The ring…

The Stonehenge Chronicles delayed for Hellgate : London

The Stonehenge Chronicles delayed for Hellgate : London

By Robin Torres

Hellgate : London’s Patch 1.0 aka Stonehenge aka The Stonehenge Chronicles has been delayed until January. This will be the first major quarterly update and, if released in January, will still be on schedule. Bill Roper, in a letter sent …

 

Massively – http://www.massively.com

Mortal Kombat makes another killing.

   Two teens from Johnstown, Colorado have been charged with killing the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the “Mortal Kombat” video game, prosecutors said.

Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were charged as adults on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said in court documents released Wednesday and filed a day earlier.

According to a police affidavit, the teens were baby-sitting Trujillo’s half-sister, Zoe Garcia, on Dec. 6 while the girl’s mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teens hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the video game, the document said.

Trujillo and Roberts tried reviving the girl by putting her under running water and attempting CPR before they called her mother and 911, the affidavits stated. The girl died at a hospital.

An autopsy showed she had a broken wrist, more than 20 bruises, swelling of the brain, and bleeding in her neck muscles and under her spine, the affidavits said.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Margie Martinez said late Wednesday that she did not know whether either teen had an attorney. The teens were being held at the Weld County jail but were not permitted to accept phone calls, Martinez said.

Roberts said he was downstairs playing video games while the sisters wrestled upstairs, police said. But a witness quoted in the affidavit said Roberts told her he had kicked the girl.

The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling. According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn’t stop, he responded, “I don’t know; I was drunk.”

If convicted, the teens could be sentenced to 48 years in prison.

(Via CityNews)

 

This source (City News) quotes the Associated Press as it’s source, and the only think linking it to the Video Games is the title of  “Video Game Killing Haunts Town”
now another few articles have popped up carrying the story around the internet:

VolunteerTV calls their article “Teens charged with killing 7-year-old by using video game moves”
http://www.volunteertv.com/news/headlines/12659486.html

MyFox (Birmingham) titles theirs as “Colorado Teens ‘Killed Girl With Mortal Kombat Moves”
http://www.myfoxal.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5272518&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.4.1

The Charleston Daily Mail say: “Police say teens killed girl with moves from ‘Mortal Kombat’ video game”
http://www.dailymail.com/News/NationandWorld/200712200221

and the DailyMail from the UK state: ‘Babysitters kill girl, 7, with Mortal Kombat video game moves’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=503713&in_page_id=1811&ito=1490

Now only ONE of those articles says the jerk was playing Mortal Kombat, all the others just state he was playing video games.

But here is what gets me.  ALL of them state the following:

    According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn’t stop, he responded, “I don’t know; I was drunk.”

So it was Mortal Kombat, a video game, that makes you do stupid shit and not BEING FUCKING DRUNK?  

Point the finger where it needs to be at.  The moron(s) drinking and getting pissed off not the video games or even the booze.

a 16 and 17 year old should already know that drinking makes you stupid and at that age they should be smart enough to understand the consequences of their actions.

if you want to blame anyone..
  Blame the kids for being stupid. Blame the parents for producing stupid children.  Blame their friends for allowing them to be so freaking stupid
  and blame the media for trying to point the finger somewhere else because they know it will make people read it.  

  Someone dies and they are trying to make a buck off of it.. doesn’t it make you sick?

Jack Tretton: PS3 Becoming Lead Development Platform

Xbox 360 ports on PS3? Think again, says SCEA chief Jack Tretton. He
says that many developers are now creating for PS3 first and then
porting down to other platforms.

Over the last year, when it came to making graphically intense, high-
definition games most developers typically made the Xbox 360 their
platform of choice, meaning that their time and energy would go into
the Xbox 360 version of a multiplatform title and then the game might
be ported over to PS3. Because the Xbox 360 and PS3 have very
different architectures, the transition wasn’t always so kind.

That said, Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton
believes that going forward third parties will make the PlayStation 3
their lead platform. So far there have only been a small handful of
titles for which that’s the case.

“We hear better and better things from the third party publishers
everyday,” Tretton told IGN in a recent interview. “We are meeting
with them on a regular basis and are getting a lot of feedback from
them in terms of their needs. We are now starting to see developers
creating games on PS3 and then porting them to other platforms such
as EA’s Burnout.”

