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New Razer Blade Stealth upgrades all the original's faults
For a gaming company's first attempt at an ultraportable workhorse, the Razer Blade Stealth was pretty great. It had a stunning chassis, a strong CPU, a gorgeous display and the unique ability to link up to a desktop GPU. Unfortunately, it was held back a bit by limited storage options and a disappointing battery life. Not anymore: Today at PAX, Razer announced a Razer Blade Stealth refresh that packs in more RAM, more options for storage and a bigger battery.
The VERTX is an e-cigarette with a touchscreen
The V2 company rolled out a new e-cigarette model this morning called the VERTX. I have no idea how that word is pronounced but the device does offer a number of unique features. For one, it's the only micro e-cig on the market with a touchscreen. Users can easily adjust both the heating element's voltage -- from 3.5V to 4.5V -- and the device's LED indicators simply by swiping across the VERTX's face.
Operation Finish All the Games: April 2016
After a bit of a squeaker back in March, I'm happy to say I'm back on track with my quest to reduce my backlog by completing one game a month for the entire year of 2016. Unfortunately, my "currently playing" list seems to be growing quite a bit on its own, occupied by various titles that I have very little hope of finishing any time soon. But, that's an issue for next month's post. How did I do in April?
Logitech made this retro game display from 160 light-up keyboards
Because when there's VR and cosplay around the corner, a simple gaming keyboard is not going to cut it.
Fighting depression in the video game world, one AFK at a time
Matt Hughes took his own life in the fall of 2012. He was a freelance reporter covering the video game industry, and before he committed suicide, he sent emails to some of his editors, noting that he wouldn't be able to turn in more stories for one simple reason: He'd be dead. His suicide surprised nearly everyone who worked with him. Speaking with Kotaku days after Hughes' death, his former editors said things like There weren't any red flags and This was a complete shock. Hughes wasn't the only person in the video game industry to take his own life that year, and as the tragedies piled up, it became impossible to ignore their commonalities. Complete surprise. No one knew. She seemed fine. For Russ Pitts and Susan Arendt, two editors who had worked with Hughes and regularly interacted with dozens of other freelance reporters, these suicides were more than a shock. They were a wakeup call.
The Firefly 2 proves that every vaporizer should have its own app
The first Firefly vaporizer was revolutionary when it debuted in late 2013. Along with the original Pax, it helped take portable vapes mainstream with Apple-esque minimalist design and convection heating. But in the modern Internet of Things era, the OG Firefly now feels laughably out of date -- especially compared to the Pax 2. Thankfully, Firefly has just released a second-generation model that's smaller, lighter and more functional than its predecessor. It's even got an app!
Pax is bringing its vaporizer to Europe
Pax sells some of the best loose-leaf vaporizers -- and proprietary e-cig systems -- on the market. Over the past five years, though, its products have only officially been available in North America. Today, the San Francisco startup is branching out into Europe, beginning with the UK and Germany. But not all of its products are making the journey across the Atlantic yet.
Nintendo@PAX: Wii U gets 'F-Zero'-style racer, 'Kerbal' and more
Nintendo helped kick off Seattle's annual PAX Prime gaming convention with a focus on the indie scene. The Nindies@Night event at the EMP Museum gave fans a chance to check out 19 indie games on the Wii U and 3DS -- and interact with the developers themselves. Among the highlights: Developer Shin'en showed off two-player split-screen support in its very F-Zero-esque Fast Racing Neo; Squad talked about bringing Wii U-specific features to Kerbal Space Program; and Yacht Club Games unveiled a certain shovel-wielding Amiibo figure.
Dell revives the Alienware 18, upgrades its smaller gaming laptops
It's a rare, satisfying feeling when a community rallies together to ask a company to bring back a discontinued product and it actually works. Today is one of those days: Dell announced at PAX that it's bringing back the Alienware 18 -- the most powerful portable gaming machine the company's ever made. The revived 18-inch rig is being touted as a 'special edition' and will pack in a 4th Generation Intel i7 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD (with an optional 512GB SSD) dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M or 980M graphics, depending on the configuration. Too big? Too much? No worries --- Alienware is refreshing its 13-, 15- and 17-inch laptops, too.
