Cheap final boss

- Laggy netcode

- The kypt could use more depth

9.1/10

Why I'm anticipating The Witcher 2

I stumbled upon a recent trailer for The Witcher 2 (sadly, NSFW so it can't be linked to) that made my anticipation for this game increase exponentially. In one scene during a prison break, the player is able to talk to a man who requests that he be freed. If the player refuses him, the prisoner will call for guards. Normally, this wouldn't excite me except for the fact that the player is able to hide before the guards arrive which will cause them to beat the prisoner for causing a distraction and allow the player to escape unscathed. This is beyond brilliant to me since I haven't seen gameplay scripting this amazing since Deus Ex or quite possibly even Fallout 2. The Witcher 2 may just be the kick in the pants that the industry needs after years of excessive gameplay streamlining. The Witcher 2 seems like it'll be the type of game that'll give players many subtle options that the player didn't even know existed. Assuming that the game manages to live up to the hype, it will either be a great title that shows what gaming as a medium is capable or it will be the evolution of gaming as we know it.

Not Funny, Blizzard

Blizzard's April Fools joke this year involved a trailer for a console port few Starcraft II which looked amazing. And of course Blizzard decided to get everyone's hopes up by pitching a product that looked like a genuinely good idea. Many console palyers would love to get their hands on Starcraft 2 and it's a shame that the punchline is that Blizzard thinks so little about the console audience. Next year Blizzard should stop making jokes that insult their audience.

Does Meta Mean Objective? The End of the Individual.

One trend that's problematic to me is the idea that anything anonymous is automatically objective and without bias, that a collective of the uninformed is somehow more enlightened than any individual who has dedicated their life to a particular form of knowledge, that sources are obsolete, that crowds cannot be swayed and that popular opinion cannot possibly be biased. Snobbishness is indeed a vice but going to the other extreme of mob rule is hardly an improvement, rather it's just chaos for the sake of chaos in an attempt to stick it to the man.

Populism isn't a bad ideal, except it's a bad model for filtering information. There's a reason why focus groups often kill films and rob them of their message, it's that things derived from consensus are soulless. Instead of relying on the merits of individual opinions, Metacritic has now become the most trusted review source on the net, with the sum invalidating its constituent parts and Wikipedia is now trusted as a completely objective and factual source when by its nature its not.

The internet is not a consciousness any more than it is several consciousnesses made one. The idea of the internet being a meta consciousness speaks simultaneously to an ideology of both majority privilege and the empowerment of the radical fringe, hence why right-wing reactionaries have such a large presence online. The most vocal supporters of an ideology simply make the most noise and drown out all reasonable debate and yet those ideologies are overrepresented within a meta framework as they are far more passionate than the general public.

Ultimately the need for individual achievement in society is being repressed by a desire for anonymous collaboration. This is ultimately futile as a meta novel would become nothing more than a deeply impersonal collaboration that would have no sense of characterization, plot progression or genre, rather it would be a loose collection of ideas decided by consensus that would be re-edited over a short period of time into something unrecognizable yet trendy. While democracy in institutions is a great goal to work towards, democratic art is an oxymoron and to attempt it would be an abomination that would ruin the entire world's conception of art for years to come. The fact is that art has often been decided by both individuals and cabals for a thousands of years. Meta art would only serve to create a purely commercial product that would please executives and those with no concept of taste but no one else.

While Wikipedia is great for general knowledge, it's both incredibly easy to post misinformation on and nowhere near as informative as an actual book on any subject. Metacritic is also not objective since the viewer may end up having a differing opinion than the majority of critics, or that a minority might have a more well thought out opinion. Also, a divisve film will naturally revieve average ratings. The push to make all information meta or the belief that meta is inherently good is a fallacy that promotes an inhuman agenda. In short, consensus is not always right and the current belief that it is is harming both the internet and humanity as a whole.

Things that I've learned from gaming

1. Most women are about 6'4 and have boobs lager then their heads. Also, women's breast shapes and sizes mean that they lack any sort of lungs or hearts.

2. It's easy for a single person to push a metal crate five times their size. Just look at Lara Croft and Link!

3. Shooting from the hip is accurate.

4. There is no such thing as bullet drop. Newtonian physics do not affect ammunition.

5. Women can only be hurt in their erogenous zones. Hence why they don't need armor anywhere else. They also never get cold.

6. You never need to contact HQ for permission to engage.

7. Friendly fire is painless.

8. Anyone chasing you will give up after they're lost track of you for 30 seconds, then they'll just forget all about the incident.

9. Wood is highly explosive, especially when used in constructing crates.

10. You never need to ease on the accelerator when turning and you should never break.

11. All barrels are flammable regardless of contents.

12. Any man who isn't 300 pounds of pure muscle isn't in shape.

13. Nobody cares if you bump into them when running indoors.

14. All moral choices are black and white. There are no such things as dilemmas.

15. Painting your car will cause everyone to forget about you running over police officers and shooting old people.

16. A 9mm round can easily decapitate somebody but torsos will never be disemboweled by gunfire.

17. All alien life is hostile. Nobody outside our world would ever desire trade.

18. Painkillers strong enough to heal gunshot wounds aren't addictive.

19. People in bar fights take turns attacking and often stand idle.

20. Nothing is more satisfying than rifle butting a racist, homophobic twelve-year-old boy in the face.

Duke Nukem Confirmed as 360 Exclusive DLC Character for Mortal Kombat

The Xbox 360 will finally be getting an exclusive character to compensate for the PS3's Kratos. Duke Nukem will be available for download in Mortal Kombat beginning June 10th when Duke Nukem Forever sees its North American release. This ends months of speculation as to what type of exclusive content the Xbox 360 will get despite hints from developers at both Netherrealm and Epic that a character from Gears of War would do battle in Mortal Kombat.

One Duke fatality has already been unveiled where Duke performs his infamous decapitation followed by defecating down his fallen adversary's neck. From the tiny bit of gameplay footage shown so far, Duke Nukem will have the ability to set pipe bomb as traps and fire rockets across distances to fight enemies in addition to a super meter building taunt featuring several of the character's famous lines including the fan favorite, "I've got balls of steel."

Running With Scissors to Develop Game Based on A Serbian Film

The creators of the Postal series have already unveiled their next project, a game based on the controversial movie, A Serbian Film. Titled simply, A Serbian Game, the Arizona-based developer is creating a nightmarish title based on what many are calling the most disturbing film of all time. Projected for a summer 2012 release, A Serbian Game is meant to give players the ability to recreate the same type of graphic sexual violence seen in the film.

Claims Running With Scissors studio head Vince Desi, "I was really inspired by the cock through the eyeball scene and I want to make that into a gameplay element. You play as a Serbian gigolo who's fled to Greece looking for a better life but ends up being used as a serial killer forced to make snuff films by killing people with his dick."

The core gameplay involves using the protagonist's penis to not only rape characters but violate them by creating new holes in their bodies. If the player is discovered during a murder, he'll have to fight police off, often by impaling them through their torsos with the male genitalia. Also, limbs can be severed either by using the penis or multiple melee weapons. Severed limbs can then be used as blunt striking implements. Health is regained by raping corpses which will often need to be done in small increments during fights to keep the currently unnamed protagonist from dying.

This comes as no surprise given Running With Scissors reputation of developing deliberately offensive games. Still, it stretches the boundaries of good taste to make something like A Serbian Film interactive. More news and hopefully screenshots will be posted as soon as they become available.