Ghost
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Robot bears are coming for your grandparents
Not content to simply blame millennials for killing practically everything, baby boomers are now expecting the younger generations to care for them in their agedness. The nerve. Indeed, some 13 percent of the American population is now 65 or older, though a recent report from the Pew Research Center suggests that figure will nearly double by midcentury. Given that the current annual median price of a nursing-home room is around $92,000 (and rising), and because we can't just up and dump a quarter of America at the Springfield Retirement Castle, robots will have to start lending elderly folks a hand. Because if there's anybody who inherently trusts new and confusing technologies, it's the olds.
Ghosting redefined
They are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our teachers, our students, our bankers, our janitors, the bathroom attendant, the perfume-counter girl, the porn star, the preacher. They are the right-wing nut job, the Left Shark and the guy in the middle seat. There's no discernible difference between us and them. In fact, there's a good chance you're one of them. They are ghosts -- or so we've been told.
'Destiny' ditches Dinklage
Before Destiny officially launched on consoles, it launched a meme: That wizard came from the moon! The phrase, which was printed on Bungie-sanctioned t-shirts (and sold like hotcakes), spawned from Peter Dinklage's awkward, non-committal voice acting as the game's helpful, floating Ghost character. Soon, we'll be able to tell if the dialogue was to blame, or if Dinklage simply phoned this one in: Bungie is replacing all of Dinklage's voice work in the main game with that of Nolan North, the voice actor behind Uncharted's Nathan Drake and Assassin's Creed's Desmond Miles (among many other credits). North spilled the beans to Game Informer this month.
Pocket ghost detector may be as hard to find as its targets (update: details)
Let's get this out of the way: ghost detection is based on junk science. It's trying to prove something that's unprovable almost by definition, using theories that have little connection to the real world. But if you are going to chase phantoms, you might as well have the best technology at your disposal, right? GhostArk certainly thinks so. It's developing a pocketable ghost detector that supposedly has everything you need to track down supernatural beings, including an electromagnetic field meter, high-sensitivity microphones, radio frequency sweeping and sensors for both atmospheric pressure and temperature. Think of it as an audio recorder on steroids -- you can even add white noise to "bolster the spirits' strength." It's a clever concept, even if none of its findings would stand up under academic scrutiny.
GoPro-ready Ghost drone touts easy tilt control and auto-follow mode
As a recent South Park episode suggests, Parrot and DJI are the two most recognizable names in the consumer drone market right now, but they are about to face a new contender. Merely three months ago, we met Ehang who showed off its heavy-duty hexacopter at TechCrunch Beijing; and now, the Chinese company is also pushing its more affordable Ghost quadcopter onto Indiegogo. While said drone has been seeded to select e-tailers since April, Ehang co-founder Derrick Xiong said the latest offering is no longer a "beta version," but rather a retail-ready package aimed at the Western market. Most interestingly, the starting price is now just $375 -- a steal when compared to the $679 DJI Phantom 2 with similar specs.
Ghost ship mystery Return of the Obra Dinn waves in a demo
Return of the Obra Dinn is the first-person ghost ship mystery game with 1-bit rendering from Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope. Whatever else it is, you can find out right now with an early demo, downloadable for PC and Mac. The demo covers the first 15 minutes of the game. "It's still very rough and very untested," Pope says. "For such a low-res game, performance is not great on a 2011 Macbook Air running BootCamp. Hopefully it runs OK on most machines. The core mechanic is only lightly touched on, but you should be able to mentally extrapolate out what's here to a full game." Papers, Please, Pope's breakout game, swept the IGF awards this year, and Pope had planned to submit Return of the Obra Dinn to the IGF for 2015, but he says the game isn't quite ready: "That deadline was pretty useful in getting me through these past few weeks of crunch, but in the end I've decided not to submit the game as it is. Maybe next year." In Return of the Obra Dinn, a ship declared missing in 1802 suddenly returns to a London port six years later, badly damaged and with no visible crew. Players are the insurance adjuster for the East India Company's London Office, and must board the ship and recover the Crew Muster Roll book. It wouldn't be a game from Pope if it didn't involve official documents, after all. [Image: Lucas Pope]
Poke around inside Destiny's special editions
Last week we learned about Destiny's pricing for its three special editions, and now we're allowed to see inside each of these packages. The website has posted pre-order pages for each special edition with interactive elements that allow you to investigate all of the goodies and bonuses that come with each. The Ghost Edition is the most expensive at $149.99 but offers plenty of feelies for your money, including a Ghost replica with sounds and lights, an exclusive ship skin, an exclusive emblem, and postcards (hey, some of us are postcard junkies, OK?). The Limited Edition ($99.99) includes most of the same items save the Ghost replica. The Digital Guardian Edition ($89.99) lacks the physical goods of the other two but does include the game, early access, the ship skin, and the in-game emblem. All three special editions are packaged with the expansion pass that unlocks the first two DLC packs when they are released.
