Paul Brownlee

Ben Krasnow is the modern Way Things Work. In this video, he shows how Digital Light Processing projectors work. Read the rest

I love the "reverse Photoshopping" of these comics -- digitally adding normal physiques -- as performed by Bulemia.com. The group says it wants to call attention to bodies so far out line with those of most Americans.

Read the rest

Another collection of excellent games joins PlayStation Plus this month, and you’ve come to the right place for details!

Starting things off on PS4 is Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee — New ‘n’ Tasty! This side-scrolling adventure reboots the PlayStation classic with new visuals, new sound, enhanced controls, and even more dark humor than before. Also coming to the PS4 lineup is Valiant Hearts: The Great War. This colorful puzzle game carries with it a heavy subject matter, as it follows four intersecting lives (and a loyal canine companion) during the first World War.

On PS3, gamers with PS Plus can download the critically-acclaimed Papo & Yo, alongside the wit-inducing Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. And on PS Vita, watch out for OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood and CounterSpy.

These games will be available for Plus members when PlayStation Store updates later today.

Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee — New ‘n’ Tasty! (PS4)

Free for PS Plus Members
It’s the return of a PlayStation classic! Join Abe in this rebooted platformer that has enhanced visuals, sound, and controls. Help him free his people from a dastardly meat processing facility, and see why gamers fell in love with good ol’ Abe in the first place!

Valiant Hearts: The Great War (PS4)

Free for PS Plus Members
The story of intersecting lives that suffer under the impossible duress of the first World War. Inspired by actual WWI tokens from the friends and family of the development team, this game may be colorful, but tells a dark and devastating story. Bring a box of tissues!

Papo & Yo (PS3)

Free for PS Plus Members
Papo & Yo is the story of a young boy, Quico, and his best friend, Monster. Monster is a huge beast with razor-sharp teeth, but that doesn’t scare Quico away from playing with him. Build your friendship with Monster by solving puzzles together and adventuring through a magical, surrealist world.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (PS3)

Free for PS Plus Members
You are the legendary detective. Use your powers of wit and deduction to piece together several grisly cases and pass judgement on the accused. Will you live up to the legacy embodied in the name “Holmes?”

OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood (PS Vita | PS4)

Free for PS Plus Members
Grind, kick, jump, and trick your way to a high score in the “skate-em-up” sequel to OlliOlli. Players can push their skills to the limit with a refined combo system, new modes, and more. Don’t fall!

CounterSpy (PS Vita | PS4 | PS3)

Free for PS Plus Members
Inspired by the Cold War, this stylish adventure tasks you with keeping the world’s superpowers in balance, all while blending covert operations and high-intensity gunplay into a colorful pastiche of gaming subterfuge.

Before you go, we want your feedback! Please take our poll, and leave us a comment below. If you’re still feeling chatty, join us in our PlayStation Community forums.

Sony and From Software have revealed Darkbeast, a new boss enemy set to appear in next month’s Bloodborne for PlayStation 4. Described as an “electric beast” that emerges from giant skeletal remains, the Darkbeast “bombards the player with its erratic and off-speed movements.” Here’s Sony’s official description: Darkbeast A malformed beast enveloped in blue lightning. […]

Read Bloodborne’s Darkbeast boss introduced in full on Gematsu.

Harvey Keitel, Klaus Kinski and underwater boobs star in this low-budget b-movie from 1985. And there's probably no better way to celebrate the 30th birthday of something this weird than just to watch it.

Above is a clip starring a flying goat. Below is the rest.

