14 months after its debut, the PlayStation 3 version is finally going to see some DLC. Bethesda Softworks has outlined a full DLC release plan for the console, and the first pack arrives on February 12.

Though the wait has been interminably long, we finally have a list of official dates on which Bethesda Softworks will release the three extant downloadable content additions for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to Sony’s PlayStation 3 console. February 12 marks the debut of the Dragonborn DLC, February 19 sees the arrival of the Hearthfire DLC, and the Dawnguard expansion makes its PlayStation 3 debut on February 26. As we reported previously, for their first week of availability each of these DLC packs will be discounted by 50-percent. As a result, Dawnguard and Dragonborn will set you back a mere $10 each, while Hearthfire will cost only $2.50. Those figures double after the initial week, so if you’re hoping to pick up any of these additions you should plan to do so shortly after they appear on the Sony Entertainment Network.

Sadly, those of you who live in England, Australia, or any place that isn’t North America may have to wait a bit longer to enjoy these DLC packs on their PlayStation 3 consoles. The above release schedule only applies to countries on that particular continent, and so far there’s no word on when (or if) these DLC offerings will make the leap across the Atlantic, Pacific, or whichever other body of water lies between your home and the United States. Presumably Bethesda Softworks would make every effort to release the DLC as rapidly as possible to all points on the map – European money spends as well as anyone else’s –  but that assumes the company has that ability and sees a lucrative opportunity in releasing Skyrim’s extra content in other territories.

As for what PS3 owners can expect from each of the DLC packs, the short answer is vampirism, crossbows, dragon priests, ancient evil, and the ability to build your own house. Dawnguard drops players into the middle of a war between a group of vampires and those who hunt them. Hearthfire offers the opportunity to adopt children and construct your own homestead. Dragonborn, the best of the current DLC offerings, allows players to ride dragons (though this feature is far less interesting than you’d expect) and confront the first person to earn the title of “Dragonborn.” All told you’re looking at roughly another dozen hours of playtime (much more if you opt to explore every nook and cranny) from these DLC packs, so those of you madly in love with Skyrim ought to be salivating right about now. Unless, that is, the last 14 months sans downloadable content additions has completely drained your desire to ever again explore the world of Tamriel. 

Samsung and BlackBerry have released only short teasers of their upcoming Superbowl ads, hoping to garner interest and curiosity among viewers.

The Superbowl is America’s  biggest sports event of the year, as well as one of its most watched too. Whether you’re watching it for the game or not, companies of all shapes and sizes are preparing for the big game this year with witty and expensive advertising to shower you with. With only a few days remaining until the big game, both Samsung and BlackBerry are showing off teasers on what should come on Sunday.

Samsung decided to release a teaser on YouTube titled “El Plato Supreme,” poking fun at the NFL trademark of the Superbowl as Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan pitch an ad to Bob Odenkirk. The ad also feature Samsung’s ongoing theme that “The Next Best Thing is Here,” taking aim at Apple and their ongoing war to eat away at the iPhone maker’s market share. The teaser also hinted at participation by both Superbowl teams.

 BlackBerry, however, has chose to remain even more discrete with its advertising, sharing only a screen still of its anticipated Superbowl ad that we frankly can’t make heads or tails of. The ad will air less than a week after BlackBerry’s debut of BB 10, they’re company claims it will display the same revolutionary values as their new OS. While no other teasers have been released by BlackBerry, digital agency Pixelcarve has released their own BB 10 “Superbowl Ad,”  offering a very bold perspective of the company.  

While BlackBerry and Samsung both chose to remain discrete, a myriad of companies have already took to YouTube, releasing their Big Game ads in advance to the public. Some of these videos have already garnered millions of views, and feature everything from RAV 4 genies to gods of war. While the styles differ, all of these companies are getting immense attention through social media, and certainly doing their best to get their money’s worth.

The PlayStation 4 is expected out this year, but Sony’s studios have been working on games for the new machine for some time now. Sony Liverpool was working on a crime game for the console when it was closed, and art for that game shows what could have been.

When Wipeout creator Sony Liverpool was shut down in August 2012, an anonymous source said that the studio was hard at work on two games for the PlayStation 4. The first of these was a new entry in its signature futuristic racing series, but the other represented a dramatic shift away from anything it had produced since it stopped being the studio known as Psygnosis at the end of the 1990s. The source claimed Sony Liverpool was making a Splinter Cell-style stealth game. While the title for that game remains unknown, leaked concept art for the cancelled game now shows that the stealth in question would have been less secret agent and more shady criminal.

The above image and others appeared on All Games Beta on Friday. The art shows gun-toting criminals on the run from police officers as well as sneaking up on security guards in a number of skyscrapers. No matter how the game ended up playing, the art already shows a very different sort of game from the Wipeout and Formula One games Sony Liverpool had focused on since 2001.

Console transitions have always been difficult on Sony’s UK studios. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has thrived thanks to games like LittleBigPlanet, Buzz, SingStar, and various EyeToy and PS Move games, but during the years when Sony was moving from a PlayStation 2-centric business to one that relied on the PlayStation 3, numerous games like Sony Liverpool’s crime game got the axe.

Sony London in particular was making two games even before the PlayStation 3 released that were similar to Sony Liverpool’s game. A PlayStation 3 entry in the long dead The Getaway series and an original crime-themed shooter called Eight Days were both in production at Sony London, and remained in production for almost two years after the PlayStation 3 finally launched. Sony confirmed the cancellation of both games in June 2008.