Moto X benchmarks and specs slip out, point to a fine mid-tier phone
We've already seen Motorola's rumored Moto X in press renders, photos, videos and even the hands of a Google executive; why not throw some benchmarks and specifications into the mix? Android Police is more than happy to add that grist to the rumor mill with a set of photos that reportedly show the AT&T Moto X ("Ghost") running AnTuTu and 3DMark tests. If accurate, the scores hint at a mid-range Android 4.2.2 phone whose 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM produce good (though not great) results. The rest of the visible specs are equally middle-of-the-road -- we see a 720p screen, 16GB of built-in storage, NFC, a 10.5-megapixel rear camera and a 2.1-megapixel front shooter. The hardware alone may not tempt customers, then, but Motorola could be counting on customization and software tricks to lure more customers. We'll know the full story on August 1st.
Neverwinter adds ghost and angel-snake companions
Hold on tight to your wallets, kids, because Cryptic's knocking on your door with a couple of new companion offerings for Neverwinter. The studio is releasing the Ghost and Lillend companions, although snagging one is going to require coughing up some cash (or playing the ZEN market smartly). The Ghost is a former Halfling who's fallen on hard times. She deals necrotic damage and has a neat ability that tosses a DoT onto an enemy while healing allies simultaneously. Lillend is... well, she's interesting. She looks like the cross between a snake and an angel, and as if that didn't give her enough fodder for dinner conversation, she can play the harp. Lillend is the game's first purple-quality healer companion. While you can buy the Ghost with ZEN, it looks as though Lillend is obtained only as a chance reward for purchasing a professions pack.
Game of Thrones' Dinklage to voice main companion in Destiny
If you're a Game of Thrones fan, there's no denying the fact that Tyrion Lanister is one of the most enduring characters in both the books and the HBO series. Actor Peter Dinklage is to credit on the TV side of things, and now the seasoned vet is branching out to do some voice work in Bungie's Destiny MMO. As your interactive companion, Ghost, Dinklage's voice (sans faux British accent) will be with your character wherever you go in the game. In addition to Dinklage, Bungie is also working with the iconic Sir Paul McCartney for the game's music.
WRUP: Ghost of Azeroth Present
The holidays are fully upon us, descended around the house and home like the drifting snow the season is famous for. It's been a rough week, and I'm not going to say much. As many of us are parents -- and all of us are human beings with basic emotions like compassion and empathy -- well. Everyone's said nearly everything. We're feeling it, too. Most of this article was written by Thursday night, so if we seem too jovial... that's because none of us could have known.
EA Gothenburg is now Ghost, don't be scared
EA's studio in Gothenburg, Sweden, is now Ghost, and along with a new name it now has a pretty snazzy website. Ghost is rumored to be working on a Need for Speed game with EA producer Alan Baker at the helm. Former DICE executive producer Marcus Nilsson leads the Ghostly team."Ghost is a unique proposition in the AAA development space; all the agility and creativity of a 'start-up,' while working with industry giants like Criterion and DICE guarantee we have the tools and support to execute our creative and technical visions," Ghost's website reads. Seriously, design nuts and art nerds, check out the site. It's super pretty.