HughPickens.com writes Farhad Manjoo writes at the NYT that at first glance Google looks plenty healthy, but growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years. Although Google has spent considerable resources inventing technologies for the future, it has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers. According to Manjoo, as smartphones eclipse laptop and desktop computers to become the planet's most important computing devices, the digital ad business is rapidly changing and Facebook, Google's archrival for advertising dollars, has been quick to profit from the shift. Here's why: The advertising business is split, roughly, into two. On one side are direct-response ads meant to induce an immediate purchase: Think classifieds, the Yellow Pages, catalogs or Google's own text-based ads running alongside its search results. But the bulk of the ad industry is devoted to something called brand ads, the ads you see on television and print magazines that work on your emotions in the belief that, in time, your dollars will follow. "Google doesn't create immersive experiences that you get lost in," says Ben Thompson. "Google creates transactional services. You go to Google to search, or for maps, or with something else in mind. And those are the types of ads they have. But brand advertising isn't about that kind of destination. It's about an experience." According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television and is likely to be dominated by services like Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest that keep people engaged for long periods of time and whose ads are proving to be massively more effective and engaging than banner advertisements. In less than five years, Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ads, and new ways for brands to measure how well their ads are doing. These efforts have paid off quickly: In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5 billion in ads, up 65 percent over 2013. Google will still make a lot of money if it doesn't dominate online ads the way it does now. But it will need to find other businesses to keep growing. This is why Google is spending on projects like a self-driving car, Google Glass, fiber-optic lines in American cities, space exploration, and other audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do. But the far-out projects remind Thompson of Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development, and has seen little return on its investments. "To me the Microsoft comparison can't be more clear. This is the price of being so successful — what you're seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It's almost like a natural law of business."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest video as part of IGN‘s month of exclusive Bloodborne coverage introduces the action RPG’s various weapons. Watch the video below. Bloodborne is due out for PlayStation 4 on March 24 in North America and March 25 in Europe.

Read A look at Bloodborne’s weapons in full on Gematsu.

PlayStation Nation!

The wait is nearly over! Soon, The Order: 1886 will finally launch around the world, officially adding a new cast of characters to the PlayStation family. Ready at Dawn not only has created a marvelous new world for us to play in, but a new breed of hero. The knights of The Order are extraordinary warriors, but it’s important to remember they are still human. They tire, they feel pain, but they still stand up and persevere.

We hope this trailer captures a little bit of that and sets the stage for your next amazing PlayStation adventure.

Thank you so much for your support!

Keiji Yamagishi, aka the composer of the music for the original Ninja Gaiden, just released a chiptunes album that sounds like an alternate dimension soundtrack to the best NES game that never existed. Listen to Retro-Active Pt. 1 for free here, or download your own copy for $8.

 

Raptor: Call of The Shadows - 2015 Edition is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*

Raptor: Call of The Shadows is the most action-crazed, guns blazing, shoot ‘em up game you’ve ever played!

*Offer ends February 20 at 10AM Pacific Time

 Jon Stewart, who turned his biting and free-wheeling humor into an unlikely source of news and analysis for viewers of "The Daily Show," will leave as host this year, Comedy Central said Tuesday.

The first gameplay trailer for Persona 5.

Read Persona 5 Trailer Shows Gameplay Footage And Other Characters on Siliconera!

Bandai Namco has released a new trailer and set of screenshots for Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. The upcoming Dark Souls II upgrade is due out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. Outside of visual improvements and an increase in the maximum number of online players, current […]

Read Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin ‘Forlorn Hope’ trailer, screenshots in full on Gematsu.

Hella Club Nintendo rewards added ⊟

Winding down its loyalty program, Nintendo has pushed out a bunch of physical rewards for North American members to spend their last points on. Those rewards include Zelda pouches for 3DS XLs, greeting cards (no idea who would want these), poster sets, Club Nintendo exclusive WiiWare game Grill-Off with Ultra Hand!, Animal Crossing mini playing cards, a Majora’s Mask 3D messenger bag, and the awesome game card case.

Nintendo has also put up literally a million digital Wii U and 3DS games*. The Club Nintendo site is getting hammered right now so it’s difficult to get anything to load, but I’ve pasted screenshots of all the game offers after the break.

*not literally

SUPPORT TINY CARTRIDGE Join Club Tiny!

Cute 2D Bayonetta minigame ⊟

It’s a simple game— just jump and shoot— but for a bonus on the Platinum Games website’s 404 page, it’s pretty great!

BUY Bayonetta 2, upcoming releases

Put the Code Name STEAM demo in my 3DS ⊟

You can grab a free demo for Code Name STEAM, the new turn-based strategy game from Intelligent Systems (Fire Emblem, Advance Wars series), from the North American and European eShops right now!

A Valkyria Chronicles-style 3DS game featuring characters like Tom Sawyer, Tiger Lily, Abraham Lincoln, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Queequeg (Moby Dick), and even HP Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter? Uh, yeah. I be on that all night, man I be on that all day.