He continued, “Developers are telling us that they are starting to
create their games on PS3 first and take advantage of the hardware
capabilities and then port down to other platforms so we are seeing
tremendous progress from the third party community in terms of what
they are able to do with our development kits. You will see some very
nice things in 2008 coming from our third party partners in addition
to what you will see this holiday.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Tretton talks about the challenges of his
first year as CEO and PS3’s first year on the market. GameDaily BIZ
also covered these topics in our Jack Tretton interview earlier this
month

(Via GameDaily)

 

[PogoWolf 's Vue]
I’ve called it before and I’m going to call it again.  Sony Marketing BS.  Total misdirection to make the PS3 look/sound like a better platform then it really is.

The first paragraph is completely true.  More titles where developed for the 360 then for the PS3, and perhaps they where ported over… to look and run like total crap.  Of course.. most of the titles developed for the PS3 already looked/run like crap anyway so shouldn’t be a real surprise to you PS3 owners anyway.

Now saying that.. Why would a company WANT to spend so much money in training their programmers how to use a totally different programming architecture, a huge new learning curve, creating new game pipelines for a system that hasn’t really sold very well in the first place?   it would be like a publisher saying “screw the PC we’re going to switch over and start making games for Linux. “  Totally different architecture and trailing the Windows market by HUGE numbers (flip off Linux lovers, you know the numbers are true.)

The only ones really pushing for PS3 hardware are those that have been ‘bought’ by Sony in order to develop for it.  Most of the main programmers have gone on record saying the PS3  architecture is hard to code for and pretty much sucks. (of course, the same thing was said about the PS2.. but that platform SOLD.)

As for Burnout: Paradise, where as I’ve not had the change to play both demos for the systems, from what I’ve seen on the net.  The 360 version looks smoother and faster.
not by much, but you can see the fill rate problems the PS3 has.  Not that the PS3 version looks bad.. but I have heard that it  doesn’t support 1080 and will only run in 480p and 720p
and won’t upscale to 1080.

as for the games, I hope we see something, because right now all I’m seeing are movies trying to be games or casual games that don’t mean anything to anyone other then casual gamers.  If you are going to develop high-end hardware I DO NOT want to play just Pac-man on it. 

Portal Cube Fuzzies

If you haven’t played the game Portal (part of Valve Software’s “Orange Box” game for the PC and the XBox 360, or on its own on Steam for the PC), you’re missing out on the best First Person Shooter Puzzle Black Humor Game of all time. I hate first person shooters and I love this game.

One of the unsung heroes of Portal is the Weighted Companion Cube. This little cube became such a cult fan favorite that geeks around the world constructed paper models, made replicas out of clay and made countless portraits and drawings for this little cube.

Finally, Valve has the Weighted Companion Cube Fuzzies available for sale. They resemble a string of fuzzy dice but they are a thousand times cooler. This pair of collectible Weighted Companion Cubes hangs around your home or workplace, providing faithful companionship throughout the day. Note: If the Weighted Companion Cube Fuzzies could speak – and we assure you that they cannot – they would remind you that in some areas it may be illegal to hang them or anything else from your car’s rear-view mirror.

Specifications: soft polyester fiber, measures 4″x4″x4″. These perfect companions can be yours for $29.95 at the Valve Software store. Just don’t expect any cake.

(Via [Valve])

Holiday Guitar Hero III Tracks (one Free!!)

Content: Holiday 2007 Single “We Three Kings”
Price: Free
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) MILD LYRICS,MILD SUGGESTIVE THEMES] Free “We
Three Kings” as performed by Steve Ouimette. For all song credits please
visit www.redoctane.com.”

 

Content: Die Fantastischen Vier “Ernten Was Wir Säen” – Single Track
Price: 200 Microsoft Points
Availability: Not available in India
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) MILD LYRICS,MILD SUGGESTIVE THEMES] “Ernten Was
Wir Säen” as performed by Die Fantastischen Vier. For all song credits
please visit www.redoctane.com There are no refunds for this item. For more
information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

 

Content: Extremoduro “So Payaso” – Single Track
Price: 200 Microsoft Points
Availability: Not available in India
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) MILD LYRICS,MILD SUGGESTIVE THEMES] “So Payaso”
as performed by Extremoduro . For all song credits please visit
www.redoctane.com There are no refunds for this item. For more information,
see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

 

Content: Trust “Antisocial” – Single Track
Price: 200 Microsoft Points
Availability: Not available in India
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) MILD LYRICS,MILD SUGGESTIVE THEMES] “Antisocial”
as performed by Trust. For all song credits please visit www.redoctane.com
There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see
www.xbox.com/live/accounts.