Engadget goes ghost hunting -- exploring the gadgetry of paranormal investigation (video)
The rendezvous point is as nondescript as these things come -- a giant convenience store off the side of the freeway, a big cardboard box out front, filled to the brim with pumpkins in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. Stacey Jones approaches us timidly at first, calling my name in our direction, as two of the crew members puff on cigarettes in the unseasonably frigid air. She'd apparently mistaken some other folks for us a moment earlier, a group of college students in hoodies and baseball caps, and is clearly a little embarrassed by the whole experience. It's the first and last time words like "timid" and "embarrassed" can be accurately applied to a middle-aged mother of an adult son who hunts ghosts for a living in central New York State. Group identified, she announces, "We'd better get going. It'll take about an hour to get there." Disappointing news, after the five it took to get to this roadside rest stop. But we nod and smile and get back in our respective cars. She's careful not to reveal the location until we arrive, for concerns of privacy. I've studied her a bit online. A self-described "ghost cop," YouTube is littered with videos of her leading camera crews through abandoned hospitals, in search of dead people apparently desperate to relate some bit of information to her. The location, however, isn't as classically horror movie as we'd imagined or hoped in the car ride up. It's quite idyllic, really -- a beautiful 100-year-old building off the side of the road, 200 yards from a truly stunning old church. Outside the front door, a small signboard advertises a monthly waffle breakfast. Decidedly more ominous are the two graveyards that flank the buildings, with tombstones dating back to the early 19th century, generations of farmers under the ground that may well outnumber residents in this sparsely populated locale. The weather, too, is doing its part to set the scene -- strange, gray clouds hanging low in impossible shapes. "The light," says one of the crew members, as we park and begin the unpacking process. "It's...oversaturated." Sounds seem to travel remarkably well in the cold, crisp, pre-storm air. I step across the road with the show producer, to gather b-roll of 150-year-old headstones, still able to hear every word that Stacey says, as she describes her entry into this strange and oft-maligned world, how her son became possessed by demonic forces on an investigation in a graveyard as a teenager. It's a story she'd recount for the Discovery Channel five years ago, coupled with basic cable dramatizations, portrayed by actors bearing slightly resemblances to their real world counterparts, if you're willing to afford them the advantage of a good squint.%Gallery-168911%
Kinect can track Paranormal Activity in the home
Paranormal Activity 4 comes out in October and looks to uphold the series' legacy of gritty camera work and terrifying jump-scare moments. As with its predecessors, 4 adds new reasons an otherwise normal house would have 24-hour demon-tracking technology in every room, including one piece of hardware that isn't out of place in a modern suburban home: Kinect.The latest trailer for Paranormal Activity 4, viewable above, shows the family in a darkened room explaining the projections of Kinect's tracking dots. Creepy. Later on the dots pick up something that isn't human, which is also pretty scary, we guess.Since Kinect is obviously the latest tech trend in ghost hunting, we expect to see it pop up on Ghost Adventures soon, alongside that audio box that spits out random words, that thing that analyzes "energy" in mysterious units and that guy who always gets sick. Science.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist aims to take Conviction's promise to the next level and then some
"I'm not going to go into the whole story," says Splinter Cell: Blacklist creative director Maxime Béland during an interview with Joystiq at PAX 2012, "but Conviction was kind of a rescue job for me." As the last game in the Splinter Cell series (that also served as a more action-oriented reboot), Conviction ended up doing fairly well at retail. But Béland says that he and another producer were "brought in because it wasn't going well. We changed the direction and kind of shipped the game in two years. So Conviction is very sweet and sour for me."Soon after Conviction's release, Béland says he and his team sat down to put together a spreadsheet, going through over 80 reviews of the game and marking out what features were most mentioned, and which were most positively or negatively received. The black-and-white graphics during gameplay weren't well liked, so this past E3 when Béland announced Blacklist, one of the first things he said was that black-and-white was out.Players felt the single-player part of Conviction "was too short, and the scope of the game wasn't big enough," so growing the world of Sam Fisher has become a priority for Blacklist. And the least-liked feature of Blacklist? Fans really missed the spy vs. mercs competitive gameplay mode. That's why for Blacklist, it's implemented right back in there. "Easiest decision of my life," says Béland.%Gallery-156954%
Patch 4.3 PTR: The (real) ghosts of Darkmoon Faire Island
Darkmoon Island is home to the brand new Darkmoon Faire. In the original preview for the new Faire, we learned that some shady people and some crazy deals were made to secure the island location for Silas Darkmoon and his traveling Faire. What the Darkmoons got with their purchase, however, might be the real mystery lurking beneath the unassuming Faire-grounds. Spoiler warning: There are spoilers for the patch 4.3 content that is currently on the public test realms. If you do not want to be spoiled, I wouldn't read the rest of this.
