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Event
Gamercamp Lv3: Seth Cooper Interview

A couple of months back, a game called Foldit made headlines when gamers used it to solve an HIV protein strand that has been eluding scientists for a decade. Fold it is a game where a player is given a protein that they must fold up for maximum points following certain rules. I had a chance to sit down with Seth Cooper from the University of Washington (who worked on Foldit) to talk about the game and to discuss what else is coming out of the University of Washington.

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At a Glance
Get Into the Zone (with Freebies!)

Never be the first or the last guy. Middle is always the way to go.

Newly-registered (officially) Xitol Softworks used to be a mod team for Halo: CE and and Halo 2 PC; later, they were a community for Halo 3. But now they have evolved ton an indie game dev team, and are working on some pretty neat stuff.

Their current endeavour, Zone: The Battleground, is an Unreal-powered multi-player FPS built off of the Zone universe (created by Xitol) that is rumoured to be intense and vastly customizable! It will be released next year, but Xitol wants you to start getting excited about it now; and they have given us the nod to Tweet some codes for a free copy of the remix of the original “Future” track created by Kenny Clemson (here).

You’ll have to follow us on Twitter to be able to get the codes. Once you have a code, click here and go bananas. These codes are one-use; please be kind and don’t hog them all.

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Review
MLB Bobblehead Battle

With the world series wrapped up and old man winter covering all the fields in snow, Baseball fans are left wondering where they can get their ball and bat fix now. Enter MLB Bobblehead Battle, a game for the XBLA, developed and published by Konami – ready to fill in that Baseball hole inside of you. However, it doesn’t fill that hole with baseball goodness, but with spiders and bitter tasting things. The game leaves me questioning if this is real life or not because the design choices just blow my mind.

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Review
Motionsports Adrenaline

Motionsports Adrenaline is a new game from Ubisoft for the Xbox360 Kinect. The game involves five different “extreme” disciplines: base jumping, mountain biking, kite surfing, kayaking and rock climbing. Of course being the extreme guy that I am, Jorge knew this game would be right up my alley. Growing up as a generation X-er I’ve been involved in most of these sports in one capacity or another (aside from base jumping) so I was eager to see how they translated into a video game – especially rock climbing.

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News Bytes
Stuff From Lately

The Holidays lumber ever closer to us, and we madly try to make our way through all of the titles that are either out or going to be out very soon. Throughout all of this madness, though, we would remind people that there are other public events and things to do that are happening in the near future! We’ll take some time to break it down here – old skool.

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Event
X-Summit: Cross-Media Synergy

This panel discussion addressed a slippery eel of a topic. Basically, when developing IP that has TV as a key foundation, what do you develop first: the show or an online plan or both? Here is a list of the folks who participated on stage:

• Ken Faier – Moderator and El Presidente of Nerd Corps. Entertainment – He has worked on some some very cool original series’.
• Paul Bennun – Chief Creative Officer of Somethin’ Else – Background in broadcast; works on content design and creativity; takes linear properties and makes them interactive.
• Leah Hoyer – Creative Producer at Levity Entertainment – Developed cartoons for Disney; now works at Levity on all kinds of comedy and television development; bridges gap between talent and television.
• Beth Stevenson – Founder of Brain Power Studio – Formerly at Alliance in the kids and family space; currently in the same space at Brain Power, across many platforms.
• Mark Bishop – Co-Founder/Executive Producer at marblemedia – Works on cross-platform storytelling on whichever platform is appropriate to the audience.

All of the panelists were great speakers, and it was a very engaging session. I have captured what I consider to be some of the more pertinent points and will share them with you after the break.

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Toys
Kre-O Transformers: Bumblebee (and a Contest)

This is another post for those of you that like to get your holiday shopping done early; or maybe you just like buying cool toys (we don’t judge*). In any case, this is a pretty neat set that I had a lot of fun putting together, taking apart, and putting together again!

I haven’t played with LEGO in a long time; not the LEGO that I grew up with, anyway. Recently, I have been using Duplo more than anything else, trying to teach my kiddo that it is okay to build things that aren’t shown on the box – not that there is anything wrong with sticking to the plan, of course. Modern building sets are much different than they used to be. On one hand, they have such highly specialized pieces**; going free-form is challenging in a good way – working around the super-specialized pieces can really help to stretch your noodle. On the other hand, there are a lot of tie-ins to movies and such with recognizable vehicles – it is just a different level of fun! Since the big dog’s patent ran out, other folks have moved in to fill in the gaps – and that’s where Hasbro’s Kre-O comes in.

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News Bytes
Stuff From Lately

So much news and so little time. Forza Motorsport 4, Rocksmith and Arkham City all launched in the last little while, robbing people of sleep but giving them dreams of awesome if they actually managed to get some shut-eye. Meanwhile, the world goes on and we’re here to make sense of it for you…

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Review
Rocksmith

Have you ever wanted to play the guitar? Or are you more of a garage-band hack that wants to refine your technique? Or maybe you’re a pro that wants more of a challenge than pressing a bunch of coloured buttons and strumming a plastic tab? Regardless of what type of guitarist you are (or soon will be), welcome to the next step in the evolution of instrument-driven music games; welcome to Ubisoft’s Rocksmith.

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Posted in News Bytes, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | 2 Comments »

Review
Just Dance 3

Until Michael Jackson: The Experience, I was never really someone who enjoyed playing dancing games; my sense of rhythm seems better suited to playing music than moving to it*. It seems that Ubisoft is determined to get me (and the rest of us) up onto the dance floor. The opening volley of their attack was MJ:XP; the finishing blow seems to be their newly-released Just Dance 3 for the Xbox 360′s Kinect.

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