REVIEW: God of War III

I have always loved the God of War series and the last God of War on PS2 left us with a cliffhanger in the story. Since then Sony has been teasing the crap out of us with God of War III screen shots, trailers, press releases, and all kinds of other stuff except for the actual game itself. E3 '09 showed off a very pretty demo which was then made available on PSN a few months later. But a demo of God of War III is not really God of War III!Finally, God of War III has hit store shelves and Kratos fans everywhere are getting their fill of their favorite, bloody, vengeful, tormented, family-friendly Spartan! Hit the jump to see our review of God of War III.

Details And Pictures Of Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T Leaked

Don’t think that Acer’s Aspire Timeline 1810 laptop is fast enough with its CULV processor? Well, what about a faster, Core i5 chip? That’s what the Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T sports. Pictures and details of this upcoming notebook have just started making rounds on the Internet, and based on the specifications leaked, it certainly seems like a juicy notebook. Pricing information isn’t available just yet, but word is that Acer will be officially announcing this laptop in late March. Specifications of the Aspire TimelineX 1830T include:

Logorama {82a Academy Award 2010 for Best Animated Short Film}

spectacular car chases, an intense hostage crisis, wild animals rampaging through the city... and even more in LOGORAMA.

Pixar’s ‘Day & Night’ revealed

 

Pixar has revealed details for “Day & Night,” the short film that will play before Toy Story 3 beginning June 18. The short film is directed by Teddy Newton, who’s credits include Character Designer (The Incredibles, Presto), and Storyboard Artist (The Iron Giant). This will mark Newton’s Pixar directorial debut.

When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly! Day and Night are frightened and suspicious of each other at first, and quickly get off on the wrong foot. But as they discover each other’s unique qualities–and come to realize that each of them offers a different window onto the same world–the friendship helps both to gain a new perspective.

2010 is already developing into a monumental year for video games

 

Although still in the early stages, 2010 is already developing into a monumental year for video games  . 'Heavy Rain,' 'Dante's Inferno,' 'God of War 3,' 'StarCraft 2,' 'BioShock 2' and the (long overdue) ' for Wii represent just a small portion of highly anticipated titles. New copies of those mega-hyped games will cost $50 to $60, though, so gamers may be limited in their total purchases. To help offset those costs, and to promote thrifty entertainment, we've compiled an assortment of inexpensive yet engrossing games from the PSN Store, the Xbox Live Arcade, and the Wii Shop. These cheapos may skimp on price (almost all are $10 and under), but the graphics, gameplay, and action definitely don't suffer. More importantly, they'll undoubtedly help avid players, regardless of their favorite console, continue their necessary virtual exploits while saving hard-earned cash for upcoming big-budget blockbusters.

Autodesk Unveils 2011 Versions of Its Digital Entertainment Creation Software

Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), has announced the latest versions of its Digital Entertainment Creation software for 3D modeling, animation, effects, rendering, compositing, digital sculpting and 3D painting. The 2011 versions offer new features and enhancements that help accelerate workflows and improve interoperability, helping artists to maximize their creativity and optimize their productivity. Autodesk has also launched new versions of Autodesk Kynapse and Autodesk HumanIK game development middleware, focused on improving ease of use.

“Our 2011 products offer customers great value and integrate avant-garde technology — some developed with industry leaders like Sony Pictures Imageworks,” said Marc Petit, Autodesk senior vice president, Media & Entertainment. “These versions offer much improved data interoperability through open formats like Autodesk FBX, as well as many innovative new capabilities.”

“Autodesk Maya 2011 takes Digital Entertainment Creation workflows to new heights with a new customizable user interface, new high performance viewports and a new 3D editorial interface. Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 users will enjoy more integrated rendering workflows with a new material editor, a fast GPU renderer and a HDR compositor," added Petit.

