New Games |
- Resident Evil: Retribution has a free browser game
- Review: Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition
- PS Vita 'one of the worst product flops of 2012'
- The Nintendo Wii lives on thanks to Namco Bandai
- The Daily Hotness: The Monkey Ball musical, full sequence
| Resident Evil: Retribution has a free browser game Posted: 29 Dec 2012 05:30 AM PST The fifth Resident Evil film is out on DVD and Blu-ray and Sony is celebrating the event with a free browser game. It's a simple, twin stick-style shooter where you control character movement with the keyboard and aim/fire with the mouse. Shoot zombies, collect pick ups, repeat. Nothing to write home about, but if you're a fan of the movies, you may have fun playing as your homegirl Alice for a change. While Resident Evil 6 didn't hit the sales Capcom was hoping for, the films continue to bring in the dough. My guess is that's because budget and expectations are proportionally lower for the movies. There was a time when the Resident Evil games were thought of as the pinnacle of what videogames could do, whereas the films have always been critically panned. Strange how that can work in your favor depending on who your audience is. |
| Review: Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Posted: 29 Dec 2012 04:30 AM PST It used to cost ridiculous amounts of money to record video from other sources, especially in HD. But these past few years companies like Hauppague, Pinnacle, AVerMedia and others have released affordable boxes that let you capture footage directly to your computer for editing and saving. Taking the price down from thousands to hundreds for these boxes came right in time for the explosion of streaming and sharing video on the internet. One of the most popular of these devices was Hauppague's HD PVR video recorder, released about five or six years ago. For less than $200 users could capture 1080i video easily. Now they've released an update with the HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition, which steps it up with HDMI connectivity, 1080p capture, and other handy features, perfect for grabbing game footage from consoles. We've given one a full test run over the past couple of weeks.
[Watch our test video in 1080p on YouTube] We've used Hauppauge's HD PVR video recorder boxes here at Destructoid to capture game footage for the past couple of years. They worked fine for what they are -- a reliable but inexpensive way to capture HD video to computer. While nothing fancy, the on-board video encoder and USB 2.0 connectivity made the job easy. But we've been missing HDMI connectivity lately. And while suitable, the video quality was always a bit lacking when compared to higher-end equipment. The biggest issue with the HD PVR was that the component video passthrough feature had a delay, making the device unsuitable for capturing gameplay footage without looking like a terrible player. If you've seen us fail a lot in our game footage, blame this box.
Hauppague's newest, the HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition, solves all of the issues we had with its predecessor. For about $160 (street price) you get HDMI and component inputs, perfect HDMI passthrough, on-board encoding with decent video quality, and some high-quality cabling to boot. The HD PVR records at rates up to 1080p from HDMI sources directly to your computer via USB 2.0 without breaking a sweat. But! HDCP copy protection rears its ugly head when recording video output from the PlayStation 3. Simply put, the HD PVR 2 cannot record HDMI 1080p video from HDCP-protected devices like the PS3 and some Blu-ray players. You'll have to settle for component-connected video, which caps out at 1080i. I'll admit to not reading the manual, but I thought the box was broken at first, while trying to capture footage of Ni no Kuni gameplay a few weeks back. Scrambled or blank screens had me flustered. But trying out an Xbox 360 gave me a crisp, clear image on passthrough, and a really nice recording, even on default settings. And then I read the manual.
I wondered what that included high-quality PS3 component cable was for! The rear of the unit features obvious ports for HDMI in and out, but the component (or other optional video cabling) connections connect through a very small proprietary port. An included breakout cable fans from this tiny and fiddly little connector to five female RCA cable ends for component connection. I get that they were trying to keep the device small and sharp looking, but I worry about how durable this port will be after several connections and unpluggings. As mentioned above, they've tweaked the looks of this device. It's small (smaller than a Wii), black, and sleek looking, with a big record button on its top and a glowing blue/green recording light on its edges. It's predecessor felt hollow and looked cheap, so I appreciate the redesign.
Hauppague includes a copy of ArcSoft Showbiz for Windows PCs for recording video. It does the job, though it's a bit clunky in use, and slow to respond when changing video settings. Options are given to change video and audio inputs as well as video format and encoding settings. There's nothing in the way of delay-free monitoring of incoming video in the software, but that's the HDMI passthrough is for. As Mac is not officially supported, you'll have to buy recording software from a third party. I can easily recommend HDPVRCapture, as we used it for the previous model, and it never gave us any issues. A new version (pictured below) of this $29.95 download has been released for the HD PVR 2, and it works wonderfully, with full options to take advantage of all of the device's features. A free demo is available on the product site. Hats off to this one-man show, headed up by a nice gent named Steven Toth.