PlayStation 4 development is putting a strain on all of Sony’s studios. “We do have a challenge to manage [the next generation of consoles], particularly in terms of dev studio resources,” said PlayStation UK managing director Fergal Gara in October 2012, “The more platforms you have, and the amount of rich content you have to deliver on all the systems you are supporting clearly puts pressure on decisions made across the studio network, which is something we are battling with.”

Whether or not you’re buying one, Chromebook sales are up as more and more educational institutions jump on the Chromebook bandwagon.

According to Google’s Official Enterprise Blog, there are now more than 2,000 schools around the world in the Chromebooks for Education program. That’s a 100 percent increase from the 1,000 schools participating in the program merely three months ago. 

Though some people still don’t know what a Chromebook actually is, the word is getting out as more and more educational institutions invest in the Chrome-based laptops.  Many schools are trying out Chromebooks because they’re affordable and usually require very little maintenance. The education sector has become such an important market for Chromebooks that Google offered the Samsung Series 5 to teachers and students for only $99 (it usually costs $430) back in December. Manufacturers have also been making Chromebooks specifically for schools, the latest being Lenovo’s 11-inch ThinkPad X131e, and reports also indicate that HP is working on an entry-level 14-inch Pavilion Chromebook that is most likely meant for the education sector.

According to Google, included among the 1,000 new schools are the Transylvania County Schools in rural North Carolina (900 units), St.Thomas Aquinas High School in Florida (2,200 units), and Rocketship Education in the Bay Area of California (1,100 units). The company didn’t release a full list with the respective numbers of Chromebooks in use, so while these particular numbers might make Chromebook adoption rates (at least within the sector) look impressive , there’s a possibility that many schools have ordered fewer devices in order to give Chromebooks a spin. 

Activision and Microsoft’s Xbox division have joined forces to promote a landmark eSports event: A Call of Duty tournament with a massive $1 million grand prize.

From April 5 to April 7, Activision, Microsoft, and the major eSports leagues will host an event in Hollywood, California appropriately dubbed the “Call of Duty Championship.” As you’d expect, the companies involved want the event to attract only the best players and as a result have decided to include “32 of the world’s most skilled multiplayer teams” in the tournament. These players will be going head-to-head against one another on the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II for a shot at the event’s grand prize: A cool $1 million. 

That’s a surprisingly large purse for what is ostensibly an tournament for pro gamers. The top gamers in the world can pull down upwards of $200K per year, so the $1 million pot is likely to bring the best of the best. It will be an all-star tournament of pro gaming, and could help the growth of eSports. 

 ”More people play Call of Duty multiplayer every day than watch the average regular season game of the NBA. The scale and passion of the Call of Duty fan base is simply humbling, and yet there is no formal way to find out who amongst those millions of players is the best of the best, until now,” explains Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg. 

This won’t be the first time Activision and Microsoft have opened their collective coffers and showered the monetary love on gamers. In 2011 during the Call of Duty XP event, the two companies held a similar competition, also with $1 million on the line. 

Those of a cynical mindset are welcome to view this as a PR stunt designed to generate more interest for Activision’s flagship game and Microsoft’s most valuable partner thanks to the timed exclusive DLCs that have made the Xbox 360 the chosen platform for Call of Duty fans. And that’s probably fair. But the flipside is that the competition stands to give pro gaming a shot of legitimacy. The eSports field isn’t likley to compete directly with athletic competitions, but the still young industry could one day rival competitions like professional poker. 

You’re likely now wondering if you might qualify for a chance to take part in the tournament. The good news is that yes, technically you can qualify. The bad news is that you’ll have to defeat some of the best Call of Duty players on the planet to do so.

If you’re still interested, you’ll need to gather up a group of pals (the tourney is for teams of four) and pay a visit to the official Call of Duty Elite site. Once there you’ll find access to a simple registration form. After you’ve completed the paperwork, the only thing standing between you and the tournament itself is the next month of Call of Duty Elite League Play. The best teams will have to prove themselves throughout the month of February, and once March arrives the top eight squads will be entered into April’s big $1 million tournament. The remaining 24 spots in the tournament will be split between the top eight teams to emerge from the upcoming Major League Gaming Winter Championship and the eight best squads from the eSports League’s European Finals. The remaining eight spots are earmarked for the best teams from Asia, Brazil, and Australia.

“It’s an absolute honor to have players and fans celebrate the thrill of competition on such a grand stage,” said Mark Lamia, head of Black Ops II developer Treyarch. “From the very beginning of development for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, we committed to making eSports an integral part of the game, and it’s going to be awesome to watch the best teams in the world battle it out for everyone to see.”

The video game retail industry has relied on used game sales for its profits for decades, but the shift to digital distribution has quashed the resale market. 2012 court rulings in the EU, though, pushed some groups to try and get Valve to allow used game sales on Steam.

As media drifts further and further away from reaching people through phsycial goods—paper magazines, CDs, video games on Blu-ray discs, etc.—capitalism continues to struggle to catch up to the change. The video game retail business in particular is in a pickle. Stores like GameStop mitigated the historically high prices of video games by letting people trade in old games to purchase new ones. Those stores, in turn, made a tidy profit on selling pre-owned games. What happens when video games are only distributed digitally? Can people sell back the license to play those games? According to the European Union’s Court of Justice, it would be perfectly legal to do so. To date though, digital distributors like Valve’s Steam don’t buy back used games and some consumer groups are fed up.

