Video Game Info

  There is a hot first person action game that is sweeping the Ps3 community and it is said to make players experience severe nausea and even vomiting while playing. Yes, you heard me right the game has a warning that states that playing this game can cause nausea and vomiting. The game is called Mirror’s Edge and it is a first person action game that is based on a message courier that travels across the rooftops in a police locked down city carrying black-market messages by using feats of parkour and acrobatics.  Constant leaps over 40 story gaps and tight rope-walking over suspended pipes are just some of the feats you will encounter in this urban ninja first person runner.  Sony has some real good ps3 adventure games but none of them can compare to this one.

Mirror’s Edge is an action intense game that will have you on the edge of your seat while your on the edge of a building looking down at a 40 story drop. It takes about 15 minutes into the game to get all the nausea brewing like a volcano that is ready to errupt.  How can a video game cause nausea and even vomiting?

Mirror’s Edge is the first game to hack into a person’s proprioception?  I know your like proprio What?  Proprioception is basically your body’s sense of its own physicality or its knowing of itself and where each body part is at all times and what each part is doing even when you are not looking at them.  An example of this would be dribling a basketball with out looking down at it or passing a baseball from one hand to the next behind your back or even walking up and down the stairs without looking down at your feet.  Mirror’s Edge interrupts your proprioception and this is what throws your mind off give you a feeling of motion sickness and nausea. In this game you see the characters hands, feet and legs in motion which in turn looks like your body parts in motion and this is what disrupts your propioception.

Mirror’s Edge is going to be the game of all games in 2008 and I can’t wait to see the sequel and what kind of bodily senses it will interrupt.

Stanford University’s Folding@home program that is integrated in the Sony PS3, has reached new heights and will soon be recognized by the Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network in the world. Ps3 users that amounted to 670,000 collectively contributed to hit the petaflop mark on September 23, which is a computing milestone that has never been reached until now.   The record was initially set on September 16, 2007 by the collective efforts of PS3 users all across the world and the ps3 users alone reached the petaflop mark on September 23, 2007. The record is a testament to the widespread participation of PS3 users from around the world-currently more than 670,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, bringing the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop. Thanks to PS3’s powerful Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (Cell/B.E.), scientists will be able to make greater progress in their studies of protein folding and its link to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other forms of cancer.
“To have Folding@home recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Without them we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases. But it is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds.”
“To have PS3 play such a large role in allowing Folding@home to be honored by Guinness World Records is truly incredible,” said Masayuki Chatani, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Technology Platform, Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc. “This record is clear evidence of the power of PS3 and the contributions that it is making to the Folding@home network, and more importantly, scientific research.”
The Folding@home program was mostly leveraged only with distributed computing power of personal computers (PC) from around the world until the Ps3 contributed. The number of PCs that made up the network were roughly 200,000 which gave the program the equivalent of about one-quarter of a petaflop. On March 15, 2007, PS3 joined the Folding@home program and hasd contributed more than 670,000 unique PS3 users to the network, which in turn brought the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop.
Sony Ps3 Started with Folding@home and will continue to support distributed computing projects in a wide variety of academic fields. Fields such as medical,social, and environmental sciences will be the next goals of the PS3 in hopes to contribute to the advancement of science.  The above picture depicts the user interface for the Folding@home network which reminds me of one of the many ps3 strategy games.

In the last decade, often one video game system has dominated the consumer demand for the holiday season, but in 2008, we have three excellent video game systems to select from, each with their own benefits.  Xbox 360, Microsoft’s brainchild, boasts breathtaking graphical capabilities, and advanced options for multi-player through the Xbox Live network.  The Sony PS3 console offers a functional Blu-Ray player, as well as the largest library of video games on any system ever, incorporating the titles from both of their earlier PS1 and PS2 systems.  The Nintendo Wii provides hours of touch-based entertainment, with more exclusive titles than the other systems, and more games geared towards fun and a younger audience. 

Whatever system you decide to buy, you’re sure to a lot of fun alone, or with friends and family over the holidays.

Every so often gamers are granted one of those great ‘sleeper’ hits.  When a game is referred to as a ‘sleeper’ it often means that its coming isn’t highly anticipated by gamers or gaming publications.  Titles from game series like Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty are never considered sleepers because their coming is well documented and the companies begin advertising for the titles ahead of time.  When Fallout 3 was released for the PS3, nobody saw it coming, but now it is being celebrated as quite possibly one of the greatest sleeper hits of all time. 

Fallout 3 was created by Bethesda Software, the same company who championed the famous Morrowind series.  Though Bethesda is well renowned, Fallout 1 and 2 were cult classics for the PC, and nobody anticipated the 3rd installation would be quite so excellent.  Fallout 3 incorporates elements of survival horror, shooter, and RPG titles, and represents a flawless marriage between these genres.  Amongst PS3 games this holiday season, you can’t go wrong with Fallout 3.