Code Name STEAM releases March 13. Vine via StreetPass NYC.

PREORDER Code Name STEAM

Sanic :(
Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SephkoComic

Hey everyone – this is Tom Happ, the sole developer of Axiom Verge. I did all of the art, music, design, animation, and programming as a labor of love. After 5 years of working on Axiom Verge in isolation, I’m finally getting close to launch. I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on it. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to make as a team of 1, but the ultimate judges will be you, the players.

One of the newest features I added was a Speedrun Mode. For years I’ve loved watching ridiculously skilled players 100%-ing great games like Super Metroid, Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, and more. The recent AGDQ festival also made me think deeply about creating features specifically for the speedrunning community.

To understand how Speedrun Mode works, it’s important to understand a little about Axiom Verge. In Axiom Verge, you play as Trace, a scientist who wakes up after a lab accident in a strange, alien world. Similar to classic games like Super Metroid, Master Blaster, Bionic Commando, and Contra, the game involves a mix of exploration, new weapons and powerups, new enemies to battle and epic boss fights. As you make your way through the world, you also encounter a number of secret areas that are randomly generated each game – both the location of these secret areas and the actual layout are procedurally generated so no two playthroughs will be entirely the same. In addition, some creatures in the world behave erratically and randomly.

When people play normally, a big part of the fun of the game comes from exploration and discovering all of the secrets. Speedrunners, though, want to know that everything is where it’s supposed to be. It’s important that random elements are minimized so that every playthrough is comparing apples-to-apples. Originally, I considered just making the game the same for everyone on every playthrough, but I decided that that would take away some of the challenge and replayability. So instead I created a separate mode for speedrunners where all of the random elements are based off of the same seed number every time you play. So when you’re playing through in speedrun mode, every enemy is in its place, and there are no secret areas to serve as a distraction from the main game.

Another feature that is important for speedrunners is being able to bypass dialog quickly. For regular players, there is an interesting storyline that falls into place as Trace makes his way through the alien world. Not everything is always as it seems, and I don’t want to spoil anything beyond that. But speedrunners will have seen all of that already. They don’t want to keep tapping the X button repeatedly just to skip past the dialog – they just want to keep going, so I’ve set it up so Speedrun Mode works that way.

The ability for speedrunners to track how they’re doing at certain points in the game is also really important. Fortunately, the boss fights serve well as landmarks along the way. So in addition to having a timer (which is based on elapsed frames rather than real time in case there are subtle differences between the speed at which the game runs) always going in the upper-left hand side of the screen, players will also be able to see how long it took them to reach each of these milestones. For players who don’t necessarily want to compete with the best of the best to squeeze out as much time as possible, this feature also lets people set more modest goals for themselves. Try to beat your time to reach and defeat the first boss, the second boss, and so on.

Last but not least is Playstation Share. I cannot wait to watch players streaming their runs on Twitch and ultimately having them displayed on sites like speedrunslive.com or speeddemosarchive.com.

Speedrun Mode is just one of the features I’m adding to Axiom Verge to make it the ideal game for diehard fans of the genre. Axiom Verge has been a passion project of mine for a really long time, so it will be very exciting to experience it with people who share my love for those classic games. If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest info on the game, please follow me on Twitter at @AxiomVerge and sign up for my newsletter on the Axiom Verge website!

Japanese DLC coming to North American Animal Crossing ⊟

You thought you were done with Animal Crossing: New Leaf? Noooooope. Put down whatever “important” thing you thought you were going to accomplish.

According to a message posted in the game (via Technologytell), a new downloadable item will be available through Nintendo Zones (or, you know, “Nintendo Zones”) every two weeks starting February 1. These items were previously only released in Japan.

And you need them. I need them. This is important. Now I’m wondering who at Nintendo of America decided to jump back into supporting ACNL? If it’s you, let me know. I’ll thank you personally.

BUY Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Isabelle Nendoroid

Amazon.com will start collecting sales tax from Illinois shoppers Feb. 1, the e-commerce giant said Friday, in compliance with a new state law that aims to treat online and brick-and-mortar retailers equally.

“Call Me Lucky” is a bold and moving documentary about volatile comedian and abuse survivor Barry Crimmins Read the rest