You are here
Computing Featured Gaming Mobile 

Windows 8 and why the Zune brand needs to die

Microsoft has taken a lot of flak for their horrible naming conventions and overly long names, and deservedly so. When first announced, Windows Phone was called Windows Phone Series 7. They officially chopped of the “Series” by launch, and now just advertise it as Windows Phone. It just makes more sense.

Similarly, they last year rebranded their paid Office cloud service to Office 365. Office 365 makes sense. It’s Office, all the time. Do you know what they called it previously?

Business Productivity Online Suite.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming 

Puddle game review

Back in 2010, six French students won the GDC Student Showcase award for the liquid physics puzzle game Puddle.  Konami later picked up the title, and after development by Neko Entertainment, Puddle was released on both the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN a couple of weeks back. The premise of the game is straight forward.  The player guides liquids through hazardous environments, while trying not to lose so much volume that you have to start over.  In the early levels, this means navigating water through pipes filled with fire and heated…

Read More
Arts Computing Featured Film Mobile Music TV 

Zune Music coming to Canada

Microsoft’s Zune Music services have always been a very US centric brand, with rumours that it would come to Canada swirling for a couple of years. The last we heard, it was originally going to show up here back in the spring of this year. While the Zune video marketplace has been available in Canada for some time, allowing users to rent and buy TV and film content via their PCs or Xbox 360s, the iTunes competitor has been bereft of, well… tunes, until now.

Read More
Computing Featured Mobile 

Windows Phone Mango update available worldwide

When rumours started floating around that today would be ‘Mango Day’, in which Microsoft launched the 7.5 version of their mobile OS (Mango of course), I have to admit I was pretty skeptical, after how clumsily the folks at Redmond handled the NoDo update in the spring. It turns out that Microsoft got it right this time, as the latest update to Windows Phone 7 has been launched worldwide.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming 

Gears of War 3 is an epic swan song

Epic Games had to pull off a hat trick with the concluding chapter of Gears of War. First is to bring new visual and gameplay tweaks that are prerequisite for a sequel to be a hit with the fans. Second, they needed a way to recap the story for newcomers. Finally, they needed to wrap up the story in a way that is satisfying for a trilogy that was designed to end with the third installment.

Epic pulled it off with style and grace, as Gears of War 3 exemplifies exactly what a sequel should be.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming 

The Gunstringer review – this duck hunts

As I do recall, the first time I set eyes on Twisted Pixel’s Kinect based game The Gunstringer I wasn’t rightly sure what to make of it. The odd little feller looked like a goofy western on-rails shooter aimed for the new-fangled Kinect. On first blush I reckoned I’d steer clear of it, but like my kin done told me, don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming video 

Gears Of War 3 launch party challenge

With Gears Of War 3 less than three weeks away from launching, a new trailer tracing the story of Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad has been released. Gears 3 has already seen an unprecedented 1.3 million preorders, making it the fastest pre-sold exclusive for the Xbox 360 platform, and the same number of players spent more the 20 million hours fragging the enemy in the multiplayer beta a few months back.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming 

They Bleed Pixels gets an official trailer, summer release date

Sppoky Squid has released the debut trailer for the upcoming They Bleed Pixels, a game I’ve personally been waiting for to make its appearance on Xbox Live Indie Games since before I first got a chance to play a beta version at TCAF this year. The “fast-paced, gothic lo-fi, platforming beat’em up” is due to appear on the Xbox sometime this summer.

Read More
Arts Featured Gaming Show 

TCAF 2011 – Miguel Sternberg interview

While at TCAF this year, we spent a few minutes talking with Miguel Sternberg of Spooky Squid about the latest Torontron arcade cabinet, the High Roller. Also on hand was a playable version of his latest game They Bleed Pixels, a “fast paced, gothic, low-fi pixel art, platforming beat’em up” that will be coming out ‘soon’ on Xbox Live Indies.

Read More

Windows Phone 7 Day to Day

Just a week or two before the launch of Windows Phone 7, my old phone did a nosedive onto a tiled floor. Not just a drop mind you, but a slow motion flung through the air and land screen first about 10 feet away from me drop. Though I had to cover the screen with cellophane to avoid dislodging glass shards, it wasn’t a permanent solution. That’s when I decided to give Windows Phone 7 a try…

Read More

Hi-Rez Studios announce Tribes: Ascend for PC and 360

Anyone who’s been playing multiplayer FPS games for over a decade will probably remember with some fondness both Starseige: Tribes and its sequel Tribes 2, the latter of which was released a decade ago. The series introduced players to a number of new elements in competitive multiplayer, from vertical combat using jet packs, and large sprawling maps that could accommodate teams of up to 16 players. Hi-Rez Studios, which purchased the Tribes franchise last fall, announced at PAX East that they’ll be bringing Tribes: Ascend to the PC and Xbox 360,…

Read More