The Federation of German Consumers Association (VZBV) in particular has taken issue with Valve and Steam. The VZBV tried to get Valve to allow Steam customers to at least be able to sell their game licenses to other users after the Court of Justice sent down its decision. As of this writing, Steam users can’t even give away games they’ve purchased if they no longer want them in their library.

The VZBV announced this week that it’s escalated its pursuit of Valve. “[The VZBV has] submitted a complaint against the company to the district court of Berlin,” said representative Eva Hoffschulte on the group’s website.

The VZBV also went into detial about what in particular it’s trying to get Valve to change. In particular, it claims that by restricting Steam users from reselling games they’ve purchased on the service, Valve is limiting the growth of the digital distribution industry as a whole. They also think it’s unfair that consumers don’t have the right to resell digital games when their prices fluctuate so wildly. A consumer that spends $60 on a disc version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, for example, can resell it for around $35 before the disc drops in price to that level months later. A Steam user that pays full price for a digital download, meanwhile, doesn’t get any of that value later on.

Valve is open to exploring used game sales. It already offers the Steam Trading service. Rumors that Valve would test letting users sell back games after playing them have been circulating for years now.

This much is true: Valve hired a full-time economist in June 2012. If nothing else, the company is actively researching what a media business should be in a world without physical goods.

 Source: CinemaBlend

While the BlackBerry Z10 and its cool touchscreen is catching most of the headlines, the QWERTY-keyboard equipped BlackBerry Q10 could be the firm’s knight in shining armor.

The dust has now cleared following BlackBerry’s successful BlackBerry 10 launch, giving us all the chance to examine the new phones, compare them to the competition, and have a good read of all the hands-on reports. Perhaps due to it being the first to go on sale, or because it’s the cool full touchscreen device, it’s the Z10 that has attracted the most attention. But that’s no good.

The Z10 appears to be a solid phone, but it’s a little bit faceless and could easily get lost among the Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Google, and HTC smartphones of this world. That’s OK though. BlackBerry has a secret weapon: the unassuming, late-arriving BlackBerry Q10. Not convinced? Here’s a few reasons why if anything is going to stop (or at least significantly slow) BlackBerry’s descent into oblivion, it’s the Q10.

We’re always calling for smartphones to be different or to stand out from the crowd, and bizarrely as it sounds for a phone which could be viewed as staid, the QWERTY Q10 is the different phone we’ve all been harping on about. Here are some of the current choices for those who want a physical keyboard on which to type: The Samsung Galaxy Chat, with its single-core 850MHz processor, the Nokia Asha 302 which runs Series 40, or the HTC ChaCha, which is now two-years old (and has one of the world’s stupidest names for a smartphone).

Using one of these just to enjoy a physical keyboard would mean quite a sacrifice, as would returning to BlackBerry’s Curve or Bold; which is something we know nobody wants to do, as otherwise the firm wouldn’t be suffering. “We know there are a lot of physical keyboard lovers out there,” said CEO Thorsten Heins during the launch event, and luckily for BlackBerry, they’ve got almost nowhere else to go.

The Q10 looks familiar, but it’s all-new inside

By choosing the Q10, the physical keyboard – which just happens to be made by the QWERTY masters, don’t forget – is only part of the package. It’s accompanied by a dual-core, 1.5GHz processor and 2GB of RAM, a 3.1-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen with a 720 x 720 pixel resolution, an 8-megapixel camera and 16GB of storage space. As you can see from the above examples, that’s light years ahead of anything else on the market.

Anyone put off by the Q10 because of the unholy mishmash of touch and keyboard that was the last Bold 9900, should remember BlackBerry 10 has been designed to be operated by touch, and there’s no trackpad or any other way to bypass the touchscreen, leaving the keyboard only for typing messages. The Q10 runs the same version of BlackBerry 10 as the Z10, so the user experience won’t be diluted down or crippled by the presence of a keyboard, plus the design is a modern interpretation of the Bold, complete with a glass weave rear cover to funk it up a bit. If you’ve been holding out for a QWERTY phone, or have been struggling on with a Bold or, shudder, a Curve; the Q10 must surely be at the top of your shopping list.

Is the Q10 BlackBerry’s dark horse?

So, that’s all the physical keyboard faithful taken care of, but how difficult is it going to be to draw in users from iOS and Android? Very difficult is the answer, but then it’s the Z10 that’s aimed at that crowd, while the Q10 will fish in the pool of those yet to make the jump from a feature phone like the Asha. We shouldn’t forget how hard BlackBerry is pushing the new software in developing markets – China will get BlackBerry 10 before the U.S., remember – where there are still a lot of users in this situation.

If the Q10 is BlackBerry’s unique product, why the delay in its launch? The Q10 isn’t expected to go on sale until April and previously, Thorsten Heins said this was primarily due to carrier testing, but it also comes down to marketing and public perception. Everything is about the touchscreen these days, and if BlackBerry had sent BB 10 out on the Q10 instead of the Z10, it would have been accused of not staying with the times. No, it’s far better to get the Z10 out to push BlackBerry 10 into the public’s consciousness, before getting on with promoting the dark horse Q10.

In an interview with Bloomberg late last year, Heins estimated a three to one sales split in favor of the Z10 following launch. While it’ll almost certainly be this way to start, we wonder how those figures will look 8 to 12 months from now; as all those who abandoned the hateful BlackBerry OS 7 hardware for a touchscreen phone, suddenly remember how much they love a physical QWERTY keyboard, and realize there’s a decent one on sale again. The Q10 could be a real surprise. We think it has a lot of potential.

