So a new type of gaming headgear has just come out.

The headset from foc.us is the first wearable transcranial Direct Current Stimulation or tDCS. This device sends a low electrical current to your brain, improving brain power. This is achieved by 4 electrodes located at the front of the headset while the headset rest on the back of your head.

This headset claims to overclock your brain, improving your cognitive performance. The headset can be controlled manually by using either a touch sensor or your iPhone. Later models will include control via Android phones. Currently, you can only change whether it’s on or off, the mode or the current level with the app. There is no way to change the duration of the current.

This cool device will be sold $249 for US customers and £179 for UK customers and the rest of the world. They will ship to Canada, US, UK, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and continental Europe. It comes in two colours black and red.

If you want to check this cool headset for yourself head over to http://www.foc.us/.

Have you ever watched those old school Kaiju films and thought “Man I could take control of a giant Mechanoid Bunny and lay the smack down on their candy asses!”

King of Tokyo is a board game for 2 – 6 players, where you take control of your favourite Kaiju from Giga Lizards to The King (a giant Cybernetic Gorilla) and even a carrot smoking bunny in a giant pink death machine. (I think you can all guess who I picked)

The objective of this mutagenic smack down is to either pound you friend’s faces into the floor or survive long enough to claim 20 victory points from dice rolls and remaining inside Tokyo.

The dice have several actions in game:

Numbers 1,2,3
Netting 3 of a matching number will bag you that number of victory points i.e. 3+3+3 will give you 3 victory points

Claws
Each claw will deal 1HP of Damage either to the Player inside Tokyo or to each player outside (if you are the one inside the city at the time)

Hearts
Hearts will heal you 1 damage up to 10HP (probably the most useful Die you could get) but if you are inside the city NO HEALS FOR YOU!!! You sit there and suffer

Lightning Bolts/Energy
This will give you 1 energy cube, these cubes are essentially currency you can use to buy cards and use your abilities

So before we talk about these cards, let’s find out why this game is called the king of Tokyo, there are two battle positions in the game Tokyo and the outskirts. Creatures in Tokyo can’t heal whilst inside but they do attack every creature outside the city meaning you can deal massive damage with each turn. And if you hold Tokyo for an entire round you gain an extra 2 victory points so it’s a very high risk reward position.

The creatures outside the city can only attack the occupant of Tokyo and can heal up ready to take the hill. So how do you take control of the city? Well it’s not up to you, whenever the player inside Tokyo becomes too butthurt to stay they can swap with the last creature to attack them, conversely if you take out the creature in the city you have to take his place.

This leaves an interesting tasty in your mouth as a player where you are torn between dealing the big hits in the city and hoarding heals and energy outside. You’re never sure whether or not to take the hill, but it gives the game a real think on your GIGANTIC feet feeling it’s a strategy game where it’s good to live in the moment.

One last area that I should cover is the ability cards, these cards can be purchased with energy cubes allowing the player to change up how they play the game. Now I play every game like a Glass Cannon I always look to deal massive damage as quickly as possible so when a Spiked tail or Extra head card turned up allowing my creature to add an extra damage or die to each roll, my game turns completely to hoarding Cubes to purchase these boosts. So imagine my brain exploding after I purchased these and a new card showed up, the Nuclear Blast that allowed me to hit everyone inside or outside Tokyo.

But it’s not all damage cards, in one game I purchased the heal ray that allowed me to sell one of my hearts to other players in exchange for cubes, which made me start acting like the mafia commenting on other players lack of health in order to solicit more energy.

Overall King of Tokyo is a quick game to get your friends in the gaming mood. Now it’s not going to hold an entire evening unless you are playing with a full roster of friends, but it’s definitely a great game to break the ice between new people, People that say meet up every Tuesday evening at Copa in Cheltenham at 7pm GMT. (If you’re local come along). It’s fun and if you’re with a good group of people can test your wits quite considerably.

Needless to say we’re all looking forward to testing out some of the games expansions.

King of Tokyo gets a: GOOODZILLAAAAAAAA!!!/10

A rumour has surfaced claiming that Nintendo is hard at work on its next generation of home and portable consoles, collectively known as “Fusion.”

An anonymous source claims that Nintendo, which is reeling after an absolutely disastrous year, is working on the successor to the much-maligned WiiU. Called Nintendo Fusion, it’s a collective name for Nintendo’s next generation of both the home and portable consoles.

Nintendo actually purchased the nintendofusion.com domain in 2003 in support of the Nintendo Fusion Tour, a rock and video game music festival that ran for four years, but it has since gone dormant. And while news that Nintendo isn’t just watching its money evaporate is not in itself remarkable, it is noteworthy that there are actual “possible” specifications for the hardware, suggesting that development is relatively far along.

