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Recommended Reading: Video games and the issue of slavery
How Historical Games Integrate or Ignore Slavery Amanda Kerri, Rock Paper Shotgun Video games certainly don't claim to always offer a depiction of the "real world," but for those titles rooted in historical events, how the narrative addresses certain events is key. One of the issues those historical games have to wrestle with is how to address slavery. This piece from Rock Paper Shotgun takes a look at how games have integrated events or ignored them completely.
High-tech TV: How realistic is the hacking in prime-time shows?
A group of five impeccably dressed high school girls are almost murdered dozens of times by the same, mysterious stalker and the police in their idyllic small town are either corrupt or too incompetent to care. How do the girls fight back? Hacking, of course. At least, that's one way they do it on Pretty Little Liars. "Hacking" is the deus ex machina in plenty of scenarios on Pretty Little Liars and other mainstream programs, allowing people to easily track, harass, defend and stalk each other 30 to 60 minutes at a time. But how real is it? To determine the feasibility of the hacks presented on shows like Pretty Little Liars, Sherlock, Scandal, Arrow, CSI: Cyber and Agents of SHIELD, I spoke to Patrick Nielsen, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
What's on your HDTV this week: NBA & NHL Finals, Orange is the New Black
This week we're finally ready to kick off the championship round of playoffs in both the NBA and NHL. Meanwhile, Netflix has loaded up its streaming library with a new season of Orange is the New Black, plus the latest seasons of Luther and Sherlock are arriving this week. 50 Cent's new TV show Power debuts on Starz Sunday night (hint: it's not about baseball), and we'll say goodbye to this season of Cosmos, Turn and Veep Sunday night. A different Breaking Bad Blu-ray boxed set hits shelves this week without the collector's edition casing, along with Robocop and Workaholics. Check after the break for a list of what's new this week plus a few trailers, and drop a note in the comments if you see any highlights we've missed.
Amazon brings BBC's Sherlock, Dr. Who and more to Prime Instant Video
Amazon's Prime Instant Video streaming service is no stranger to BBC content, but today the two have inked a new deal to bring more British TV shows to the platform formerly known as LoveFilm. There are a bunch of seasons of Sherlock and Doctor Who now available to binge-watch, as well as classic comedies like The Office, Red Dwarf and Ab Fab. Far from an exclusive deal, Amazon's basically playing catch-up to arch nemesis Netflix here, which snagged rights to more or less the same library around this time last month. Still, with only a seven-day catch-up window on BBC's iPlayer (currently, anyway), better access to the archives on any service can only be a good thing.
The game is on with Sherlock: The Network
I am a huge fan of BBC's Sherlock, and I immensely enjoyed the new series that completed its run on BBC One a couple of weeks ago, and is currently airing on PBS in the states. Coinciding with series 3, an official app was released featuring exclusive video footage of stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Mark Gatiss as Sherlock Holmes, John Watson and Mycroft Holmes, respectively. That app, Sherlock: The Network, makes its US debut today. Sherlock: The Network has 10 cases that need solving, and you become one of the members of Sherlock's Homeless Network to assist him and John. There are a number of mini-games, a "Mind Palace" just for you, communication with key members of Sherlock's team including Lestrade and Molly and much more. If you are a fan of the quirky nature of the series, Sherlock: The Network will delight you from the first launch. Don't skip the introductory video, else you'll miss a key opportunity to be recruited and berated all at the same time. Unlike the other videos, it can't be replayed at this time, though developers are working to address this. The cases navigate you through London, and most fans of the series will be familiar with the use of pounds and London's tube system. Sherlock and John provide a guiding hand throughout via text and voicemail messages. The voicemails have transcripts in case you're unable to listen to the audio. You want to solve the case as quickly as possible, but hold onto to your money, so you'll get pretty familiar with the tube mini-game. The touch sensitivity isn't quite what I like. It was a bit hard to maneuver the bits of the tube tunnels into place, and I had to tap several times to get parts to move. I really like how this game grounds itself in as much reality as possible, from the London tube stations to voicemails being tied into the local date and time on your phone. The cases are actually pretty tough, which loyal fans will appreciate. If the case proves too difficult, you can either forfeit your points by having Sherlock solve it for you or you can wait and see subtle hints appear to guide you to the correct answer. Sherlock: The Network fits in the series' world in every way and doesn't dumb down its content to appeal to a broader audience. Granted, Sherlock wouldn't stand for such a thing. Even if you're not a Sherlock fan, if you enjoy the Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton games, then you'll like this one. The game is US$4.99, and there are no in-app purchases. The Project Factory made a smart move here to have all the content available from the start. However, I would love to see new cases eventually be available through in-app purchases. Buying the HD version for the iPad requires a second $4.99 purchase. The Project Factory's Andy Skinner explained that separating the iPhone and iPad versions kept the download size the games down. The iPad version, which features larger pictures, clocks in at 433 MB and the iPhone version is 260 MB. The content on both versions is the same. Those worried about spoilers will find some cheeky references to series 2, but no spoilers for anything past series 1. If you're a Sherlock fan, the $4.99 is worth it just for the extra content featuring Sherlock, John and Mycroft alone. The immersion into Sherlock's world is top-notch, and you'll find yourself awaiting more cases just as eagerly as you'll await series 4.