We take a final look at Crystal Dynamics’ work on Tomb Raider in advance of the reboot’s March 5, 2013 launch.

Lara Croft has evolved over time from agile, puzzle-solving treasure hunter into a loot-seeking mass murderer (of bad guys and sharp-toothed animals) who also solves puzzles. But with the new Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics is re-envisioning the character for present-day audiences in its upcoming reboot. She’s still going to shoot at various two-legged and four-legged creatures using an assortment of weapons, but the hope is that you’ll pick up some sense of the journey that she takes from wide-eyed wanderer to tough girl adventurer as her gritty tale of island survival unfolds.

Square Enix offered a new look at how the March 5, 2013 release is progressing during a recent media tour, picking up not long after Lara is forced, for the first time in her life, to kill another human. It’s roughly three hours into the story and a handful of hub camps – all of which are connected by a fast travel system – have already been discovered. The latest location sees Lara hooking back up with Roth, the captain of the wrecked ship that stranded them both (and others) on the island. He’s also something of a mentor figure to the young Lara.

Roth is freshly injured when the two meet, following an unfortunate run-in with a wolf that ended with the beast slipping off with Roth’s food pack. The island may be filled with wildlife to hunt, but the food pack contained a  more important item: the transmitter from the wrecked ship’s lifeboat. This device is the best hope that Lara, Roth, and their fellow survivors have of escaping the Dragon’s Triangle island and the scavengers that make a life there. It’s somewhere nearby, nestled away in the wolf’s cave.

Roth’s leg injury prevents him from helping Lara retrieve the transmitter personally, but he provides some assistance in the form of a sturdy hand axe. Lara’s key equipment upgrades in Tomb Raider are all motivated by story events. The cutscene that plays over her reunion with Roth offers a peek at this young treasure hunter-in-the-making — “You’re a Croft,” Roth gently reminds her — but it also serves to justify the arrival of this new tool.

Prior to receiving the hand axe, Lara’s traversal capabilities are limited to how far up a wall she can propel herself toward a ledge. The axe allows her to actually scale vertical surfaces; not every surface in the game, mind you, but stretches of bare, relatively flat wall. The game’s Survival Instinct visual overlay highlights climbable surfaces with a golden glow, making them easy to spot.

The act of retrieving the transmitter sees Lara exploring the hub space that this chunk of story unfolds in. There are multiple open world-ish locations like these scattered throughout the game, and this not-insignificant chunk of world is apparently the smallest. The area is centered around an unoccupied, makeshift encampment built at the base of a valley. Mountains loom high all around, and each obvious point of interest – notably a blinking radio tower at the top of the highest peak – is accessible with the right tools. Some tools won’t come Lara’s way until later, and backtracking players can expect to frequently discover new places to visit in these familiar locations.

Lara faces down the wolf in a brief, yet frantic QTE and then returns to Roth, who tells her that she’ll need to get the transmitter up to the nearby radio tower in order to reach the outside world. So begins a climb that mixes equal bits of platforming and combat, with a dash of puzzle-solving thrown in. Lara may be untrained in the ways of survival, but she is astoundingly agile, to the point that you can even tweak her direction of movement mid-jump. The path to the radio tower starts simply enough, with wall climbing, ledge grabbing and the like, but it’s not long before the path leads into a series of caves and tunnels populated by the island’s scavengers.

Little is known so far about this antogonistic force in Tomb Raider. They were on the island long before Lara and her shipwrecked mates arrived, a good 20-30 years. Surprisingly, there are no children at all to be found on the island in spite of the length of time that the scavengers have lived there. It turns out that there’s a very specific story-related reason for this, but it’s the stuff of spoilers and therefore not being discussed prior to the game’s release.

Combat has a very brutal feel to it, with the camera pulling in tight on Lara’s shoulder whenever her bowstring is drawn back or her gun is brought to bear. The scavengers are a hardy bunch for this underpowered, early game version of Lara – skill upgrades improve various player-chosen attributes over time – absorbing multiple arrows and/or bullets before they fall. The wisest course in most encounters is to employ stealth and tactical retreats, luring lone enemies or smaller groups away from the herd.

A lengthy stretch of combat eventually spills into the radio tower’s support facility, with Lara ending up trapped in a room as it slowly fills with gas while a machine gun-toting scavenger watches her choke on the other side. There’s some light puzzle-solving to be done here, first in escaping the room and then in taking care of the scavenger. The solution leads to another cutscene in which Lara picks up the machine gun, adding it to her arsenal. Yet again we see an example of the story motivating an upgrade to the player’s capabilities.

This is what Crystal Dynamics is aiming to do with Tomb Raider. Lara needs to be redeveloped as a character for a modern audience, but that means starting her from square one. She’s not exactly useless when she’s first starting out, but there’s a big difference between a fit and athletic newcomer to the realities of the real world, and a hardened thrill-seeker who’s been carved from her experiences. The story unfolds over a period of weeks rather than years, and the hope is that the life-or-death situations that players repeatedly overcome as Lara paint a convincing portrait of her development as a person.

The demo concludes with Lara reaching the radio tower and scaling it to connect the transmitter with a maintenance panel at the top of it. Players are in control through every inch of her ascent, pushing her forward using the left thumbstick. Once at the top, there are dials in the maintenance panel to be spun as you search for a clear frequency to transmit on. This active participation in what could have easily been rendered as a cutscene speaks to a principal goal for Crystal Dynamics: it’s more about the journey than the end result. All of us already know where Lara Croft is headed; Tomb Raider will merely allow us to guide her there for ourselves.

