Razer Onza Xbox Controller Offers Gripping Gameplay

 Inventing excuses after losing, dying, or in general just playing like crap is a time-honored tradition among gamers. We’ve heard them all — teammates who don’t pull their own weight, cheaters, tons of lag, screen glare, and worst of all, faulty or unresponsive controllers.

So here’s the bad news: Razer’s Onza TE will make covering up your ineptitude with hardware-based justifications even less tenable. But don’t panic. The good news is you might not have to make as many.

At just $10 more than Microsoft’s standard-issue wired controllers (and the same price as the wireless versions), the Onza TE is an undeniable value whether you’re a seasoned fragger or casual gamer. Yes, you’ll have to deal with a cord — Microsoft doesn’t license its wireless tech to third party peripheral makers — but at 15 feet, you should still have plenty of wiggle room from couch to console. In fact, like the rest of the controller, even that cord is thoughtfully designed. Made of lightweight, braided cable, it also comes with a quick release USB connector should anyone accidentally trip over it.

As for the controller itself, the first thing you’ll notice is that it has a drastically different feel then the standard Microsoft models. It’s not only lighter, thanks to the lack of a battery pack, it’s also slimmer and slightly more angular. Razer also coated the Onza TE with a rubberized, non-slip finish, ensuring that even Cheetos-stained fingers will maintain a firm hold.

But as with Razer’s other gaming peripherals, the Onza TE’s true appeal is in its ample opportunity for customization. To that end, both of the controller’s analog sticks have adjustable resistance rings, letting you tighten or loosen the amount of force needed to tilt them. You also get two separate, fully-mappable buttons located just above the triggers dedicated to whatever task you deem fit. (I was fond of mapping my reload button to right one).

Razer also threw in what it calls “hyper response technology” into its ABXY face buttons. This is actually just a fancy name for using mechanical switches beneath the buttons. And if you’ve suffered the mushy membrane switches that Microsoft uses in its standard controllers, the advantages will become immediately apparent. Not only is the depressing distance for each button much shorter, you’ll also get a satisfying click each time you do it. Even better? Those buttons are backlit.

The adjustable analog sticks also come in handy in multiple gaming situations. Dialing in the precise resistance when controlling the errant camera in L.A. Noire or loosening things up and adding a bit more precision as you’re aiming down your ACOG scope was simply a matter of twisting the rings on the analog sticks to the right or left.

Of course, none of this is to say the Onza TE will actually make up for lack of skill. But after using it for more than two weeks I can say it’ll make going back to any other controller nearly impossible.

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Your console is your cable box as Comcast, HBO Go, Verizon FIOS, and more come to the Xbox 360

Microsoft has announced a series of deals which will bring around 40 established media outlets to the Xbox 360 console. The list is long and varied and includes HBO Go, Bravo, Comcast, Crackle, SyFy, and more. The entire list can be seen on Major Nelson's blog, with information on which properties will be available in which regions, and which will require an Xbox Live Gold account. This is an impressive announcement and should help make the Xbox 360 a more powerful force in home entertainment, not just games.

What's unclear is how each media company will offer their content on the system. Some may give up their on-demand services, while others may allow live streaming, and subscription channels will most likely continue to require a standard subscription to the channel via your cable package before you're allowed to watch the content on your console, which would act as your cable box. The real power Microsoft is offering with the 360 is the ability to unify these content providers under one large umbrella.

"Gone are the days of managing a handful of remote controls, trying to remember what movies are available from what service, and hunting back and forth across television inputs," Microsoft explained in a statement released today. "Using voice search with Bing on Xbox, easily look across a variety of branded services and play the programming you want without ever raising a finger. Having trouble finding last night’s episode of “The Office”? It’s now only a voice command away. Just say “Xbox, Bing, ‘The Office,’” and Xbox finds it."

Instead of digging across all the media outlets you have access to looking for a single piece of content, the console itself can do that for you, effectively piling all the different movies and television programs into one big pool that's easily searched. While there are bound to be more details and limitations announced before all this content is added to the system—which is expected to take place before the holidays—Microsoft is making serious moves in the world of entertainment.

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Kratos, Sackboy Collide in PlayStation TV Campaign

Ever wanted to see Uncharted’s Nathan Drake chat up Final Fantasy XIII protagonist Lightning? Sony’s newest TV advertisement, released on Wednesday, lets you watch all your favorite PlayStation all-stars interact.

The commercial, which features CG versions of classic PlayStation characters from God of War’s always-angry anti-hero Kratos to the cute and cuddly Sackboy of LittleBigPlanet, is the first in Sony’s new Long Live Play ad campaign.

The ad itself is wildly entertaining, mostly because you can use it as a “spot the hidden mascot” game. My personal favorite was Sackboy playing Chess with Twisted Metal mascot Sweet Tooth.

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New Humble Bundle Tries Different Pricing Tack

If you’ve watched the gaming world at all over the last year or so, you’re probably aware of theHumble Bundle, a charity-orientated promotion where you pay what you want for a few standout indie titles. The few so far have had a great reception, raising millions for charity (EFF and Child’s Play). A new one has just launched with acclaimed strategy shooter Frozen Synapse as the main draw, but there’s a new wrinkle in the pricing scheme.

Instead of just having the whole bundle available for any price you want to pay, you receive either just Frozen Synapse or the game plus the whole previous bundle depending on how much you give. Give under the average and get the game, give over the average and get the bundle. It’s a little bit brilliant.

Paying over the average (around $4.40 as I write this) will almost certainly be the more popular choice, as it gets you quite a bit of extra content (the excellent Shadowgrounds and its sequel). And what happens when you pay over the average? You raise the average. It’s a nice, soft way of setting a price floor without preventing cash-strapped (or just cheap) people from paying a buck for a good game. The average price has gone up a couple pennies just as I’ve written this paragraph, and when you’re looking at sales in the hundreds of thousands, those pennies start to add up.

So far they’ve sold over 30,000 bundles and have raised above $130,000. The sale’s just beginning (it goes for two weeks), so those numbers should rise quite a bit. Head on over to the Humble Bundle site to buy or just check things out. And here’s a video of the games involved:

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The Twisted, Taxing Puzzles of Space Miner Rochard

NEW YORK — John Rochard doesn’t care about silly things like physics. Like any good blue-collar worker, he’s too busy clocking in his hours and grinding out a living to worry about Newton’s laws or gravitational pull.
That’s your job.
In Rochard, a downloadable physics-based puzzle game available Tuesday on PlayStation 3, you’re tasked with guiding John through a series of gravity-based puzzles. After accidentally discovering an alien artifact, the space miner finds himself stranded on an asteroid, his co-workers missing. Also, there are laser beams and turrets and mean bad guys who want to kill him.
Rochard has a few weapons at his disposal, but most interesting is his gravity gun, which he can use to manipulate crates and switches, flinging them around like angry birds to knock down baddies and open new passages. He can also slow down gravity, making it easier to jump and swing around Rochard’s lovely two-dimensional stages.

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