Autodesk Maya 2011: One Maya. More Value.
On the heels of the Maya 2010 makeover last summer, Maya 2011 software offers several breakthrough capabilities. It features an invigorated customizable user interface, enhanced tools for character animation including non-destructive live retargeting, high-performance display of large scenes in the viewport, new 3D editorial capabilities for pre-visualization and virtual production workflows, integrated color management, asset structures for pipeline connectivity and improved rotoscoping. Also, Maya 2011 is now available for Snow Leopard, the 64-bit Mac OS X operating system.

Autodesk 3ds Max 2011: Breaking the Rendering Barrier
3ds Max 2011 features a powerful new node-based material editor, the feature most requested by 3ds Max users, and a high-quality hardware renderer that provides near production quality results 10 times faster than traditional rendering techniques on common graphics cards. It also offers a tightly integrated full-featured high dynamic range compositing system, based on Autodesk Toxik technology, as well as enhanced tools and workflows for creating and texturing models, animating characters and viewing high-quality images interactively, which help to significantly increase productivity.

Autodesk Softimage 2011: High-Quality Characters and Effects in Less Time
Softimage 2011 introduces innovative new rendering and animation tools that help artists create more complex, high-quality characters and effects in less time. The software offers a new advanced shading architecture and editing environment, an innovative rigging paradigm with support for kinematics in ICE (Interactive Creative Environment), and automated lip-synching in the Face Robot facial animation toolset.

Autodesk Mudbox 2011: Powerful New Tools and Workflows
Mudbox 2011 delivers new tools for helping deform and pose models. It also offers new image adjustment brushes and blend modes for paint layers, Vector Displacement map extraction, the ability to create higher-quality turntables, and enhanced file transfer with Maya and Adobe Photoshop.

Autodesk MotionBuilder 2011: Now More Easily Integrated into Production Pipelines
Offering significantly improved interoperability with Maya 2011 and 3ds Max 2011, MotionBuilder 2011 now integrates more smoothly and reliably into production pipelines. Skinning and blendshape deformations are now calculated on the graphics processing unit (GPU) for improved performance. The in-viewport experience is significantly more interactive, and playback is many times faster, further enhancing the software’s capabilities as a real-time virtual production system.

Autodesk FBX 2011: Offering a Better Way to Connect
Autodesk FBX 2011 asset exchange technology helps facilitate higher-fidelity data exchange between Autodesk software and certain third-party applications. The open format provides new support for additional third-party and proprietary applications. In addition, games developers using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 will be able to import FBX files directly into the Unreal Editor. Developers can now use the Python programming language to integrate FBX technology into pipelines not based on C++.

Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites 2011: Value and Flexibility
These new products will also be available as part of the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites — giving artists and production facilities access to a broad range of creative toolsets at significant cost savings. The suites offer a choice of either Maya 2011 or 3ds Max 2011, and include MotionBuilder 2011 real-time character animation software, as well as Mudbox 2011 digital sculpting and 3D painting software.

Autodesk HumanIK 4.5 Middleware: Technology for Believable Characters
Autodesk HumanIK animation middleware is a run-time solution for full-body inverse kinematics and retargeting that enhances existing animation systems, allowing characters to interact dynamically and realistically with their environments. Autodesk HumanIK 4.5 improves ease of use with an artist friendly integration into the Unreal Engine and a Characterization plug-in for creating and validating characters in Maya.

Autodesk Kynapse 7 Middleware: Put the Brain in your Game
Autodesk Kynapse middleware is a world leading, production-proven artificial intelligence solution that has been used in over 100 games. This high-performance AI engine supports complex dynamic 3D pathfinding, spatial reasoning, team co-ordination, and automatic data generation. Kynapse 7 is easier to use, with new pathdata generation, improved tuning and profiling, simplified integration and configuration, as well as off-the-shelf behaviors.

From March 11−13, visit the Virtual GDC event on AREA to watch demonstrations of the 2011 products, as well as customer presentations, live from Autodesk’s booth at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Short videos of new features in the 2011 Digital Entertainment Creation products are also available on the Autodesk YouTube channel.