While not exactly the deep discount we’ve all been hoping for, $200 less for a pricey MacBook Pro isn’t that bad.

If you weren’t able to grab a MacBook Air during Best Buy’s two-day sale, or if you were holding out for a discount on the MacBook Pro with Retina display instead, check out Amazon.com right now. According to 9to5Mac, the website is offering the laptops at a discount and will even ship them to you for free. Although it’s unclear whether the price cut is permanent or merely a temporary promo, both 15- and 13-inch versions are sold at prices considerably lower than usual. 

The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display that comes with a 2.3 GHz processor and 256GB of storage is now available for $2,000 – $200 less than its usual price of $2,200. If you really want a Retina-equipped MacBook Pro but can’t afford the $2,000 price tag, you can choose to get the 13-inch version instead. Amazon is offering the 13-inch laptop equipped with a 2.5GHz processor and 128GB of storage for $1,516 – that’s $183 less than its original price of $1,699. 

Of course, if you’re not particular about wanting a brand new computer, you can always grab a refurbished MacBook Pro with Retina. The 13-inch version is available for $1,439 at the Apple website, while you can get the 15-inch version for prices starting at $1,869. 

The zombies craze reaches its inevitable satirical phase, and a new type of love story is born.

It really was just a matter of time. The zombie craze has grown so large it’s become its own genre: Games, movies, books, you name it. There isn’t an entertainment medium that is immune to the zombie craze, so it was inevitable that people would begin to find new ways to interpret it.

The popular image of a zombie is one of horror. A zombie is a rotting corpse with a hunger for human flesh, and perhaps the odd side dish of brain. These corpses are traditionally subject to decomposition, which gives them a monstrous look. Zombies are viewed as deadly and pitiless, without emotion or memory. They are animated corpses, bearing no resemblance to the person that used to own the walking meat suit. They are not worth pity or hatred, they are a mindless scourge like locusts.

But when a trend has grown so large, it begins to encourage people to think about it in a different way. What if the zombie were victims, trapped within the confines of their own ghoulish nature? What if the person the zombie used to be was still there, just below the surface? Would they be capable of remorse? What about love?

That is a question at the heart of Warm Bodies, a love story that challenges the nature of zombies and humanizes the post-human monsters with humor and heart. At times the message can be a bit heavy handed, and the more horrific aspects of zombies are severely muted in the movie. It’s still there, but it is more forgivable to see a zombie eat a person in this world. The film stays away from the gore and shows the zombies as pitiable creatures. Zombie purists are going to instantly reject that, but if you can look past it, you’ll find a charming and generally funny movie for the date-night set. It doesn’t hurt that the main zombie in the film is adorable rather than horrible.

The zombie known as “R” (played by X-Men: First Class’ Nicholas Hoult) is one of the lucky ones. Despite his condition – being dead and all – he has something of a life. He lives in an abandoned 747 aircraft, hangs out with his friend (Rob Corddry), and occasionally ambles into the nearby city to pick off members of the last surviving enclave of humanity. It’s not a bad life, even if it is a bit hollow.

R doesn’t particularly like eating people, but he doesn’t really have a problem with it either. When the hunger takes control nothing else really matters. Plus, there is the added boon of eating human brains, which gives zombies the memories of the eaten, an experience somewhat akin to a drug rush. After eating the brain of a random human, R’s memories – combined with a “love at first sight” attraction – cause him to go against his nature and save the beautiful human Julie (Take me Home Tonight’s Teresa Palmer).

He takes her to his home in the abandoned 747, and slowly begins to regain his humanity. They both know it can’t last though, and despite their growing bond, R agrees to help her return to home, unaware that together they have set something in motion that will threaten them and possibly change the world.

If you look past the supernatural aspects, Warm Bodies is something of a traditional love story, just told using a different set of circumstances. The film really comes down to the performances by Palmer and Hoult, who dominate the screen time. The other characters are mostly background, with only a few exceptions like Corddry’s zombie character, Julie’s best friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton), and Julie’s father, the last city’s de facto leader (John Malkovich).

Both are up to the task. Even though the story can veer towards beating you over the head with romantic themes, both Hoult and Palmer stay grounded and even subdued. It’s actually fairly remarkable that the characters work at all, since R is a corpse and Julie is basically a kidnap victim hanging out with a corpse. A sizable portion of the film then resides with Hoult’s voiceovers and Palmer’s reactions to his undead expressions. And yet it works, and the two have a weird, but fulfilling chemistry. Thankfully, despite being a flesh-eating, decomposing corpse, R is actually in pretty good shape. In fact, as far as zombies go, he is somewhat adorable. That makes it hard to connect with the nature of the zombies, but it’s an understandable sacrifice for a film like this.

Warm Bodies is a romantic comedy built on a foundation of humor. There are laugh out loud moments – including a scene in the third act that casts the characters in a historical, and hilarious light – and even the more subdued jokes are entertaining. Still, it never really delves deeply into the zombie nature that it could mine for some dark humor. It’s somewhat surprising to see a zombie movie with a PG-13 rating. The films holds back a bit in order to make R – who is still a brain-eating corpse at the end of the day – sympathetic. His condition is horrific, but that horror is never really explored and at times the film goes out of its way to ignore it. 