Indie games are vast, varied and very 80s in this Megabooth trailer
There is no single definition of an "indie" video game. "Indie" doesn't mean free, cheap, mobile, 8-bit, 3D, platformer, shooter or any other thing. Thanks to the recent, rapid evolution of game-making technologies, more people than ever are able to craft and sell their own video games with help from friends and without involving a large publisher. That's what "indie" means -- independent, but not alone. The development community has plenty of avenues for people to gather and support one another, and one of the largest such organizations is the Indie Megabooth. Every year since 2012, the Megabooth has set up stalls at PAX East and PAX Prime showing off a selection of stellar independent games. It started with 16 games in 2012, took a trip around the globe in 2014, and will now boast a lineup of more than 70 games at this year's PAX Prime from August 28th to 31st. The list includes beautiful digital board game Armello, intense Xbox One game Below, gorgeous space shooter Galak-Z, poetic point-and-click That Dragon, Cancer, wacky competitive game Gang Beasts (shown above), and tons more.
Juul is the e-cig that will finally stop me from smoking (I hope)
I started smoking at 13. To be honest, I can't even pin the blame on peer pressure. Maybe it was my teenage desire to rebel; maybe I just wanted to look cool. I'm not sure why I started, but I know that I've never been able to stop. And I haven't had a day without a cigarette in at least 14 years. I've owned four e-cigarettes over the past three years, and despite my efforts to transition to vaping full-time, none of them have been able to replace tobacco for me. They have nonetheless been a good supplement, filling in when I'm unable, either due to social niceties or because it's forbidden, to smoke the real thing. Enter Pax Labs, the company behind the excellent loose-leaf vaporizer of the same name, which claims it's solved all my e-cigarette issues with its first attempt, the $50 Juul.
The Pax 2 vaporizer makes its predecessor look half-baked
I immediately fell in love with the original Pax vaporizer when it debuted back in 2012. Its compact and lightweight construction belied a powerful three-stage conduction oven, while the sleek, push-button design made it far more intuitive and user-friendly than other portable vaporizers available at the time. Granted, the OG Pax wasn't perfect -- what with its habit of clogging every few sessions or so. Now, more than two years after the release of the first Pax, PAX Labs is back with a new iteration that's smaller, lighter and more powerful than its predecessor. Say hello to the Pax 2.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining SWTOR's producer letter
At the community cantina that Star Wars: The Old Republic held this past weekend at PAX South, community manager Eric Musco said that the community team was going to do something different in 2015 during the cantinas. He said that he wanted to reveal some tidbit at each and every event. And this cantina yielded us an early look at Producer Bruce Maclean's roadmap letter to the community. In the letter, he talks about where the SWTOR story will take us, what's on the horizon for flashpoints, personal stories, planets, and the outfit designer. But what is all this new stuff, and should it get people excited about the coming year? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for that. If you play for similar reasons as I do, then there is plenty to be excited about. However, there are certain players, like PvPers, who might be a little frustrated by what they are seeing and not seeing in the letter.
RetroBlazer feels like Doom by way of Saturday morning cartoons
Amil Parra isn't a big fan of violence. That might sound strange coming from a man designing an homage to '90s sprite-based FPS games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, but one look at the game in motion and it becomes obvious that the inspiration Parra draws from those games is the feel, not the aesthetic. Meet RetroBlazer: a PC game that feels like a 1994 run-and-gun shooter, but looks like something you'd catch between episodes of Biker Mice From Mars and Mighty Ducks (that's the cartoon featuring space-ducks fighting space-dinosaurs by the way, not the live-action film featuring a lawyer fighting to be a better person).