Must See HDTV for the week of January 13th: Archer, Sherlock and The Square
CES is over and we're ready to load up our DVRs with a slew of winter TV, starting with the return of Archer on FX. Joined tonight by the premiere of new series Chozen, season five is expected to take the spy series on a new angle. Other highlights include the US season premiere of Sherlock (no spoilers!) and the launch of one of Netflix's new original documentaries. The Square will debut on Watch Instantly streaming Friday at 3:01AM ET, and take a deeper look at the Egyptian revolution. Check after the break for a trailer plus our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and gaming.
Rumor: Smash Bros and Metroid Prime press conference coming soon?
The clues are beginning to come together: there's a countdown on the official site of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and some rumblings of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption news coming around May 20th. In this month once reserved for the mighty E3, it's been quite some time since Nintendo has held a major press conference. Finally, good 'ol Matt has made it perfectly clear in a recent IGN Mailbag: he's on his way to Seattle next week for some mysterious reason, and it's not for Starbucks.About freakin' time, Nintendo. For a company still claiming that the big three will release in 2007, they've been awfully tight-lipped about the impending trio. We look forward to bringing you some surely awesome news coming next week ... uh, you know, assuming that this actually happens.
Hands-on with Sprint's 1H '07 roadmap?
Authenticity is tough to verify here, but what we've heard from an inside source here regarding Sprint Nextel's launch estimates for the first half of the new year -- including some devices that have already hit the streets -- seems totally plausible, if not probable. Samsung's been tapped to provide three: the m300 "Vivace," m510 "Fantasy" (apparently a minor update to the m500), and -- most interestingly -- the m620 "Flipper," which we've now heard from multiple sources will be a CDMA version of the nifty F300 Ultra Music Edition, scheduled to launch with Sprint on April 1. Sanyo brings a total of five to the party, two of which have already launched: the 3200, 7000, 7050, Katana II (hopefully sporting EV-DO this time), and M1. Sierra Wireless and Novatel will team up to bring three more data devices to market, the 595U, 597E, and Express (the XV620, we're guessing?). Moto's on the hook for three devices, the Q (wow, we haven't heard it called "Franklin" in ages) and a pair of iDEN / CDMA hybrids, the ic502 and ic902. Rounding out the offerings will be the 6800 -- an HTC Titan variant -- and the previously-unmentioned Palm Sherlock (a CDMA version of the 680 or 750, we'd wager). Not a bad lineup considering this all theoretically goes down in the first six months of the year, eh?[Thanks, anonymous tipster]
Karelia: "Lightning has indeed struck twice"
This has got to be frustrating. In an attempt to avoid a repeat of the Watson/Sherlock debacle, the folks at Karelia Software made an earlier-than-originally-planned public beta release of Sandvox available. Sandvox is a super-simple, WYSIWYG web editor that makes web site construction easy and fun. Sound a little like iWeb? I realize that no one has the exclusive rights to web editors, but the timing here is really unfortunate. From the Sandvox blog:"...some of the biggest limitations of iWeb (.mac only, not pluggable, no ability for HTML content) can become strengths for Sandvox. As we move forward past version 1.0, we will be able to further distinguish Sandvox from iWeb by focusing on features that our users demand that will never be a part of the iLife suite." Competition of this sort usually drives the production of better products. I, for one, am looking forward to what Karelia has in store.