The depiction of zombies is also somewhat inconsistent. R’s journey is well documented and believable within the confines of the film’s universe, but others take a leap of faith to buy into. There are shortcuts taken. None of them deter too much from the story at the core – R and Julie – but it also feels like there were a few missed opportunities to make some truly original jokes in an aspect of an over-saturated sub-genre that has hardly been explored.

Conclusion

Warm Bodies is a love story, and a good one. Its macabre setting and lead character give it a unique twist on the rom-com, an otherwise tired genre that is always looking for new ways to give fans what they want. Warm Bodies does that. It is actually one of the more interesting romantic comedies to come along in years, and should appeal to all audiences.

The film stops short of being groundbreaking, and it avoids some of the more problematic aspects of the zombie nature it exists in. Plus, overarching themes come up and smack you in the face until you recognize them; That isn’t really a bad thing, just a bit unnecessary since it manages to convey that without being so heavy handed. That doesn’t take away from what is one of the more original and interesting romantic comedies to come along in recent years.

A new “context aware platform” from Qualcomm is opening the doors to a future in which everything about our lives – from the apps we use to the places we go to even the sounds we hear – is harvested and shared.

Unless you’re a major Trekkie, you probably didn’t notice a new app for iOS and Android released this morning by Paramount Pictures. Named after the upcoming Star Trek film by director J.J. Abrams, “Star Trek Into Darkness” seems like just another fanboy app – but it isn’t. It’s a crystal ball, a peephole into the potentially terrifying future of mobile data collection.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” is one of the first apps available in the United States to utilize an impressive new “context awareness platform” from mobile chip giant Qualcomm called Gimbal. Announced last summer, Gimbal taps into every sensor in your smartphone – camera, microphone, compass, temperature sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi radio – to collect information about intimate aspects of your life: what you see, what you hear, where you go, and what you do when you get there. Gimbal knows which apps you use, which websites you visit, which songs you listen to, the photos you take, and more. And all of this personal information can be made accessible to app developers, marketers, and advertisers.

“We’re taking the data from each one of these sensors, or set of sensors, that can be interpreted and used to understand the world that’s around you, and figuring out what it is that gets you to interact at a more human level,” says Ian Heidt, director of product management at Qualcomm Labs.

Now, none of this may seem particularly shocking, unique, or even new. Data miners have been collecting bits and pieces of information about us for years. The things you search for, the websites you visit, the brand pages you “like” on Facebook, the articles you tweet, where you go, the apps you use – all of this is already being collected. So why are we talking about Gimbal?

Because Gimbal puts all of these details about you together in a way that has never before been possible and, according to Heidt, in turn gives those who use it to collect data the ability to understand “real-world behavior” – what we actually do in our lives, in every situation – like never before.

“We’re right on the cusp on seeing a fairly big shift in mobile services,” says Heidt – a shift toward hyper-personalized advertising, hyper-personalized apps, and hyper-personalized services, hyper-personalized everything. And Gimbal is positioned to become one of the main mechanisms pushing us into this fully customized future.

For some, a future in which the technologies we use know almost everything about our lives that happens outside our own heads will come as a blessing. All the content you consume, from apps to advertisements, will be tweaked just for you. For others, however, the benefits of full “context awareness” may not be worth the costs, especially the toll it could take on privacy. After all, the entire purpose of Gimbal is to broadcast many of the details about your life to third-parties, who will use that information to their advantage, to boost their bottom lines. The purpose of Gimbal is, by its nature, the antithesis of privacy.

Qualcomm is fully aware of the privacy implications of Gimbal, and has gone out of its way to make sure the technology does not get attacked for violating our personal space. For starters, Gimbal’s data collection mechanisms are all opt-in – you must give it permission to eavesdrop on your conversations, or track where you go, says Heidt. It also requires that you explicitly allow applications to access the data collected by Gimbal, all of which is stored directly on your device, rather than in the cloud.

All of these efforts are well and good from a privacy perspective. It’s clear to me that Qualcomm is doing everything it can to make Gimbal palpable for users who might be uncomfortable with carrying around a sophisticated monitoring device in their pockets. So my concerns here aren’t with Gimbal specifically, but with the future Gimbal is set to help shape – with the prospect that we will soon be living in a state of constant surveillance, and that we will have brought on this state willingly.

I worry about such a future, not because I’m skeptical of new technologies, but because I’m skeptical of what people will do with our personal information. Qualcomm may be committed to data protection, but what’s to stop the next company that comes along with a “contextual awareness platform” from disregarding such safe measures, especially if we’ve all shown a willingness to participate? And what’s to stop companies, governments, or even individuals from using this data for nefarious means?

At this point, there is no good answer to those questions. By sharing every tidbit about ourselves, we are effectively relinquishing control of who we are to the world at large. That, in turn, means handing over that control to someone else, someone we likely know nothing about. And it is technologies like Gimbal, or even Google Now (a slightly less sophisticated “context aware platform” beloved by Android users), that will massively accelerate this power shift.

In all likelihood, the battle to maintain our private lives is already lost. The cat is, as they say, out of the bag. And there’s no getting that sucker back in. Hyper-personalization is the future, whether privacy advocates want it to be or not. This isn’t entirely a bad thing – the products and services we use will almost certainly improve because of the increasing amount of information we share. They will help us spend more wisely, stay safer, find more things to enjoy. But this does not change the fact that, every time you agree to reveal more about your life, you pay for those benefits with a piece of yourself.

Gaming headphone maker Astro is getting into the spirit of the highly anticipated Dead Space 3 launch with custom Dead Space 3-themed stickers for its A30 and A40 headsets.