PAX South 2015: Pox Nora is the coolest online card game you've never heard of
Pox Nora is a game that's hard to categorize. It's like Hearthstone, you see, because it's an online card game. But it's also like Civilization because it uses turn-based combat on a variety of maps with terrain that affects the battle. And maybe it's like Minecraft as well because it was built by a tiny team and developed incrementally through the feedback of a passionate fan base. Pox Nora was free-to-play before free-to-play was a thing. It's gone from tiny little indie to SOE-backed product and back again. And through its eight years, it's managed to fly quietly under the radar while its developers continually churn out content, implement community ideas, and expand its possibilities. At PAX South over the weekend, I sat down with Arthur Griffith, CEO of Desert Owl Games and co-creator of Pox Nora, to learn more about the game and its latest content additions.
PAX South 2015: Life is Feudal revives the good ol' MMO feel
When the assignment for Life Is Feudal came to me, I questioned why I was covering a game that really didn't seem to be an MMORPG in my eyes because of its separate servers and the survival feel of the setting. It felt to me initially that I was covering another DayZ, one set in a medieval era and no zombies. But as I found out at this year's PAX South, I was completely wrong. Interestingly, I didn't find out what kind of mistake I made from the head honcho of Bitbox, Vladimir Piskunov. I found out from someone who has been playing for a long time and was invited to play at the Life Is Feudal booth. His name is Bill, and he's the "superfan" who demoed the game for me. He explained the ins and outs of the mechanics until I started having Ultima Online flashbacks. We discussed the skill system and trekked around the world, and then reminded me that LiF will eventually be an MMORPG. And I could certainly see how. If sandboxes are your thing as they are mine, then maybe this game is up our alley.
PAX South 2015: Why aren't MMOs more social?
On Friday, Alex Albrecht from ZergID and formerly of the Totally Rad Show headed up a PAX South panel about the social side of MMOs, inviting Patrick Mulhern from Lorehound, Jenesee Grey from Camelot Unchained, and me to join to discuss community in MMOs and why it's seemed so absent in recent years. Meg Campbell from YouTube moderated the panel discussion, calling us the PAX MMO guild. I admit that I considered naming this piece, "How Star Wars Galaxies did everything right and World of Warcraft did everything wrong" because I am obviously biased. But I really was completely surprised at how much SWG came up during the panel. Many former Galaxies players will tell you that there was a lot about that game that was pure crap, but when you talk about the social implementations of SWG, there just aren't many games that compare.
PAX South 2015: Moonrise and State of Decay shine at the Undead Labs booth
Most media appointments at an event like PAX South 2015 work like this: You meet the person you're supposed to meet, that person shows you the game her studio is working on, and then you rush off to the next booth on your list while cursing yourself for not scheduling time for a snack. Undead Labs handled my PAX appointment a bit differently, sitting me down for back-to-back play sessions with brand-new tablet game Moonrise and a remastered version of State of Decay, the zombie survival game that put the studio on the map. It was a little jarring to go from adorable pet battles to being torn in half by a zombie, but the two-for-one session provided a nice glimpse of where Undead Labs has been and where it intends to go.
PAX South 2015: Camelot Unchained's proactive approach to community management
In the crowdfunded independent industry, we are starting to see some ups and downs. Backers have seen some games fail and other games soar. One of those games that seems to be doing very well, at least if you ask its Community Manager Jenesee Grey and its legions of fans, is Camelot Unchained. At this weekend's PAX South, I spoke to Grey about her experience as a CM for a crowdfunded game.
Gearbox's beautiful 'Homeworld' remake reaches PCs February 25th
If you're a long-time PC gamer, you probably have a soft spot for the Homeworld series. Relic's epic saga was both eye-catching and proof that real-time strategy could work in the void of space. However, time hasn't been kind to the games -- the first came out when 3D graphics cards were relatively new, and THQ's acquisition of Relic (plus its eventual bankruptcy) made follow-ups difficult. At last, though, you'll have a way to relive the Mothership's journey while doing justice to your modern gaming rig. Gearbox, which bought the rights to the series, has revealed that its previously teased Homeworld Remastered Collection will reach Windows PCs on February 25th. The remake spruces up just about every aspect of the two Homeworld games, ranging from much better-looking ship models and effects to reworked cutscenes. You also get a beta multiplayer experience that merges the online modes of both titles.
