games, news Jason England games, news Jason England

'A Hat In Time.' Indie Adventure Awaits Your Greenlight Approval

Developed by Danish dev Jonas Kærlev, also known as Mecha the Slag, A Hat In Time is a Banjo-Kazooie style 3D platformer with simple, crisp cel-shaded graphics and a focus on 'Collecting Lots Of Stuff.'  A game of solving various puzzles; presumably related to time-travel given the motif, the title currently resides on Steam's Greenlight service, awaiting crowd approval.

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games, tech Jason England games, tech Jason England

A 'Steam Box' Emerges At CES 2013

We all knew a 'Steam Box' of some sort was coming – Valve boss Gabe Newell recently said as much – but exactly what that mysterious console-cum-PC would look like or how indeed it would stack up against the competition, little was known. CES 2013 has already given us one or two shock announcements, but one alluding to Valve's much-discussed Steam-based home console is certainly the best of the bunch as yet.

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Valve Brings Steam To The Living Room With 'Big Picture'
games, news Jason England games, news Jason England

Valve Brings Steam To The Living Room With 'Big Picture'

A lot of talk gets slung around about what’s better, PC gaming or console. It's a debate that continues to rear its ugly head whenever gamers of different backgrounds/tastes are in the same vicinity (that is, once we leave our bedrooms), but it's also one that so often is settled when everyone can come to agree it's not necessarily what's 'better' per se, but one that boils down to what each feels most comfortable with. Valve's very latest addition to Steam, however, has the potential to blur the lines between the two. It's called 'Big Picture' and it's everything you love about Steam, in your living room.

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Pid Review
games, review Jason England games, review Jason England

Pid Review

You come to realise that Pid is quite an odd game, emerging from the sea of recent indie platform games with an odd combination of politeness and eccentricity.  This gaming premiere of Swedish developer Might and Delight casts you as Kurt, a schoolboy stranded on a distant planet after falling asleep on an intergalactic bus.

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games, tech Jason England games, tech Jason England

Valve Working On 'Wearable Computing', Not A Console In Sight

Trying to sift fiction from fact is a job that becomes an almost daily ritual when reporting within the tech world. Speculation will start off relatively slow-burning, hit a crescendo of wild rumours and obvious fabrications at its height, and begin to tail off, just as the cycle starts once again. But game company Valve has chosen to put an end to the fervent rumours circulating all over the net about what many deemed to be its own home console – rivalling the next-gen Xbox, PlayStation and the Wii U – and capitalising on its grasp on the digital market with Steam, with a piece of hardware that can only be described as a 'wearable computer'.

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Skyrim Gets A Hint Of Portal With 'Fall of the Space Core' Mod
games, news Jason England games, news Jason England

Skyrim Gets A Hint Of Portal With 'Fall of the Space Core' Mod

To celebrate the release of Bethesda's new Skyrim Creation Kit, Valve have created a small mod which drops the Space Core from Portal 2 into the fantasy world of Dragon slaying and the taking of arrows to one's knee.  It goes without saying, we love both Portal 2 and Skyrim; but at no point have we ever comprehended the Earth-shaking combination of the two.

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editorial, games Jason England editorial, games Jason England

Editorial: No Gabe. The world is not under threat from curation. We were never open to begin with.

"Innovation is threatened."  "People's access is controlled."  "The world seems to be moving away from open platforms."  Strong words from Valve Boss, Gabe Newell at Seattle TechNW conference.

These were directed at Apple's choice of app curation over open-source values.  The argument here is that as we lose our open-ness in the face of the App Store phenomenon the opportunity of innovation and our sense of choice goes with it.  However, everything everywhere is curated so really, is this a bad thing?    

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