Dead Space 3 won’t be released until February 5th, but if you just can’t wait that long, Astro has something to whet your appetite in the interim.  The company has announced the release of six sets of Dead Space 3-themed speaker tags in advance of the game’s launch, three for its A30 gaming headset and three for the A40.

The speaker tags will feature art directly from the upcoming title; art which Astro describes as “authentic and entirely terrifying.” Fans of the Dead Space series now have a little something extra to get them juiced up for the third installment, which will see protagonist Isaac Clarke marooned on a frozen planet, fighting the deadly creatures that inhabit it.

If Dead Space 3 doesn’t happen to be your cup of tea, you can create your own speaker tags using the Astro Customizer, or choose from a bevy of other pre-existing options.

Astro Gaming Dead Space 3 speaker tags are available now on the company’s website. The three sets of tags for the Astro A30 retail for $20, while the three sets of tags for the Astro A40 retail for $25. each. Bundles including the Astro A30 and A40 headphones and  speaker tags together are available for $210 and $260 respectively.

Some of us like the idea of purchasing an unlocked phone from another region through an import site. This is a nice way to get our hands on phones that would otherwise not become available until much later, or in some cases never.
Now a new rumor claims that Samsung is looking to crack down on this, starting with the Samsung Galaxy S4. The idea is that a new update service would know what region your phone is from and where you are at.

If the phone is residing somewhere outside of the region it was intended for, the update would be denied. How this would work remains unseen. Right now Samsung updates are either performed via OTA or through Kies software, but the rumor does indicate that IMEI-based updates could be in the works as well.

Keep in mind that this is totally a rumor at this stage, and so don’t get too up-in-arms about it just yet. Still, it does make you wonder: how would this work for travelers? If you are in the United States for a business trip but live in Korea, would you be blocked from updates until you returned home? Perhaps the update system would have a way to see if you are using a carrier from outside the region and use that to determine if it should block updates or not?

While such an update system is technically possible, I’m not sure if it makes sense for Samsung to do something like this. For one, it would only be a matter of time before hackers found methods around this update system or simply released update files onto the web for those with imported handsets.

What do you think, could you see Samsung implementing something like this or not?

Developers who spent $1,500 to have the first units of Google Glass Explorer Edition might be getting their high-tech eyepieces soon.

The Google Glass Explorer Edition has successfully passed through the FCC, revealing more details about the device and increasing the possibility that it will soon be in the hands of the limited number of folks who dropped $1,500 for it. The fancy, futuristic eyewear was announced and demonstrated during the Google I/O even in 2012, and attendees were given the chance to reserve a unit for themselves. 

The FCC filing reveals that Google Glass will come equipped with Broadcom 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi radio with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy technology, although one of the documents lists 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi instead. Two different filings also list two different ways to charge the device, one via USB connection and another via a “barrel” connection, which we’re assuming is a proprietary port. It was also revealed that the eye piece will feature an “integral vibrating element that provides audio to the user via contact with the user’s head.” That might pertain to Google’s bone conduction technology patent application for a Glass-like device filed in January. 

The company invited those who purchased Google Glass to its San Franciso hackathon in late January and to its New York hackathon this February 1 and 2 for an early preview of the device. Google Glass going through the FCC means it’s been tested safe for human use, but while the lucky I/O attendees might be getting theirs soon, that it will take some time before the rest of us can get one. Project Glass’s leader, Babak Parviz, called it a complicated undertaking and said that there’s still a lot to be done before the eyepiece is ready to hit the market. 

A leak has given us the codenames of two other possible smartphone releases from HTC, named the HTC M4 and HTC G2. We’ve got a few details to tempt us, but no indication on when either will be made official.

We’re all expecting the future flagship phone known as the M7 to be launched during HTC’s February 19 event, but whether it’ll be joined by any other phones, or if HTC will hold something back for Mobile World Congress remains to be seen. A new leak has at least vaguely confirmed HTC does have a selection of other phones up its sleeve, but still leaves us guessing as to their arrival.

The phones in question are known by their codenames: The HTC M4 and HTC G2. We’ll start with the M4, which could be a small step down from the M7 judging by the potential specification. The 720p, 4.3-inch screen may be joined by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and 2GB of RAM. A 13-megapixel camera could be onboard, as could 16GB of storage and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

HTC has calmed down with the G2 though, as it’s said to have a 3.5-inch screen, a 1GHz processor and a 5-megapixel camera. The operating system may not be all that up-to-date either, as Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is listed. This puts the G2 on the same level as the Desire C and Desire V, while the M4 is similar to the Desire SV and One SV. The gulf in-between the two spec sheets indicates at least one other phone will turn up at some point.

HTC’s range is confusing at the moment, with many variations on the same theme, and all of them called the Desire something or the One something. Here’s hoping it’ll give it a complete overhaul in 2013 to make its individual models more recognizable.

The source of the rumor, Unwiredview, seems to doubt we’ll see the M4 and G2 at the February event or Mobile World Congress, but does suggest a spring release. We’re not going to speculate as to which gathering HTC will choose to show off these new phones, but we’d say it’s likely to be one of the two.

Welcome to Digital Blend, your one-stop shop for coverage and recommendations of all things relating to mobile gaming, digital marketplaces, and indie titles (for the week ending February 3).

Welcome back to Digital Blend, our weekly look at the world of downloadable video gaming that exists at the fringes of the mainstream. That means we look at the hottest new mobile game releases, downloadable content drops on consoles and PCs, indie darlings that deserve your love and attention, and the best gaming values out there for under $20.

