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Toy Test Burnout Revenge

At Toy Test 2005 in Seattle I was able to get my hands on the newest demo of Burnout Revenge. There were quite a few more challenges available to try out than there were at E3, and I must have put a good 30-45 minutes or so into the Toy Test version. One thing that has totally impressed me about Revenge is the sense of speed that the game provides. I am a big fan of Burnout 3, and I thought that the sense of speed in that game was unmatched. Burnout Revenge, through its much improved graphics and more realistic vehicles, provides a level of speed that can only be described as insane.

The crashing challenge in Burnout Revenge is a bit different than what fans are now used to. You are graded as the crashes take place, rather than having to wait until all is said and done before seeing the final tally. The different scoring multipliers have been eliminated in Burnout Revenge, which was a bit disappointing to see. In Burnout 3 it was always ruckus when a few friends were gathered together and one person got a 4x multiplier, only to hit the Heartbreaker before the end of their turn.

During the races, you are now able to take down just about any small vehicle on the road, whether they are your competition or your traffic. This was a complaint that I had in Burnout 3, only because it was inconsistent that you could take down your opponents, but if you hit another car of similar size, you ended up in a tragic accident. Very nice to see. The other major addition to overall gameplay is that when you take down a rival, you become marked for “Revenge”. This means that driver will target you until they take you down. The same happens when you get taken out. The marker above the rival changes from yellow to red. Take them down, and you get extra points. Burnout Revenge is set to drop on September 13, 2005.

Burnout Revenge is definitely looking good - obviously the Xbox version is prettier than its PS2 counterpart, but the real loser here are those who only own the Nintendo Gamecube. You are missing a real winner here.


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We have some great pictures of the new Xbox Guide, previously named the dashboard on the original Xbox. So, we decided to post a nice little run down for all of you to check out so when you finally get your hands on the new Xbox you’ll already know what to do. Read more for a breakdown of all the screens and pictures of the screens.

Click to continue reading In Depth Look into Xbox 360 Guide


Death From Gaming A South Korean man, identified only by the family name “Lee,” died in an Internet Café in Taegu after 50 hours of online gaming.  Lee’s 50-hour game-athon had been interrupted only for trips to the bathroom and small naps.  The 28-year-old gamer had recently quit his job to pursue his obsession, but died after pushing himself to the point of exhaustion-induced heart failure.  If you’re reading this and you haven’t been outside or away from your computer in a few days, especially if you’re in South Korea – please, take time for a nice, long break.


Read More | CNN


Unreal Tournament UnrealArt

Unrealart is a project developed by artist Alison Mealey.  The images in the project are composed from information collected over the course of one 30-minute game each.  Each game has 20-25 AI bots fighting in slightly user-influenced patterns on artist-created maps.  The position of each bot is logged every second along with points of death and lines of movement.  The data is put through Mealey’s custom code and outputs as the beautiful artwork you see above.  There are many more examples on her website, each wonderful proof of what beauty is possible through such creative collaboration.  Mealey’s art goes on live display at the CoEDD graduate exhibition in Huddersfield in the UK on August 13th.


Read More | Unrealart


Xbox 360 There are tons of rumors flying around about the Xbox 360 launch right now and one analyst spoke up about what they feel Microsoft will be doing.  Anthony Gikas of Piper Jaffray, believes that Microsoft will roll out two different versions of the Xbox 360 for launch, but doesn’t try to speculate of what the differences might be.  There is the ever so strong rumor of one version will lack a hard drive, or at least come with a smaller hard drive, rather than the larger one Microsoft mentioned previously.

“Microsoft knows $299 is important,” Gikas explained. “They know that historically that’s been the launch sweet spot, but they also don’t want to take such large hardware losses this time. Of the 1 million units Microsoft is expected to have available at launch, I expect 80% of them will probably be the more expensive SKU, because that’s what early adopters are going to want.”

Read More | GameDaily


Doom on iPod color It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Doom, the original cult classic FPS has been ported to the iPodLinux platform. I can’t imagine how they get the UI to work with the click wheel, and there are a lot of reports of frame-rate issues, but this is just nifty. Frustrating UI aside, it really is impressive how many platforms Doom has been ported to - I have it on my smartphone right now and can only imagine what portable devices of tomorrow will be able to run it.


Read More | iPodlinux


Xbox 360, PS3, Revolution According to a recent poll of 1500 X-bit readers, the PS3 and Xbox 360 hold nearly equal interest in the minds of potential next-generation console owners, pulling in 23% and 20% of the votes, respectively.  Sadly, Nintendo’s Revolution only received 5% of the vote.  However, far more interesting news is that 46% of those who responded to the poll have no interest in acquiring any of the new systems.  This should come as a huge confirmation for those worried that the upcoming console wars are starting far too early.

Read More | X-bit


Xbox under 360

We’ve all seen pictures of these two consoles on their own, but better this is a nice way to give those who haven’t seen the Xbox 360 up close an idea of how large it is. TeamXbox has some pictures comparing the two consoles which they were able to obtain thanks to Gamecon. One of the best parts of this gallery is the close ups of the new controller which is said to be much more comfortable then the Controller S.


Read More | TeamXbox


Intec Wireless Rechargeable ControllersIntec has finally released something a lot of hardcore gamers have been asking for since the dawn of wireless controllers: rechargeable wireless controllers for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. The chargers are powered by the game console and you can recharge them while using the controllers as wired controllers - a nice feature for those all night LAN parties. The controllers charge in 4 hours, and get 60 hours of game-play per charge. Halo 2 Deathmatch anyone?


Read More | Intec via GadgetryBlog


Xbox 360 PSP Dash

With Microsoft touting the Xbox 360 as a multimedia hub, it’s good to see them following through with their promise to integrate 3rd party video players like the Sony PSP into the Xbox 360 dashboard. Some leaked screenshots show UI for playing content stored on a PSP via the Xbox 360. Although the developer kit used to make these screenshots is presumably using the PSP as a mass storage device, the Xbox 360 would theoretically also be able to transcode media center content into a format supported by the PSP enabling you to take your shows and movies on the road with you.


Read More | PSP Vault via Kotaku


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