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Syfy's futuristic cop show 'Halcyon' will have 5 VR episodes
In the year 2058, virtual reality is so commonplace that big-city police have established a Virtual Reality Crimes Unit. In this branch, detective Julie Dover ends up investigating an incident that shouldn't even be possible -- a real-life murder that went down within virtual reality. This is the premise of Syfy's new scripted series, Halcyon, which consists of 10 episodes that will air on Syfy's television and web channels, plus five VR-only episodes set to debut on Oculus Rift.
TUAW's Daily App: Halcyon
Halcyon is a game for the iPad by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg that's part music game and part puzzler. You've got little triangles coming down either side of the screen on various strings, and your goal as the player is to match those up by drawing lines across the strings in the right places. As you play across the strings, the game creates a sort of arrhythmic, atmospheric music that's pretty fascinating, and the triangles show up faster, making things get pretty complicated. The game makes excellent use of the iPad's touchscreen, and there's a lot of game to enjoy; there are 36 different levels along with 2 different Endless Modes to play. There's no actual multiplayer, but the game is integrated with both OpenFeint and Game Center for leaderboards. The game was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival this past year, so at just US$1.99 (during the current sale), you know it's a quality experience.
GDC09: Terminator Salvation hands-on
click to enlarge Set two years before the movie bearing the same name, Terminator Salvation's, well, salvation from the realm of mediocre shooter-dom is in the hands of Bionic Commando dev Grin. Embedded within the film's production team from day one, sharing creations back and forth, the Swedish group hopes to set the game apart from every other third-person action game on the market by playing off the toughness and tenacity of the titular robots. When we sat down to play the game for the first time, we found a functional shooter that didn't manage to terminate our generally low expectations of movie tie-ins.While we were assured that the game does indeed look like the film on which it precedes in the series' canon, the wash of browns and greens which made up the first level's scenery, combined with its cover mechanic and even the look of John Connor himself, had us wondering if this really was a Terminator title or if someone had played way too much Resistance: Retribution. (It looks eerily similar at times; check out the screens.)%Gallery-48219%
Halcyon Company planning games based on Philip K Dick novels
Fans of trippy, intelligent science fiction are likely well aware of the works of Philip K. Dick. This prolific powerhouse has released over 40 novels and 120 short stories throughout his illustrious career, many of which made their way to the silver screen (including "Total Recall", "Blade Runner", and the ever-confusing "A Scanner Darkly"). This plentiful font of sci-fi volumes was recently tapped by the procurers of the "Terminator" franchise, The Halcyon Company, who plan on publishing two games based on Dick's work following the release of their current project, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.We've got high hopes for any games based on the incredible narratives of this cyberpunk scribe, though Halcyon's blank game development resumé fills us with an appropriate amount of trepidation. We urge the fledgling publisher to follow the example set by EA's 1997 point-and-click adaptation of "Blade Runner", and to shy away from including sequences featuring a poorly rendered version of California's governor being repeatedly kicked in the penis by mutant dwarves.
Halcyon adapting Terminator for new game
If you're looking at it objectively, Terminator should be the best video game license in the known universe. It's a story about a robot who travels through time to kill other robots. Doesn't that just scream GOTY? Puzzlingly though, the franchise has had mixed success in its interactive form. Now it seems a new, untested publisher will be taking the reins, and fans can expect the streak of disappointing Terminator games to finally ... continue.Halcyon, the studio that picked up the rights to Terminator, is working on a new game based on their upcoming film Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Both are due in mid-2009. Both are also their first projects, but we already know one thing they're bad at: Naming things. ... Oh, and filling us with confidence. So, two things.
