Meant to blog this last week but forgot: FPS games increase brainpower. Experienced players of these games are 30 percent to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in everything that happens around them…They identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once. Glad to hear my endless logged hours of Day of Defeat have not gone to waste. And considering I rented Enter the Matrix over the weekend and spent an unhealthy amount of time beating it, I must be operating on a Zen plane right now.
Category: Gaming
Dot Matrices.
More fuel for the Matrix debate: A fanboy site posts the Niobe and Oracle conversation from Enter the Matrix. It might explain a few things, or it might not.
Dream a (not-so)little Dream.
The largest World Series of Poker in history kicks off in Vegas, which should mean at least two hours of quality television on ESPN2 in a few weeks. No word on whether Bill Bennett is going for it all this year.
Where’s the Outrage?
All over the press this Saturday morning: moral exemplar William Bennett is a high-roller, losing over $8 million in the past ten years at various casinos. I play a biweekly poker game and have been known to throw down some money in Vegas, so I’d be the first to argue that gambling within limits is a minor vice at worst. But then again, I haven’t made a living peddling sanctimonious garbage like The Book of Virtues or The Moral Compass either. Yes, this is gotcha journalism making entirely too much out of a mildly disreputable pastime – it’s not like Bennett is a child molester or anything. But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy watching Mr. Virtue squirm on the petard of his own hypermoralism. Mr. Bennett, is schadenfreude a forgivable vice in this instance? Update: Mrs. Bennett drops the hammer. Update 2: Mike Kinsley weighs in, also invoking the schadenfreude angle.
Prepare for Sturmangriff.
After three-some-odd years of beta testing, my FPS of choice, Day of Defeat 1.0, is now available for download. There went my weekend.
The Few, The Proud, The Plane Campers.
It’s probably a strange time in world affairs for a link like this, but nevertheless, these FPS propaganda posters cracked me up. Battlefield 1942 players will find them especially on point.
Games Without Frontiers.
Verrry aggressive…you’re a new man, and won’t be pushed around. A Boston Globe editorial surveys the long and sordid history of poker and war. (Via Dangerous Meta.)
Wasted!
Dave Chappelle previews Grand Theft Auto 4, and the graphics are definitely a step up.
Six Degrees of Footloose.
Test your who-starred-in-what-movie knowledge with Cinema Sequence…I gotta say, this is the most time-consuming link to come down the pike in awhile. Finally, an outlet for all the useless film trivia I’ve accumulated over the years…I just wish they’d turn this into a game show. (Thanks much to Listen Missy.)
It’s Not Easy Being Green.
Fresh from the Game Developer’s Conference, IGN Filmforce hosts a fascinating keynote by WETA Digital on their work for LOTR: TTT, with several Quicktime shorts on the evolution of Gollum, the Ents, and MASSIVE (and a few Toy Story-esque blooper reels). Definitely worth checking out, if you can spare the bandwidth.