Video gaming

Big Daddy just got a new pair of daddies. Image: Take Two InteractiveWhere many have tried and failed, the man behind The Hunger Games will once again give it another shot. Francis Lawrence, director of the last four Hunger Games movies including the upcoming prequel, has been signed to direct an adaptation of the popular sci-fi horror game BioShock for Netflix.Deadline broke the news, which also includes writer Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) to pen the screenplay. It’s the first major update on the film since…

Image: 2K Marin/2KFor those who play video games, 2007 is often considered one of the best years of the medium. It was a year of bangers: Microsoft had Crackdown and Halo 3, Nintendo took Super Mario to the Galaxy, Call of Duty blew the world open by going modern, and so on. It cannot be understated how much that year just kicked ass for games, and in the upper echelon at the time was 2K Games’ Bioshock, which is now 15 years old as of today. Developed by 2K Boston (later Irrational Games) and the now defunct 2K…

We know that Sega is making a follow-up to its game-filled miniature throwback console, and we know that it’s going to be released in both Japan (as the Sega Mega Drive Mini 2) and in North America (as the Sega Genesis Mini 2) on October 27. But today, Sega of America has finally revealed the full game roster for the Genesis Mini 2, which includes a handful of never before released titles.The Sega Genesis Mini 2 improves upon the original with a smaller footprint and an upgraded six-button Fighting Pad 6B controller—but…

Screenshot: NintendoI’ve always gravitated to genre stories about heroes that are defined by their power to persist. Peter Parker, famously raising himself out from under a pile of rubble in Amazing Spider-Man #33, was burned into my mind as a kid, and Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles’ Mister Miracle is one of my all time favorites for a similar reason. So recently, at a low point in my life, it makes sense to have gravitated to another.The recent release of sci-fantasy JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles 3—the third in…

Image: Nintendo/Monolith SoftAll narrative-focused video games live and die on their cast of characters, and nowhere is this more true than in RPGs. Just as it’s easy to get swept up into an interesting world by the party members and supporting cast you meet along the way, it’s just as viable to realize the characters in the game are a burden or worse, deeply uninteresting. Fortunately, the teens who make up the party of Monolith Soft’s recently released JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles 3 are great. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is set…

A well-edited trailer can make any movie look good, but Hollywood has several minutes to convince a movie theater’s captive audience that a flick is worth seeing. Advertisers limited to just 30 seconds of broadcast TV, when viewers are eager to do anything but pay attention, have a much harder job. But that just encourages more creativity.I don’t remember the last time I’ve voluntarily sat through an ad that wasn’t holding a longer video hostage, but commercials were a big part of my formative years before ad-free…

Image: Jakks PacificYour Forzas, Gran Turismos, and other racing sims might be more realistic and graphically intense, but there’s only room in my heart for one racing game: Mario Kart, and soon there’s only going to be room in my garage for one car: Jakks Pacific’s new electric ride-on Mario Kart go-kart.Now,before you get your hopes up too high, this go-kart doesn’t come with all of the features and functions the karts featured in the various Mario Kart games do. Drive it into the water and it won’t transform into a…

Brennan Sellner (R) and Dani Goldberg, students at Carnegie Mellon University, watch GRACE, a prototype mobile robot, as it moves down a hall July 15, 2002 at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Photo: Chris Hondros (Getty Images)Humans have been waiting for a robot servant for over a century now. But even with the developments in robotics of the 1980s and ‘90s, they were still just a dream. By the early 2000s, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University invented a robot…

Chinese state media said loopholes allowing minors to bypass new rules aimed at curbing gaming play time to three hours per week should be removed to "prevent addiction."China introduced new rules in August limiting the amount of time under-18s can spend on video games to three hours a week, a move it said was necessary to combat gaming addiction, but causing young Chinese gamers to express outrage at the rules."On some online trading platforms, there are game account rental and sales businesses, users can bypass the…

See how Chief goes toe to toe with the Covenant.Gif: PixomondoWorking on the VFX for a Halo TV show is a bit of a headtrip. You’re taking the imagery of assets made for over 20 years of one the most beloved shooter franchises around, translating them into the practical, “real” world of making modern TV, and then bringing them all back digitally to make the show’s big set pieces and alien foes come to life. But as wild as Halo: The Series got, that VFX work was always cool to see in action.io9 spoke to Pixomondo VFX s…