4 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Trials Evolution Gold Edition (PC) Review (or The Engine Has a Misfire)

trials-evolution-gold-edition-box-artDo you remember Miniclip? When I was in high school many a joke class (like intro to business, civics and career studies) was spent playing flash games that wouldn’t crash the old, cheap computers. The original mainstay was miniclip.com, which, I’m slightly surprised to say, still exists today.

That’s where I first played the Red Lynx’s Trials series (it was called Trial Bike back then). I had seen proper Trials on TV on an old show called Motorsport Mundial so I knew what Trials was about and was instantly hooked on the flash game. Naturally, I’d have to pick up Red Lynx’s first PC Trials game since it left flash.

The problem is that while Trials Evolution, the most recent Trials (né Trial Bike) game, is a critically acclaimed game on the Xbox 360, Red Lynx should have kept their PC games on flash.

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Wednesday Link-Off: Dealing with Problems

emilia-clarke-gq13-01Hope you’ve enjoyed the racing coverage over the last couple of days because there isn’t much chance of a racing post through next week. We’re working on some neat things over the next stretch, though, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, since Game of Thrones (AKA Game of Owns! [I’ll show myself out]) is back this weekend, here’s Emilia Clarke.

Senator Rob Portman was against gay marriage until his son came out to him. After that, Portman had to toe the party line during the 2012 election campaign. His son, Will, talks about coming out to his father and the effect it had on both of them. (Yale Daily News)

Matt Lauer is both the most popular and most hated man on The Today Show. He might be the face of the show but not everyone is happy with how he made that happen. (New York Magazine)

Rob Ford’s alcohol problem may be getting him in trouble and his staff is getting concerned. (Toronto Star)

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Sports

IndyCar – GP of St. Petersburg: Vote Hinch for Victory Lane

James Hinchcliffe, No. 27 Andretti Autosport ChevroletHey look! We’ve added IndyCar coverage this year on the blog. Regular readers know that I’m a passionate fan of American open-wheel racing. I watched CART long before I ever watched Formula One or NASCAR so I think it’s about time that I brought some IndyCar posts to the blog. It’s a bit of a work in progress but for now, our IndyCar coverage will be similar to the race and news recaps we do for F1.

And what a week it was for us to start writing regularly about IndyCar. We saw Will Power dominate the weekend only to get literally run over during the race. Two drivers made us go “Danica who?” during the race. One was Simona de Silvestro who ran in the top five for all but the final lap. The other was the man who scored Go Daddy’s first IndyCar win as the Mayor of Hinchtown, James Hinchcliffe, scored his maiden IndyCar victory.

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3 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

The Dollars and Cents of BioShock Infinite

bioshock-infinite-alternate-box-artAt the beginning of January, I wrote up a detailed breakdown of how much a publisher actually makes for each new copy of a game they sold. With today’s release of BioShock Infinite, I thought it would be a good time to apply these numbers to a practical example to show how profitable games actually are.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Sports

F1 Malaysia GP: Law and Disorder

Is Formula One a team sport or an individual sport? This has to be the question on everyone’s mind after this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix. Team orders played into the first four finishing positions. In one team, orders were ignored. For the other, team orders were followed when it was clear the other driver was faster.

In a surprise for many cynical race fans, it was the Red Bull Racing boys who ignored team orders. Sebastian Vettel went by teammate Mark Webber after the race was supposed to be over between them and went on to take the win.

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Sunday Link-Off: News Madness

gracie-carvalho-next13-01It’s the end of the week which means it’s time for some links. This week will be pretty interesting because I’m planning to debut an IndyCar column this week. It’ll be along the lines of the F1 recap columns and hopefully you enjoy it as much as the F1 column. Along with that, we should have a couple of video game posts. Not sure what else we’ll have this week but we’ll figure it out.

For now, let’s start out with Gracie Carvalho.

You may know Matt Ufford from Kissing Suzy Kolber or SB Nation but before he became a prominent blogger, he was a US Marine. For the ten-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Ufford writes about his experience as a member of the first wave of Marines in the invasion and the lasting effect it had on him and his men. (GQ)

Now that the Steubenville rape case has been settled, it’s time to turn our attention to a similar case in Torrington, Connecticut, where people seem far more against the victim than in Steubenville. We need Anonymous to get some attention on this case and repay the victim bullying. (The Register Citizen)

Some say that now is the best time in history for access to news and information. However, local news is suffering because of free and open access to news on the internet. (The Atlantic) If free access to news would but an embarrassment of a newspaper like The Sault Star or a glorified press release aggregator like Soo Today out of business, I’m all for it.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Entertainment, Link-Off

Entertainment Link-Off: Watch This!

alison-brie-wired13-03Jackie’s busy this weekend and I’m in to cover the entertainment beat. The good news is that this weekend is a good one to catch a new release in the theatres unless you actually check out reviews. There appears to be something for everyone except those with good taste, it seems.

Dreamworks Animation’s The Croods seems to be the best reviewed movie of the weekend but don’t confuse it for a Pixar classic… Or Ice Age, even. If you’re looking for a live action comedy, Admission stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd which sounds great on paper but doesn’t work in practice. If mindless action is your thing, Olympus Has Fallen is right up your alley.

So rather than try to wedge someone from one of these movies, here’s Alison Brie because you really should be watching Community on NBC.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Humour

Caption This: March 16 – 22, 2013

Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading →

Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

The Showdown Effect Review: Yippee-ki… Ah, Screw It

the-showdown-effect-bannerHave you ever wondered what would happen if Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Bruce Lee and Liam Neeson did battle in a giant battle royale of action movie superstars? I’m sure a drunken conversation has resulted in a battle between movie heroes but nobody’s really gone beyond the argument over pints.

The Showdown Effect, a new game from Magicka devs Arrowhead Studios, tries to answer the question of which action star would win if placed in a battle to the death. If Super Smash Bros. dropped the more family oriented direction for the comically clichéd action ripped out of 80s and 90s action movies, it would be The Showdown Effect.

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2 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

eSports Won’t Go Mainstream Anytime Soon

mlg-dallas-2013On a whim, I watched part of the recent MLG Winter Championships. I’ve never watched MLG before and never played StarCraft 2 or League of Legends. As such, I was, naturally, completely lost at first. Over the course of the couple of matches that I watched, I was able to grasp the basic concept of the SC2 games was to kill all the opposing units but that was all I was able to grasp.

This made me think of stories and columns I’ve read over the last year or so that speculated that competitive gaming and eSports could break into the mainstream as a sport with sizable interest and possibly make the transition to TV.

While it’s entirely possible that competitive gaming might make it to TV, it’s not going to evolve past the niche audience and break into mainstream consciousness anytime in the near future.

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