Satin Silver PS3 Rolls into Japan on March 10th
It's not white, titanium blue, or even the traditional black -- this PS3 is Satin Silver (or is it Silver Satin?) and headed to Japan on March 10th. No specs have changed as far as we can tell with the 160GB model CECH-2500A SS selling for ¥29,980 (about $366) while the 320GB CECH-2500B SS weighs in at ¥34,980 (about $427). There's even a matching vertical stand for ¥2,000 (about $24) because Sony knows how important it is to coordinate your game center with the finish on your Rolls-Royce Ghost.
Man celebrates Halloween with flying ghost helicopter (video)
Some people buy a costume for Halloween. Others piece one together from scratch. Michael Colton makes six-foot-tall flying ghost helicopters that chase children down the street. He pieced this one together from some off-the-shelf R/C quadrocopter parts mounted to a simple aluminum frame, all held together with zip-ties and covered with an old bedsheet. He calls it Mr. T, and we pity the fool who doesn't watch it in action after the break, staged as the performance might be.
"Return to Graveyard" button appears in latest Cataclysm beta build
Picture this: You're an innocent, wide-eyed goblin, exploring the Ruins of Gilneas in Cataclysm. You're minding your own business when all of a sudden, a hideous, jaggedly polygonned female worgen leaps out of the bushes and assaults you! You fight valiantly, but -- QQ! -- your chosen class has been nerfed to the ground in beta patch after cruel beta patch! You clutch your chest, cursing Ghostcrawler with your final breath. You fall to the ground as a sassy little green corpse. "No problem," you think. "I'll simply run back to my corpse!" And so you try. But ... you can't find it. I mean, it's there somewhere, but you're on the wrong side of a moat, and ... well, you've never been here before. Wait, this doesn't look familiar at all ... I mean, it sorta looks familiar but ... it's different. You think you've seen that tree before but ... no, wait, it looks exactly like all the other trees around here. And ... dammit, your ghost just fell into this deep trench. Crap. You're nowhere near your corpse or the Spirit Healer. How the hell are you going to get out of this? The answer: The brand new Return to Graveyard button. It's a new feature in the latest beta build, and it does exactly what you think it does.
The ghosts of Azeroth
I love ghost stories, and one of the nice things about WoW is that Azeroth is full of them. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that one of the nice things for us is that Azeroth's full of them, because lore-wise it's hard to argue that the existence of any ghost is a happy occurrence. While I could (and probably should) turn this into a giant feature cataloging all the ghosts in the game, I have my personal favorites: Caer Darrow The inhabitants of Caer Darrow are my favorite ghosts, not least because you can't see them at all until you've done a bit of work on their behalf. The island seems utterly deserted barring the Sarkhoff couple...until you realize that it's not, and that there's an entire town full of people trapped on its "happiest day," going about its business, oblivious to how the world's moved on. That there's a ghostly vendor you can't otherwise talk to without a Spectral Essence is even better.
