Abdulmajeed Al-Shuaibi

Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn is now free to try, developer Square Enix announced this week.

The trial program will run for 14 days after players create their accounts. Those who sign up through its official website can play through level 20. The trial is limited to the Windows PC version of the massively multiplayer online role-paying game, which is also available on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

For more on the game, be sure to read our Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn review and watch its video portion below.

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Jon Stewart has a long, playful, and antagonistic history with CNN, but his relationship with the 24-hour news channel could change dramatically if Stewart's latest plan pans out: raising $10 billion to buy the network. Stewart isn't actually trying to buy CNN — "Keep in mind," he says, "we need ten-billion dollars" — but he did announce a fake Kickstarter campaign to do so on his show last night, even launching a website in support of it. Stewart's campaign would offer some pretty great rewards too, including the chance to make a talking head appearance in a 21 box, a 6 box, or a 2 box. Fans of Fareed Zakaria and party drugs will also be interested.

Stewart's parody campaign comes in response to Rupert Murdoch and 21st Century Fox's...

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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the 90′s.

Kingdom Hearts TV Show

For years fans have been pondering about a Kingdom Hearts animated series to go along with the games and the manga that have been released so far. What started off as a rumor over a decade ago, fans just thought it was something to throw into the fire of rumors while waiting for any announcement of Kingdom Hearts II.

Now that rumor can finally be confirmed as Seth Kearsley, the writer and director of the cancelled series, has uploaded a storyboard he had put together for the show’s pilot episode. This is what Seth had to say in his own words about the pilot:

This goes back to about 2002.  Only the first game had come out at this point.  I was hired by Disney TV animation to develop and direct an animatic for a possible Kingdom Hearts animated series.  I played the first game from beginning to end and was so excited to get this opportunity.  This would have been the perfect thing for me, especially because of my action/comedy background with Mummies.  It was dark.  It combined anime and classic disney characters.  Are you kidding me?  This was awesome.  I also had control of the script on this so it was INCREDIBLY DARK…but then so is the game.  The darkest moment in the pilot was when Maleficent possessed Riku after he snatched the lamp.  That’s the very last panel here.

You’ll notice a series lack of backgrounds in these boards.  There was a pretty good reason for that.  As part of the project, I was able to go to the Disney Animation Archives.  The episode took place on Agrabah, so I pulled actual production BGs from Aladdin and boarded with it in mind that I would use this backgrounds.

This is one of those projects I really wish I could go back and have another crack at.  Especially with the technology now.  Looking back at these drawings, I can’t believe how small some of them are.  I also can’t believe I inked them and did marker tones on all of them.  I must have been temporarily insane.

At any rate, the pilot animatic tested exceptionally well but it was decided there wouldn’t be an animated series because they planned on making many more games.  WHO KNOWS…there could be a Kingdom Hearts animated series at some point.

——

I actually played the entire game myself to the end and tossed the script they originally had because it read more like an episode of Aladdin guest starring the characters from Kingdom Hearts.  I wanted to be very true to the game without just copying the game.  The episode took place in Agrabah and centered around Sora and Riku trying to get the lamp, which was the key to Argrabah.  It started on the island the way the game starts so we could meet Sora, Riku and Kiri then it turns into a bit of a nightmare and Sora wakes up on the ship with Donald and Goofy as they’re approaching Agrabah.  We see Riku with Maleficent and Jafar.  Riku and Sora meet up in a fight against the heartless in the streets.  They both go for the lamp.  As soon as Riku touches the lamp it’s as though Maleficent has control of him and ultimately Sora gets the lamp away from Riku before a giant heartless hand pulls him through a portal.  SOOO….quite a lot of information to get through in a 7 minute pilot presentation.

Ultimately, it tested very well but there was so much respect for the Japanese Director who was doing the games and there were still so many games in the works that they didn’t want to muddy the water with a series.  Who knows.  Maybe they’ll still do one down the road.  When I see Disney acquiring Marvel and then LucasFilms, all I think is, “Those would be awesome worlds to battle heartless.”

It would have been such an amazing show.  With the pilot, I actually went to the Disney Archive and pulled production backgrounds from Aladdin to use as backgrounds for the pilot and then did the board with those backgrounds in mind.  So when Sora and Riku were fighting in the streets, it was the actual backgrounds from the movie.  When Riku grabs the lamp, it was the background from when Aladdin grabbed the lamp.  My plan was to do that for all of the lands they would visit in the series.  I felt that using the actual backgrounds would not only save a bunch of money it would keep us from recreating the wheel for each of those lands and it would have a visceral effect and make you feel like you had seen this before.  I thought it would do an interesting thing to the brain of any hardcore fans.

So…yeah…it was the coolest project that never got off the ground for reasons that had nothing to do with the project itself but more company wide strategizing.

Here is a look at the storyboards that Seth had created:

So what do you all think about the cancelled Kingdom Hearts animated show? Would you like to see the show be brought back to life now that Kingdom Hearts is an established series?

Source: Seth Kearsley’s DeviantArt Page

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Thanks to my daughter (the younger one) for the idea!

Bayonetta developer Platinum Games will release a downloadable third-person combat game based on Nickelodeon's animated show The Legend of Korra this fall, IGN reports.

The Legend of Korra stars the eponymous young avatar, a legendary figure with the ability to master all four elements. The game will take place between the show's second and third season, and players will have access to all four of Korra's elemental abilities in combat.

