This game is entrancing.

Pixeljunk: Eden

On sale Tuesday.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun. It calls to mind a rollicking R-rated version of Mad magazine featuring Dave Chappelle and Quentin Tarantino, and sets a new standard for what is possible in interactive arts. It is by far the best game of the series, which made its debut in 1997 and has since sold more than 70 million copies. Grand Theft Auto IV will retail for $60.

Hardly a demographic escapes skewering.

It looks like New York. It sounds like New York. It feels like New York. Liberty City has been so meticulously created it almost even smells like New York.

I will happily spend untold hours cruising Liberty City’s bridges and byways, hitting the clubs, grooving to the radio and running from the cops. Even when the real New York City is right outside.

Grand Theft Auto Takes On New York

Avery’s ploy had been unorthodox, unprecedented, and, as players and sages would declare afterward, “embarrassing” and “bush”—akin, maybe, to doing pushups over the twelfth hole at Augusta while an opponent is putting for par.

The next day, amid Pan-Canadian outrage, the NHL issued a decree, informally known as the Sean Avery Rule, or the Nitwit Rule: no more doing that, whatever it was.

The innovation, like midget batsmen and airplane shoe-bombing, would prove to be short-lived.

I don't care about hockey, or agitators, but I am positively intrigued by the idea of "pan-Canadian outrage."

Puckhead

An addictive (mostly frustrating) little Flash game. Like a one-player variation on Go. You can win.

Chat Noir

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words.

This has the potential to be considerably more addictive than the ESP Game.

FreeRice

Heck of a job, "Pat"!

"I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it," said John P. "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs.

"I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," (*) Michael Chertoff said.

(*) Chertoff's first job after law school was as a clerk for Murray Gurfein, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That was in 1978.

Philbin's last scheduled day at FEMA was Thursday. He has been named as the new head of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

I thought someone had lost their head last week ...

Buy It Now in time for Christmas!

Customers who bought this item also bought:

One of a kind "Tim Burton on bad acid" Dolls

Be advised, this is NOT a spoof. I repeat: this is not a spoof.

In Left Behind, video game players must try to convert others to Christianity. If nonbelievers won't convert, players must kill them.

Set in perfectly apocalyptic New York City, the Antichrist is personified by fictional Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive."

The CEO speaks out:

Situations resulting from the stories' post-apocalyptic time-frame are used to encourage gamers to think about matters of eternal significance, a topic largely ignored by modern games.

In the initial missions, there is little emphasis on physical warfare and gamers are introduced to powers of influence which result in a battle for the hearts and minds of people. As missions progress, there are no ‘objectives' to cause war physically. However, physical warfare results when the player is required to defend against the physical forces of evil; led by the Global Community Peacekeepers.

From IGN:

The units just aren't smart enough to take any initiative here so you'll spend the majority of your time micromanaging the particulars rather than planning out your overall strategy.

And this:

There are a lot of Christian rock acts featured in the clue screens between missions. While it's not everyone's cup of tea, the selections here are enjoyable and typical of the genre. The style of music, however, serve as an unintentionally amusing commentary on the game's decision to cast electric guitarists as the minions of evil on the Antichrist's side.

And finally:

The company's ultimate goal in offering the game: to bring parents and kids together to talk about the Bible.

'Convert or die' game divides Christians

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Last year, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

It often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.

Sony seems to have lost its way; their technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3

Some notes about Finite and Infinite Games:

There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite.

A finite game is a game that has fixed rules and boundaries, that is played for the purpose of winning and thereby ending the game.

An infinite game has no fixed rules or boundaries. In an infinite game you play with the boundaries and the purpose is to continue the game.

Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.

Finite players try to control the game, predict everything that will happen, and set the outcome in advance. They are serious and determined about getting that outcome. They try to fix the future based on the past.

Infinite players enjoy being surprised. Continuously running into something one didn't know will ensure that the game will go on. The meaning of the past changes depending on what happens in the future.

Your daily dose of McLuhan (here excerpting Life magazine):

The traditional enemies of the Willigiman-Wallalua are the Wittaia, a people exactly like themselves in language, dress and custom ... Every week or two the Willigiman-Wallalua and their enemies arrange a formal battle at one of the traditional fighting grounds. In comparison with the catastrophic conflicts of "civilized" nations, these frays seem more like a dangerous field sport than true war. Each battle lasts but a single day, always stops before nightfall (because of the danger of ghosts) or if it begins to rain (no one wants to get his hair or ornaments wet). The men are very accurate with their weapons -- they have all played war games since they were small boys -- but they are equally adept at dodging, and hence are rarely hit by anything.

The truly lethal part of this primitive warfare is not the formal battle but the sneak raid or stealthy ambush in which not only men but women and children are mercilessly slaughtered ...

This perpetual bloodshed is carried on for none of the usual reasons for waging war. No territory is won or lost; no goods or prisoners seized ... They fight because they enthusiastically enjoy it, because it is to them a vital function of the complete man, and because they feel they must satisfy the ghosts of slain companions.

Back to the book:

You can do what you do seriously, because you must do it, because you must survive to the end, and you are afraid of dying and other consequences. Or, you can do everything you do playfully, always knowing you have a choice, having no need to survive the way you are, allowing every element of the play to transform you, taking pleasure in every surprise you meet. Those are the differences between finite and infinite players.

Exactly who are the ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

"If popular culture has taught us anything," Daniel H. Wilson says, "it is that someday mankind must face and destroy the growing robot menace." Luckily, Dr. Wilson is just the guy to help us do it.

If Robots Ever Get Too Smart, He'll Know How to Stop Them