Keep your comments and feedback coming. We want to hear from you! Did you try something you read about here and enjoy it? Is there a particular game you think we’ve overlooked or news you want to share? Any questions you are dying to ask? Let us know! Your thoughts, feedback, suggestions and (constructive!) criticism are welcome, either in the comments section below or directed at yours truly on Twitter, @geminibros.

Making headlines…

* Temple Run 2 has sprinted its way into the record books. Developer Imangi had reason to celebrate earlier this week when the sequel to the wildly popular endless runner racked up a record-setting 50 million downloads in 13 days, making it the fastest-growing mobile game yet. That’s less than half the time that it took for Angry Birds Space, the previous record holder, to reach the same sales figure (that one took 35 days). The fact that Temple Run 2 is free-to-play probably helped, but it’s an admirable achievement all the same.

* Valve boss Gabe Newell turned some heads earlier this week when he expressed his belief that the biggest threat to the success of the company’s Steam Box initiative isn’t from Microsoft and Sony gaming consoles, but rather from Apple. He explained that the iPhone maker’s ridiculous market share coupled with its increasing number of steps in the direction of the living room are cause for worry, in a speech given at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

* Bethesda Softworks is officially on iTunes. The publisher revealed earlier this week that the soundtracks from seven of its games are available for purchase on Apple’s music store. The list of games is pretty much what you’d expect Bethesda to trot out for sale: all three latter-day Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Rage, and Dishonored. Prices ranges from $9.99 to $15.99. MUSIC.

* ArmA dev Bohemia Interactive is apparently a fan of NVIDIA’s Project Shield mobile gaming device. The developer added another game to its 2013 lineup earlier this week, with ArmA 3 and the standalone version of DayZ to be joined by the strategy game, ArmA Tactics, one of the first confirmed titles for the Shield. Described as a “turn-based close combat strategy game,” Tactics puts players in control of a four-person Special Forces squad in combat situations inspired by the other games in the series.

* Mass Effect 3 is due for more DLC. BioWare indicated as much late in 2012, with word emerging that the full writing team had reassembled for something in the realm of post-release content. The intrigue grew earlier this week when executive producer Casey Hudson and producer Michael Gamble separately tweeted unfamiliar screenshots bearing the Mass Effect 3 logo. Neither offered any details, but the hint comes across clearly enough: Stay tuned!

* 4J Studios released the latest title update for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition earlier this week, but it is unfortunately not the update that fans were looking for. The UK-based developer has done incredible things with the console port of Mojang’s PC hit, issuing update after update in 2012 that brought the console release fairly close to its PC predecessor in terms of features. The big item that continues to be missed is “The End,” which is Minecraft‘s literal endgame (though you can keep playing after you complete it). This week’s title update unfortunately did not add that material, instead focusing on squashing a handful of bugs. It’s fine, we’re good, the tears are all gone now. But the wait for The End continues.

Top buys of the week…

Antichamber :: PC :: $19.99

This game is amazing. You’ll be getting a proper review early next week, but Alexander Bruce’s long-in-development first-person puzzle game is too outstanding to go without being mentioned here the week of its release. Trailers don’t do the marvel of what Bruce delivers here any justice at all. The trippy environments are gorgeous in their own minimal way, but the it’s the gameplay that truly impresses. Puzzles are rooted in non-Euclidean geometry, which essentially means that you’re running around a series of spaces that all feel like M.C. Escher fabrications. The game constantly builds on itself with new ideas and mechanics too. I can’t recommend this one highly enough. Pick of the week for sure.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Revolution DLC :: Xbox 360 :: 1,200 MS Points

Call of Duty fans celebrate this week with the coming of more Black Ops 2. The expected four multiplayer maps and one Zombies map are joined by a new weapon and an all-new competitive multiplayer mode for Zombies. It’s a lot of content, more than fans have gotten used to seeing from Call of Duty DLC. It’s all great stuff too. We skipped the review in favor of a getting started guide, so check it out right here for tips on getting around and surviving in all of these new locations.

Skulls of the Shogun :: Xbox 360 / Windows 8 / Windows Surface :: 1,200 MS Points / $10 / $5

Skulls of the Shogun is an important game for its cross-platform capabilities within the Microsoft ecosystem. It doesn’t matter what flavor of Windows or Xbox you’re running; this game can be played on it, and can be played against other players on any platform. It also happens to be a charming, exceptionally well put together turn-based strategy game designed to appeal to people who don’t like strategy games. Anthony loved it, and so do I.

Proteus :: PC :: $9.99

Nitpickers can waste all the time they want arguing over whether or not Proteus qualifies as a game. As for me, I’ll be busy in the corner exploring it’s beautiful and ever-changing world. Described as “a game of audio-visual exploration and discovery” by creators Ed Key and David Kanaga, Proteus drops players into a lush, seemingly alien world and sets them loose. There isn’t any specific goal or task laid before you; you simply explore, soak the world in, and reflect on your surroundings. The world changes every time you play, and it always ends up being a memorable experience.

Crysis 3 multiplayer beta :: PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 / PC :: FREE

This is more of a PSA than anything else. Electronic Arts is offering free multiplayer beta access to Crysis 3 for one and all until a week before the game’s February 19, 2013 release. The beta amounts to two modes – Crash Site and Hunter – as well as a sampler look at some of the built-in social features that will be further fleshed out in the finished product. Go play it. It’s fun and it costs you precisely zero dollars.