The HD PVR 2 does a fine job of capturing anything you throw at it. As mentioned above, Xbox 360 and PC content coming in via HDMI works beautifully, with what seems to be a totally transparent passthrough coming through to my television and monitors. Cranking the recording settings to a max bitrate of around 14 Mbps gave much nicer files than we ever saw with the previous model. Files are clean, with little hit to color. Of course, compression artifacts pop up now and then, but nothing serious. The framerate is capped at 30fps, which might bum out some videophiles, but probably makes no difference for video to be used on the web. With the PS3, the passthrough isn't exactly transparent, but that does not affect the quality of capture. What does affect the quality of capture is that you're stuck using component. 1080i captures suffered from motion blur sometimes. I found that things looked much better running the PS3 at 720p. While not quite at the quality of Xbox 360 capture, the HD PVR 2 still does a nice job with the PS3. And to be fair, you're not going to notice much of a difference in web video. You can find several examples of game capture using the HD PVR 2 from both the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the video above. YouTube is a better choice as you can watch it in 1080p.
If you're looking to capture game footage or any other type of video, the HD PVR 2 is worth considering. You're getting a really solid H.264 capture solution for under $200, though you'll have to go in knowing that PS3 capture (and system output) won't be optimal. Its passthrough feature lets it become a fully integrated piece of your gaming setup, meaning that you won't have to mess with unplugging and reconnecting each time you want to capture something. In the end, the HD PVR 2 comes with all the cables you'll need (two HDMI cables, one PS3 component cable, USB cable, and component breakout), is easy to use, and captures really nice video. Recommended. |
| PS Vita 'one of the worst product flops of 2012' Posted: 29 Dec 2012 01:00 AM PST Financial blog 24/7 Wall Street has ranked the PlayStation Vita among the worst product flops of 2012, placing it alongside such disasters as Apple Maps, the Dodge Dart, and John Carter. Yep, this is going to be one of those stories. Strap yourself in. "By the end of February, the company announced it had sold approximately 1.2 million units, followed by an additional 2 million units of software for the handheld game console," writes Samuel Weigley. "Yet sales quickly declined. From its release date to June 30, just 2.2 million PlayStation Vita units were sold, far less than the 3.6 million units Nintendo 3DS sold in just its first month. "Recently, Sony has clumped sales of the Vita and its predecessor, the PSP, together to avoid highlighting embarrassing sales figures. Frequent complaints about the Vita were that the $300 price tag was too expensive and that its game lineup was both weak and small, especially given the availability of cheaper gaming through smartphones and tablets."
Pictured: Something. There's no arguing that the PS Vita failed to ignite the world of handheld gaming. Still bound by this idea it can charge what it wants and people will eat up the brand, Sony's arrogant refusal to compromise on price and insistence on coupling the Vita with expensive memory cards has bitten it in the ass this year, and it sucks, because the Vita is a damn good system. A system hamstrung by the narcissists in charge of it. Whether or not you'd consider the PS Vita an outright flop is a matter of perspective, but it's had an undeniably disappointing run for all but the most deluded of fans. I say that as a big supporter of the machine, too. Its performance, in terms of pretty much everything since it launched, has been a letdown. The long wait between decent game releases, the pathetic software space limitations, the mishandling of PS One Classics, the general awkwardness and clunkiness of any extra app outside of the admittedly solid Twitter one -- the Vita has a laundry list of failings in a market where you just can't away with that shit anymore. It's a testament to how good the Vita is that I'm still such a hardcore user of the console in spite of all these falterings, but at the same time, they cannot be honestly denied, and if Sony itself continues to deny them, then I think the Vita's status as a flop will truly be achieved. |
| The Nintendo Wii lives on thanks to Namco Bandai Posted: 29 Dec 2012 12:00 AM PST Things have been pretty dire for Wii owners for a good long while now. And now that Nintendo has the Wii U to worry about, things aren't likely to ever improve on that front. In fact, the platform holder doesn't currently have anything in the works for their now last-generation console. Namco Bandai sure does though. According to Famitsu, the Japanese publisher is planning to release a new game for the Wii next year. Based on the popular anime series of the same name, Pretty Cure All-Stars: All Together Let's Dance allows players dance along to the theme songs from the films and is set to release for the system on March 28, 2013 in Japan. An import-only anime dancing title probably isn't what you're looking for in a new Wii title, but chances are there are still plenty of wonderful games out there for you to catch up on. I guess it's just nice knowing that the venerable machine isn't totally dead just yet. |
| The Daily Hotness: The Monkey Ball musical, full sequence Posted: 28 Dec 2012 03:59 PM PST
The Super Monkey Ball musical that Random Encounters was working on for Sega didn't release as timely as the group had hoped, but the remaining episodes did eventually appear. And now, here are all the episodes strung together in one big Sega-splosion. Today, community member Bory Borham digs deep into the hidden mysteries of Metal Gear, Adam Sessler replaces Max Scoville on The DTOID Show FOREVER (not really), the OUYA gets naked, Retro City Rampage gets a solid release date for XBLA, and the PS2 bids Japan a tearful farewell. Destructoid Originals: Community: Contests: News: Offbeat: Media: |
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