Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

Like

• Super Comfortable — I wore the Chimaera for several gaming sessions of two hours or more and found it perfectly comfortable the whole time.
• Great Sound — Although it’s not as impressive as headsets with multiple drivers, I really enjoyed the sound output. At the very least, it blows away TV speakers in terms of clarity and detail.

Didn’t Like

• Microphone — The mic isn’t noise-cancelling, which could be a deal breaker for gamers that play in crowded living rooms, doorms, etc.
• Possible Interference — I’m positive that interference won’t be an issue for most people, but if you live in a crowded apartment complex (like me) with lots of 5.8GHz devices fighting for signal then you’ll probably experience occasional dropouts. At home, I experienced a few dropouts but when I brought the Chimaera to my friend’s house in the suburbs I didn’t have any.

Kindly watch the review when you have a chance and let me know what you think! Is the Razer Chimaera 5.1 something you want this holiday season?

Special thanks to Justin Leeper for conducting the interview while I cracked up behind the camera.

Please, please, please check out this video of some of the 30+ action figures that can be used in Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventures. The action figures themselves have some cool designs and the marketing copy is hilarious. Most of the action figures have tag-lines that are so silly that you have to laugh at them.

I’ve actually started my second run of the game and the main reason I’m playing it again is because it’s fun to use the action figures to swap characters. I’m positive that the game and the toys will sell like crazy this holiday season. Well played Activision. Well played.

Gamasutra has a must-read interview with id Software’s John Carmack. The brilliant programmer covers a wide variety of topics in this four-page interview, including Rage, frame rate, the decision to stop licensing id Tech, the benefits of being acquired by ZeniMax, the true power of mobile devices, and more. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. You’ll be a smarter gamer for it. Here are some highlights:

Why the company stopped licensing its id Tech engine:

It’s interesting when you look back at our technology licensing — it was never really a business that I wanted to be in. In the very early days, people would pester us, and we would just throw out some ridiculous terms, and we were surprised that people were taking us up on it.

I didn’t want to be in the process of supporting a lot of outside teams — because we feel beholden to not make radical changes, and pull the rug out from underneath lots of other people. If it’s your own team, you can make the sensible decision of “It’s going to be worth it. It’s going to suck for a while, but we can make our way through it.” But you don’t want to do that to other people.

Why Microsoft gives its Xbox 360 developers expensive tools for free:

Microsoft has got some pretty good static analysis tools, and normally they make you buy, like an $8,000 professional edition of Visual Studio, but they give it for free to all Xbox developers — which I think says an interesting thing about this stuff. Where Microsoft figures that, well, nobody blames them for crappy software on Windows, but they do blame Microsoft a bit for crappy software on 360, so it’s in their best interest to put more static analysis tools available there.

One of the biggest problems with PC game development:

It’s pretty sad, the fact that we have these PCs that are sometimes 10 times as powerful, and we have more trouble holding 60 frames per second on the PCs because of drive and OS unoptimalities. And there are reasons for all of them. I’ve done enough driver work on OpenGL to understand why things wind up the way they are.

And sure, on the PC, you can go ahead and you’re running two megapixels. You can turn on anti-aliasing, and you can have much bigger page tables for the virtual textures, and all this stuff. But still, if you want it to get done in like 16 milliseconds, the graphics drivers are a huge hindrance right there.

As I said before, it’s a fantastic interview. Carmack is awesome. I guarantee you’ll learn at least four things from this story. Now go read it!

Source

Here’s a video with my top five games of E3 2011. Please check it out! Also, please keep in mind that my list was restricted to games that I officially saw. Some developer friends snuck me into demos that I wasn’t scheduled to see and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Having said that, there’s only one game I “unofficially” saw that would’ve cracked my personal top five.

Now that you know my top five games of E3 2011, kindly let me know your top five of the show!

T-Mobile USA senior product manager Desmond Smith showed me his HTC Sensation at E3 2011. This excellent Google Android phone is available today and packs some impressive features. Smith was nice enough to give me an overview of the phone (he saw me mark out after he told me it was in his bag). In the b-roll he shows off the HTC Watch (streaming movies) and HTC Trace (Swype-like keyboard) features.

Check it out and let me know what you think (please)!

Here’s a cute video of Virigin Mobile Sarah playing Karaoke Revolution: Glee Volume 3 at Konami’s E3 2011 booth. Watch the beautiful Sarah sing and dance her way to your heart. I know I did. Ha!

It was cool to see T-Mobile at E3 2011. The company had a fairly large booth where it pushed gaming on the LG G2x. Here’s a quick video featuring T-Mobile USA senior product manager Desmond Smith talking about why the G2x is one of the best phones for gaming.

In this interview, Justin Leeper talks about Still Man Fights and how his experiences in gaming, pro-wrestling, stunt choreography, and writing came together in the book. Find out why people are saying that it’s great for A Game of Thrones Fans and how the book’s fight scenes are similar to combat in Infinity Blade.

Kindly check out the interview and if you dig what Justin has to say then please check out his book.