OnLive: Doing What the Infinium Phantom Couldn’t

Sal Romano — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:29:28 +0000

At this year’s Game Developers Conference, currently taking place in San Francisco, Rearden Studios announced their new PC-on-your-TV game system, OnLive. The new console will be offering an on-demand PC games service allowing gamers to purchase games, download demos and add-ons straight from their OnLive console.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but as soon as I read about what this can do and saw it in action, I immediately thought of the Infinium Phantom. You remember, that big-ass white thing from E3 2004? The one that was shown demonstrating Unreal Tournament 2004 and excited the crowd? Let me refresh your memory.

Today, the Phantom is known as vaporware. It even made first place in Wired’s 2004 top vaporware list.

When I first read about OnLive, I said to myself “Crap, another Phantom.” But the thing about the Phantom was, they offered an on-demand game service which you can play straight off the console. Eventually you’d run out of hard-drive space and the specs would get too technical for the system to handle when games like Crysis release.

OnLive will allow gamers to play PC games with the highest of specs, such as Crysis, even if you’re still gaming on that crappy old Dell. And how? Through their high-speed streaming subscription service. So you’re never going to need to upgrade your PC, how I see it, and never going to have to spend so much money on extra parts again. As long as OnLive is around, you’ll be able to play any game that comes around in at least 720p HD, because Rearden will always be there to upgrade their hardware as long as we pay our subscription.

That’s why OnLive is doing what the Phantom couldn’t. Mr. Phantom, you’ve been one-upped.

Max Payne Movie Will “Make You Feel Like You ARE Max Payne”

Dan Landis — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:49:20 +0000

The cast and director of the upcoming game-to-film adaptation of Max Payne gave a little Q&A at the San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend. Marky Mark discussed how he was really looking to kick ass again, and the director, John Moore, expressed how he intended to break the mold of videogame movies and make sure Max Payne doesn’t suck.

John Moore had the following to say in regards to making gamers happy:

“Here’s the funny thing about video games and movies — the minute you take that controller out of the player’s hands, you better deliver something of equal value. Ya gotta give them something so exciting and kick-ass and we thought the way to do that is to be highly subjective and make you feel like you are Max Payne.”

I’m not entirely sure how he intends to do that — is the movie shot from 3 feet behind Marky Mark except during cutscenes? As I said before, however, the trailer does have me excited for the movie. Of course, I’m a Marky Mark fan, so maybe I’m just biased. Speaking of Marky Mark, here’s what the actor said regarding his role as the titular Max Payne:

“I read the script — after Invincible and The Happening and Lovely Bones, I wanted to kick some ass again and I got an opportunity to do it in a way where I think I did more than I did in The Departed: movies like Four Brothers and Fear.”

They also apparently talked about a new camera the used called “The Phantom” that takes up to 1,000 frames per second (which is almost as fast as Crysis runs on my killer gaming PC). Bullet-time was a huge part of what made Max Payne (the game) what it is, but the difficulty they faced was doing slo-mo in a way that didn’t just look like The Matrix or a John Woo flick.

Wish I could be at Comic-Con myself, but at least the lucky bastards at Geeks of Doom keep me (and thus, you) informed.

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OnLive: Doing What the Infinium Phantom Couldn’t

Max Payne Movie Will “Make You Feel Like You ARE Max Payne”