After much hype and many delays, Microsoft’s new dashboard software for their Xbox 360 is now available for download. It’s the most significant change made to the video game system since 2008 and one that aims to make it more of a digital entertainment system, where watching online movies, TV shows, and music is just as important as playing video games.

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I walked into a tavern and stepped up to the bar. Video game controls being what they are, I missed my mark slightly and stumbled into a nearby chopping block. A large axe, set into the wood, teetered and came loose. “Watch out!’ cried the bartender, as the axe head toppled past myself and the other patrons on its way to the floor. This is the astonishing level of detail in Skyrim, an epic two hundred-hour game in a world vast with everyday details that have nothing to do with the main story. The furniture is not bolted to the floor and characters are not mannequins waiting for response triggers. Everything has a life of its own.

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It’s too soon for a remastered version of Halo. While yes, ten years have passed and time moves quickly within the culture of video games, it’s not enough for a sense of nostalgia to set in. A release like this should be as much about emotion as the technology. Playing the game, I find it’s still an all-too-familiar experience. It’s only been a year since the release of Halo Reach and in a franchise that has been so consistent in themes, characters, and look it’s hard to feel like we’ve been away from its alien glass-and-steel corridors for very long.

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It’s a prediction that’s been floating around for more than a decade. Advertising executives and new media specialists have long promised that you’ll have the option to purchase a shirt or dress worn by an actor or actress the moment you first admire it during a movie or TV show. Like the sweater that character is wearing? Press the “shop” button on your remote. That kind of thing. It’s technology that’s been talked about for so long that I thought it would never appear, but this week it arrives, debuting with the release of Sons of Anarchy Season 3 on Blu-ray, offering of all things, a wide assortment of Biker clothing.

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Real characters, real story, and a real sense of adventure. In all three aspects Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a match for any book, any movie. Every piece of action, every shoot-out, every chase, every puzzle, serves the story and moves the adventure forward. Most games exist as an activity, exercises in shooting and strategy peppered by attempts at a story to keep it interesting, but when you fight in Uncharted 3, it’s to escape, to chase, to rescue. You feel like you should stop and catch your breath, but there’s no time, you just have to keep going. It’s extraordinary.

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The iPhone 4 is shiny and new again under the name “iPhone 4S”. Place the two phones side by side and they look identical, but in use the iPhone 4S is faster, with better graphics, and a camera that demands to be taken seriously. It’s enough, just enough, to induce a twinge of want even if you’re not due for an upgrade.

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He named his business after a healthy piece of fruit. Apple may have been an unlikely name for a computer company in 1976, but it’s become a meaningful reminder of the exceptional insight of Steve Jobs. He understood how technology would develop across many decades, but uniquely that our relationship with it must be both a personal and healthy one. He helped an entire generation realize their dreams of the future with technology that the average person can claim as their own. Today he has died at the very young age of 56 and we’re left to wonder how that relationship will continue to evolve without him.   [More]

Fumito Uedo is the kind of video game creator whose work could be added to a gallery as installation art. His tales seem archetypal, a boy rescuing a princess from a tower, but they capture every moment with such a distinct, visual emotion that you’re left feeling that you’ll never see their like again. With The Last Guardian due for release next year Sony has rightly decided to remaster his first two games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, upgrading them to High Definition and 3D while packaging them both with new bonus content. The extras aren’t important, the chance for those who missed these games to find them is. [More]

It’s been a long time since anyone felt that marionettes were cool and yet that’s exactly the case in The Gunstringer, a game that uses a stringed-puppeteer’s movements as the controls for Microsoft’s Kinect system. Held up and to the side, your left hand controls the invisible strings of a cowboy puppet while your right hand, with forefinger and thumb forming a pistol, control the aiming and shooting. You pull your right hand back at the elbow each time you shoot in that universal “pew, pew” action all kids understand and it’s that bit of mimicry that makes this game an absolute blast.

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Despite giving away replica light sabers and opening their stores early for the launch this morning, the line-ups for the release of Stars Wars The Complete Saga on Blu-ray at Future Shop were very small. A mere dozen fans waited outside the Yonge and Dundas location. It’s not that the store won’t sell many copies, they will, but for the re-re-re-release of a movie series now more than thirty years old, most fans are content to pre-order and pick up later. Darth Vader seemed eager to get his copy early, but then for him there’s a controversy to deal with.

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