Fusion DS:

CPU: ARMv8-A Cortex-A53 GPU: Custom Adreno 420-based AMD GPU
COM MEMORY: 3 GB LPDDR3 (2 GB Games, 1 GB OS)
2 130 mm DVGA (960 x 640) Capacitive Touchscreen
Slide Out Design with Custom Swivel Tilt Hinge
Upper Screen made of Gorilla Glass, Comes with Magnetic Cover
Low End Vibration for Gameplay and App Alerts
2 Motorized Circle Pads for Haptic Feedback
Thumbprint Security Scanner with Pulse Sensing Feedback
2 1mp Stereoptic Cameras
Multi-Array Microphone
A, B, X, Y, D-Pad, L, R, 1, 2 Buttons
3 Axis Tuning Fork Gyroscope, 3 Axis Accelerometer, Magnetometer
NFC Reader
3G Chip with GPS Location
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE Command Node used to Interface with Bluetooth Devices such as Cell Phones, Tablets
16 Gigabytes of Internal Flash Storage (Possible Future Unit With 32 Gigabytes)
Nintendo 3DS Cart Slot
SDHC “Holographic Enhanced” Card Slot up to 128 Gigabyte Limit
Mini USB I/O
3300 mAh Li-Ion battery

Fusion Terminal:

GPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAMED KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
802.11 b/g/n Wireless
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
2 USB 3.0
1 Coaxial Cable Input
1 CableCARD Slot
4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads
Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot
1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage

Nintendo News claims it has an “impeccable reputation” with regard to rumours but also notes that none of this is substantiated and is subject to change and/or outright denial at any time. And while it’s only been a little over a year since the WiiU was released, it’s been such an unmitigated disaster that I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo is in a rush to get a successor out the door. Whether or not it will do anything to restore its credibility is another matter entirely, but at this point, anything is better than nothing.

Source: Nintendo News

Customers show more Windows H8 as popular demand encourages HP to push 8.1 to “optional” status

It’s no secret that Windows 8 got off to a rough start, with users confused by the new tiled, touch- and mobile- friendly interface; irritated by its difficulty to use with the traditional mouse-and-keyboard setup of old; and/or put off by its outwardly un-charming appearance. Unfortunately for Microsoft, its attempt to alleviate some of the concerns of current and potential future customers – by improving the experience and making concessions for those still clinging on to the traditional desktop environment – seems to also be burning up faster than the Hindenburg.

In advertising material found on the United States version of their official website, HP has apparently decided to give short shrift to the sinking popularity of Windows 8 and 8.1 and states that it has bought back Windows 7 on its computers “by popular demand”. The site is now heavily promoting computers with Windows 7 as an alternative to Windows 8, with most of the available computers now coming with 7 pre-installed – unless Windows 8 is deliberately ticked as a “customisable option”.

The advertisements even claim that choosing a Windows 7 computer can save you “up to $150” from your purchase.

Numerous rumours have suggested that with the retirement of Steve Ballmer as CEO, Microsoft are eager for the next generation of Windows to distance from the media firestorm surrounding Windows 8 as much as possible, with many suggesting that Microsoft’s plans to reveal the next update for Windows at its Build Conference in April will reveal concepts for a whole new Windows – Windows 9, perhaps – rather than another refresh of 8. HP’s decision to highlight Windows 7 adds a little more to the ever-growing weight that rests on Microsoft’s shoulders to reassure everyone that they have their interests in mind.

Machinima, bastion of 360 no-scope headshots and other YouTube memes was just outed for offering a monetary incentive to their YouTube partners who created positive videos about Microsoft’s new Xbox One console and it’s games. (PredictedCyborg’s original blog about it here)

While I would like to claim I am surprised by this, the sad truth is…I’m not.

(Full disclosure: I am a YouTube Content Creator myself. In fact, I happen to be partnered with the Fullscreen network.)

Here’s the facts about being a YouTube creator.

1) Its Hard – Making videos is hard work. Its even harder to get noticed. making quality content doesn’t guarantee exposure.

2) Its Hard To Make Money – Once you get exposure, making money is hard. You need a lot of views, yes. But you also need to be able to monetize your content in the first place. And if you’ve been following the recent Content ID kerfluffle, you know that easier said than done these days.

3) People Like Money – Ok, maybe I’m cheating this one. But yeah, people like money. Its a rule of life basically.

With this in mind lets move on.

What Machinima is doing, with either explicit or tacit approval from Microsoft (I’ve seen sources reporting both ways – Microsoft is actually behind the idea, or that they are smiling and nodding at Machinima’s bright idea that’s getting the Xbox One good press), is appealing to the base nature of the human animal. Most creators who are part of a network want to make money. My own network, Fullscreen, runs campaigns for us all the time. And yes, they get us extra money. The difference here is that a Fullscreen campaign is usually something silly. As an example, we ran one over Thanksgiving where we could make a video with a silly way to say “turkey stuffing”. They then gave us extra money on those views. What’s the difference between that and what Machinima is doing you ask? Simple:

Machinima is asking it’s own members to state positive things about a product. In fact, the agreement even explicitly states that you may not say anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One or any of its games in said video. This engenders in me a feeling of deep distrust towards ANY video that I see on Machinima about the Xbox One. And it calls into question many of their other videos. For better or worse, many gamers these day tun to YouTube “celebrities” for news, reviews and other gaming related content.

An uproar is sure to break out over the next few days about this. So let’s all remember a few things. Machinima is a business. Machinima and it’s partners are in this game to make money. Microsoft is also a business out to make money. Furthermore, the shining image of YouTube creators as paragons of journalistic integrity that so many people are crying foul over is ludicrous. People out to make money aren’t going to have that type of journalistic integrity. Especially when almost none of them were trained as journalists to begin with.

Do I find what Machinima is up to shady? Hell yes.
Am I surprised by it? Hell no.
Should we cry foul at YouTubers over their journalistic scruples? Maybe. Maybe not. Each YouTube has their own goals and morals. Its up to them to establish what they are and aren’t willing to do for money. Be that making videos of CoD headshots, giant dicks they built in Minecraft, taking money from Microsoft/Machinima to pimp the Xbox One, or shaving a goat while wearing a speedo (maybe that last one is just me), they are going to do what they are going to do.
In the end, its up to the viewer to make their own judgement about the creator’s intentions.

(For our XBox One review, look here)