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First Person Shooters (Games)

Modern Warfare 3 Details Leak 56

fysdt writes "Details on the next Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, have not simply leaked onto the internet; they have flooded. Among other details, a November 8 release date was mentioned. According to a report coming from Kotaku, what was just a month ago among the best kept secrets of the gaming industry — information on the next Call of Duty game — has now become anything but."

Comment Re:The Duke ain't PC (Score 1) 344

Huh, I recall it was easily worse during the 90's, especially worldwide (it's must been over a decade since I last remember a controversy where I live in Sweden). In fact, I can't recall any recent media frenzy, especially after Jack Thompson lost his credibility even amongst the "think of the children" groups.

The last notable media frenzy was easily the hot coffee controversy, and as far I can tell that was US-centric controversy.

Games tend to self-censor themselves a lot. You rarely see children in games for example, I think the only FPS you can kill them in is in Deus Ex and that game is a lot about moral choices anyway. Well, and that you can "kill" the little sisters in Bioshock but that's discouraged, and the game rewards your for rescuing them.

Comment Re:What, no co-op? (Score 1) 344

It's trickier to add co-op in modern FPS games, mostly due to ingame events and such that can cut you off etc. It's usually a deliberate design choice by the designers so they don't feel limited by it.

Sometimes people mod in coop though. Like with Half Life 2 see http://synergymod.net/ (although HL2 gets ridiculously easy when four-eight players are plowing through it).

Comment Re:This article belies a greater question... (Score 1) 13

Actually beds in Swedish hospitals costs a fee if I recall. It's relatively cheap and depends a lot on the municipality and region (see as a example http://www.lj.se/infopage.jsf?childId=9131&nodeId=36221 although prices are quite bit cheaper than in my city ), but expensive enough to discourage people using it as a hotel.

The problem is that some hospitals hadn't really expanded fast enough as some cities grow, or people don't distribute themselves correctly (going to a large hospital when their local clinic is fine).

Comment Re:10 INPUT "Flogging a dead horse: ", U$ (Score 1) 83

Game remakes are more faithful to the original than Hollywood is with it's movie remakes, usually just some bonus content and adaption for the device/handheld in question. In a way,a game remake is more like a directors cut of a movie with a couple of removed scenes added etc...

Still, I do admit I remember being disappointed over SM64 DS being the launch game rather than a all new original Mario game (it was a good remake with a twist on the original gameplay, with trickier controls than the original).

Comment Re:10 INPUT "Flogging a dead horse: ", U$ (Score 1) 83

The game industry always had sequelitis, nothing new. Look in the 80's and 90's you can see a quite few sequels to very popular games.

Releasing a Metroid, Mario and Zelda game on each new Nintendo platform is more of a Nintendo tradition at this point. For both good and bad though, they aren't afraid to try something new while mixing in the old (Super Mario Galaxy comes in mind).

Comment Re:Poll is to vague - Define "microprocessor" (Score 1) 559

Your SNES have two "microprocessors" S-SMP, it's fully programmable but it's output is obviously just sound. :) I remember seeing the rare SNES game that would freeze as the main CPU crashed, but have music keep playing cause it was kept track of by a separate processor.

Same thing with Nintendo DS which have two ARM processors! And I think the Gameboy advances capable of playing the old Gameboy (Color) have two processors (one ARM, one Z80 for backwards compatibility) as well. And there is probably a couple from your list I forgot.

Comment Re:Not sure I'll buy it. (Score 1) 216

I nearly bought Starcraft 2. I saw all kind of fun things done with it, mods etc, and gameplay videos and all that. I was avoiding it for the same reasons as you, but at some point I wondered if I could try to oversee those things.

Then I found out Starcraft have a region restriction in it's multiplayer. As a European with a lot of American friends... it's a no buy for me.

Education

Astonishing Speedup In Solving Linear SDD Systems 157

eldavojohn writes "A new paper (PDF) out of Carnegie Mellon University shows how to solve symmetric diagonally dominant linear systems much faster than before. The technique employs graph theory, randomized algorithms, and linear algebra to achieve an astonishing advantage over current methods to solve such systems. From the article: 'The result is a significant decrease in computer run times. The Gaussian elimination algorithm runs in time proportional to s^3, where s is the size of the SDD system as measured by the number of terms in the system, even when s is not much bigger the number of variables. The new algorithm, by comparison, has a run time of s*[log(s)]^2. That means, if s = 1 million, that the new algorithm run time would be about a billion times faster than Gaussian elimination.' Developers out there who maintain matrix packages and linear algebra tools might want to take a peak at the paper. Anyone who has modeled real-world systems will be able to tell you that speedups in linear algebra algorithms have a weighty effect on efficiency in simulations — especially as one approaches the theoretical limits of optimality. This research is currently being presented at the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science."

Comment Re:Stretch that dollar. (Score 1) 255

Supposedly Microsoft had interest in acquiring Nintendo but Hiroshi Yamauchi former president of Nintendo and also the largest shareholder of Nintendo refused any offers. This could just been a rumor of course, but judging a few old news articles Microsoft seemed to have the interest.

I think it's unlikely Nintendo gets bought up by anyone. Judging by the last few years successes (even if they had it a little slow lately), it's more likely they buy someone else up.

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