Category: Featured

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Borderlands 2

When Borderlands appeared on our consoles in 2009 (Ed: Really? Was it that long ago? Wow. Feels like last year), its popularity was a surprise. New IP has a hard time making a big splash in the world of console video games. Borderlands, with its co-op multiplayer gameplay proved a huge hit, and Gearbox Software, the chaps behind the game, decided that it was popular enough to deserve its own sequel, titled Borderlands 2. I definitely wasn’t expecting the “2”, so I took a trip around the planet of Pandora to see what the hullabatwo was about.

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Cautionary Tales Entertainment Featured Music Video Clips

Key & Peele: Dubstep

News of the upcoming Skrillex tour of South Africa reminded me of the comedy sketch duo “Key & Peele”, specifically of an episode where they took on the subject of much mockery: dubstep.

The two men are packing up Key’s apartment and Peele’s suggests that they put on some dubstep to make things go a little faster. Key has no idea what dubstep is and Peele is happy to educate him. And so starts their descent into madness. It’s sweaty, bloody, and all too hilarious. Check out Key & Peele: Dubstep below.

[via @arteechoke]

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Animal Kingdom Cautionary Tales Entertainment Featured Music Video Clips

Kitty Goes Crazy to the Sounds of “Smack My Bitch Up”

You’ll remember The Prodigy’s single Smack My Bitch Up caused some controversy. First was the change in the CD cover, which initially showed a VW Beetle wrapped around a tree. However, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car accident earlier that year hastened a change to the artwork that we recognize today. And there was the music video that was widely criticised for its violent tendencies and banned on some television networks.

The band played it down, saying that the song was all about “doing anything intensely”. Which brings us to this rather appropriate parody. While cats may look innocent in our company, we all know that they can be downright evil the moment our backs are turned. In this mashup by YouTube user TheCube95, a cat is outfitted with a GoPro camera and is left to roam its surroundings. It’s not long before a pedestrian is robbed, a cyclist is attacked, and a bouncer is punched in the balls. And that’s just the start of the evening! Watch as kitty goes cray cray to the sounds of “Smack My Bitch Up”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0jdjRrzIyw

[via Blitzmatt]

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Awesomeness Cautionary Tales Entertainment Featured Video Clips

Dumb Ways to Die

Life is full of death traps and the Metro Trains Melbourne in Australia is trying to warn passengers not to do dumb things.

Reminiscent of the Happy Tree Friends, this cute and somewhat morbid public safety video shows a collection of animated creatures as they die in a number of horrible ways. Using your private parts as piranha bait, poking a grizzly bear, and taking your helmet off in outer space are just a few of the Dumb Ways to Die. Have a look at the rest below.

Dumb Ways To Die was animated by Julian Frost and performed by a Melbourne band, Tangerine Kitty. To download the catchy jingle, its instrumental version, or the ringtone, visit Soundcloud. All the GIFs can be found on Tumblr.

[via Huffington Post]

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Video Clips

Cheetahs Finish First

We’ve seen Phantom cameras being put to good use before. Tom Guilmette was stuck in a hotel room with one, while Ty Migota had fun with cocktails, and Zach King broke up a tea party. And Gallagher, well, he’s just Gallagher.

This time, National Geographic in collaboration with the Cincinnati Zoo used the pricey Phantom gear to shoot one of nature’s fastest creatures. In full stride, the cheetah can reach speeds up to 120 km/h, and the team used the high-speed camera to capture the animal’s gait at 1,200 frames per second. Expectedly, the results are stunning. Have a look at Cheetahs on the Edge below.

[via io9]

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Okami HD

One of the most beautiful games in existence makes an HD return to the PlayStation. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Capcom, I got a chance to review this game. Does it stand up to memory? Is it still as good as before? Let me paint you a (verbal) picture of what I found.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Do you feel the need? The need for…Burnout? The Need for Speed series has seen some 18 titles since its beginnings in 1994, and in the last couple of years, the franchise has had its ups and downs, trying to stay relevant.

2012 hasn’t really been a bumper year for arcade racers so any title that randomly wandered into my rear view would have my attention (Ed: I see you ignored Ben 10 Intergalactic Racing, though…). As luck would have it, those veteran developers—Criterion Games (who also updated Hot Pursuit)—are once again in charge of rebooting another Need for Speed staple.

I like Need for Speed but I love Burnout. Does the latest Need for Speed: Most Wanted look to combine the best of both worlds? Let’s check under the hood. Vroom!

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

See Where the Internet Lives: A Tour of Google’s Data Centers

The majority of us aren’t concerned with the background processes that run when we use Gmail, watch a YouTube video, or do a Google search. The computational requirements for bringing these services to the 2.4 billion Internet users are pretty hefty but Google’s billion-dollar network of data centers are able to handle more than 3 billion daily search queries and to index 20 billion web pages a day.

Physical access to their data centers has only been reserved for a privileged few, but Google recently commissioned photographer Connie Zhou to take a few snaps of their high-tech facilities. In a segment called Where The Internet Lives, we get a virtual peek into colourful and highly organized collection of coolant pipes, server racks, and tape libraries. See the arty photos of Google’s data centers after the jump. There is even a street view clip that shows the inside the Lenoir data center in North Carolina.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

Donald Pettit on Taking Photos in Space

From the vantage of the ISS, we’ve seen some stellar views of Earth at night, striking star trails, and swirling auroras.

Astronaut Don Pettit has spent 370 days in space and is one of the principal photographers aboard the ISS. In a recent photo conference, Pettit gave an illuminating TED-style talk on how photos are captured from space. He talks about taking photographs both inside and outside the ISS, the limitations imposed by the environment, the different cameras that he uses, and the wonderful out-of-the-world scenes that he sees out of the seven windows of the cupola.

[via Photoshelter Blog]

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

It’s been a decent few years for reboots of old gaming franchises, from Syndicate to Duke Nukem to just about anything in-between. The latest game to receive this sort of treatment is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a reboot of the 90s game series, XCOM. The original series was an amazing tour-de-force of strategy gaming, and set an incredible bar for other games in the genre. Let’s see if the reboot is worthy of its ancestors.

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