The title will be available for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows PC. Check out a teaser of the game above. A turn-based strategy version will launch for Nintendo 3DS this year as well from Webfoot Technologies.

The Legend of Korra is a followup to Nickelodeon's hit animated...

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Daily Overview is an amazing project that shares one satellite photo from Digital Globes a day in an attempt to change the way we see our planet Earth.

The project was inspired by the Overview Effect, which first described by author Frank White in 1987 as an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of Earth and mankind’s place upon it. They’re having a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

You can find out more about it in the video below. You can also follow the project via Instagram, Facebook or Tumblr.

All images © Satellite imagery courtesy of Digital Globe | Via: Bored Panda

Greetings, dear PlayStation.Blog readers! Today we want to bring up two things: an extended cut of our latest trailer, and some more insight into Pavilion’s gameplay.

First, as most people know, E3 happened last week. Even though we weren’t able to attend, we released a new Pavilion trailer that was shown at the PlayStation booth and uploaded on the PlayStation YouTube channel. There was a time limit to the trailer and we therefore had to exclude two scenes from the original cut. We thought about it, and why not release the original extended version of the trailer as a bonus to this post?

The second thing, as requested, is to uncover some more information about the gameplay of Pavilion. Without going too deep spoiling specific puzzle features, we’ll try to shed some light on the overarching gameplay by presenting the three fundamental components that make up Pavilion’s puzzle design. These three things are woven together, and all three aspects need to be taken into account when solving puzzling situations.

1. The first of the three components is the main character seen running around in the world of Pavilion. His behaviors and personality need to be observed, understood and aided, for you both to traverse and progress in the game.
2. The second component is the environment. The layout of the surrounding world in which the main character is traveling will affect his traversal.
3. The third component is the interactive objects which can be manipulated and thus affect both the environment and, indirectly, the main character.

Apart from these three in-game components, there’s also an outside fourth component, the wielder of interactive objects that brings forth reactions from the character and changes in the environment.

These are the cornerstones of the gameplay, and depending on how things relate to each other, puzzling situations will emerge. Each individual puzzle aims to both give you new knowledge, a deepened understanding of the gameplay, as well as being a problem for you to wrap your head around. Once you realize the solution, execution will be direct and easy. We rather want to reward the player for understanding than punish her for not seeing the solution right away.

We’re also happy to see conversations about the fourth person term. As many have touched upon, the fourth person idiom partly relates to the indirect steering of the main character, much like in everyone’s favorite game Pac-Man 2, but with a totally different kind of logic. Though, the indirect steering is not solely the reason for us to use the term. Unfortunately we can’t go deeper into its meanings without spoiling certain parts of the experience that we’d rather have you experience while playing. Pavilion presents itself best when played, and we look forward to giving you a hands-on experience at game shows later this fall.

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments and we’ll try to answer them for you. Have a great day!

A feature-length documentary entitled Video Games: The Movie, executive produced by Zach Braff and Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski, will hit both theaters and online on July 15th. The upcoming film includes interviews with luminaries like Hideo Kojima, Warren Spector, and Nolan Bushnell. Narrated by Lord of the Rings' Sean Astin, it charts the growth of video games and how it eventually became a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

Although the trailer opens with "From executive producer Zach Braff," both he and Bleszinki acquired their positions by contributing $10,000 to the project's crowdfunding campaign, and it's uncertain as to how much creative control either men were given. According to the movie's Kickstarter...

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A veritable tidal wave of new emoji are headed to the world as part of a newly-updated list from Unicode, the industry standard group, and now there's an easy way to see all of them in one place. The Unicode Consortium has published a new chart that shows what's new and what's not, highlighting the 240 new characters that are headed to computers and mobile devices. That list includes things like the Reversed Hand With Middle Finger, Black Skull And Crossbones, and the imminently relevant to 2014 Telephone On Top Of Modem.

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Life delivered a clear summary of the events in New York: “Most shocking of all to the residents of Harlem was the fact that Malcolm X had been killed not by “Whitey” but by members of his own race. The country’s Negro community was suddenly faced with the possibility of a fratricidal war”.

On the very next page was an essay in words and photos by Gordon Parks — credited as “a close observer of the career of Malcolm X” – who gained unprecedented access to the black Muslim community for a photo-essay two years prior. Back then, Malcolm X was a preacher with a black-nationalist religious movement Nation of Islam, which he had a falling out in 1964. From his former movement, he received numerous death threats and finally an assassin on February 21, 1965. The assassin, one Thomas Hagan, was paroled only in 2010, serving 44 years of a life imprisonment.

Last month, a link with that frantic America which prospered Malcolm X and his firebrand philosophies was lost when Yuri Kochiyama died, aged 93. Ms Kochiyama, a long-time political activist, famously appeared in the photo above, cradling the dying Malcolm X’s head. The photo was taken by Earl Grant, a close associate of the slain preacher.

Peter Dinklage’s graduation photo from Delbarton School in Morristown, 1987.

Android's current wordmark, set in a futuristic typeface, has remained basically unchanged for as long as the platform has existed — but now, some 5 1/2 years after the T-Mobile G1's commercial release, it might be time for an update. Posted earlier this week by Twitter account @upleaks, the alleged 17-second boot animation for LG's upcoming G Watch features the usual stylings of a Google-influenced Android device — but the interesting part comes at the end, when an all-new Android word mark appears. It's entirely in lowercase and has a softer, friendlier feel than the robotic futurism of the current logo — the only questions are whether it's real, and if so, whether it'll be canon for all Android branding going forward.

During its...

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