HEROES OF THE STORM

HEROES OF THE STORM

The ultimate lure of Blizzard's long-awaitedentry into the world ofthe MOBA can be felt only in the heady afterglow of a smart play. In many other genre entries it's very possible, especially as you just begin to grasp the intricacies of the systems at work, to wait the better part of a month before this moment comes. By tweaking and tailoring the form, slicing away at certain bits and glueing more on to others, the Warcraft maker has somehow managed to enable those satisfying moments where it all seems to come together to occur more regularly and for more people. It sits comfortably in the middle ground, providing enough depth for the hardcore to feel challenged, and yet allowing the newcomer to grasp the ideas and thrive within its folds. 

LANE TRAIN 

And the game isn't afraid to mess with longstanding genre convention in pursuit of that accessible edge. Heroes boasts seven maps to play across, rather than one or two to master, and each packs a unique mechanic designed to drag you out of your lane and to more actively alter your role during a match's playtime. In the stormstricken port of Blackheart Bay, for example, the team darts about collecting as many doubloons as possible in order to convince the map's namesake pirate ruler to unleash a barrage of cannon fire on the forts of your enemy.
The presentation is immaculate here, and weíre not just talking about the visuals. Similar to its work
in Diablo III and Starcraft II, Blizzard manages to imbue your frantic clicks and quickfire keyboard taps with a sense of supreme power inions explode satisfyingly as you cast your spells, while lining up and firing off a precision attack to land the final blow on a fleeing player legend.
If you're not quite on top of your game, or need to get in a bit more practice as a certain character, there are a pleasing array of PvP and Al enemy game types to move across, too. Heroes does a brilliant job of gating you off from certain player-on-player modes until you're ready for them, ensuring thereís
little excuse for newbie abuse. Viewed as a solid and approachable gateway MOBA, Heroes of the Storm simply has no rival.

LIFE IS STRANGE

LIFE IS STRANGE

Are you sitting comfortably ? For all the cliffhangers and surprises that saw this tale of time travel and teen drama grow into one of 2015's most talked about games, perhaps its most quietly revelatory moment is the first time it asks you to take a load off. Games rarely invite you to take stock - for the player, it's valuable time to reflect: to consider choices made (and occasionally unmade) and to wonder what might come next.

Whatever your guess, it's probably wrong. While on the surface Life Is Strange seems simply a take on Telltale's episodic adventure game format, it delights in confounding expectations and blending disparate genres. It offers resounding, occasionally unsettling shocks, but it's equally if not more affecting in its quieter moments. And thereís something rare and precious in the way Life Is Strange represents the highs and lows of adolescence, particularly in the way it portrays a friendship between two young women - protagonist Max, and her best friend Chloe. This shouldnít be a novelty, and yet it undoubtedly is in the interactive space. Spiky and obstinate, Chloe is a realistically flawed creation, and a terrific foil to more hesitant, diffident Max. Their relationship is one subtly shaped by your choices.
And if at time Dontnod tilts close to melodrama, that's only fitting given the heightened emotions we all feel as teens. Life Is Strange manages to evoke an identifiable sense of adolescent yearning, Such that it generates a kind of vicarious nostalgia; the feelings that bubble to the surface seem raw and real.

STRANGE TIME

Whether we're making use of Max's time-bending abilities to convince a friend we can see the future, or finding an inventive way past a locked door, Dontnod makes a familiar idea feel novel again Meanwhile, on the occasion the power's used for a simple do-over, the context keeps you engaged perhaps you're boosting the self-esteem of a classmate, or punishing a bully. The supporting cast at first seem like archetypes, but over five episode they're afforded depth, and soon earn your sympathies. Life Is Strange may take an episode or two to really finds its way into your heart, but once it's there, you'll never forget it.

Stress GPS

Stress GPS

With careful navigation, you can get ahead and maintain health. (No one-way ticket to the Bahamas required…

Although we wouldn't blame you.)

Hands up who's stressed. It's a trick question, obviously .

Whether you're trying to get through to your ISP after opening a thousand buck bill, facing a barely realistic deadline or making sure the babysitter knows where to find the Stingose, chances are it comes with a sense of prospective catastrophe. For some reason, even everyday practical tasks have become mired in tension (you can feel it in your shoulder blades). The thing is, while blowing a data cap and having to tell the boss you can't submit your report until tomorrow feel life-threatening, they're actually proxies for real threats to survival we envloves to meet but no longer face. You know, saber-toothed tigers. As a result, our bodies enact the same melodramatic adrenalin-inducing response in preparation to fight or flee a power bill as a woolly mammoth.

This involves redirecting blood flow to the muscles. Pushing glucose into the blood, increased sweating. A drop in immune function and digestion (as these are no longer the prioritiv). Increased heart rate and breathing and enlarged pupils. None of which actually help you find that car-free space you desperately need if you're going to make the meeting you're already late for.

But perversely we seem to like being stressed.

"Although the medical community has established that a little stress is actually good for you – waking up your creativity.

Fuelling your vitality, and keeping your immune system vigilant – the qualifying and key word here is 'little', "says stress management expert and autor of Addicted to Stress Debbie Mandel. "When you find yourself rushing from activity to activity, doing chore after chore, with no personal time for yourself, the problem isn't the external world that's landing on your doorstep; rather, it's your own need to constantly open that door and welcome stress into your life".

How you cope with stress – and how long you can withstand it before kowtowing to burnout – is personal, says Jennifer Ackerman, autor of Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream – a day in the life of your body.

"How your body responds to stressful events may be determined in part by your genes." She says. Whether you fret like a chihuahua at a Great Dane show or cruise through unruffled depends on genes known as serotonin transporter genes, which come in two sizes, short and long. The short ones favour moodiness low selfesteem and neurotic behaviour and are found in about 20 percent of the population. While long ones favour resilience and belong to qbout 30 per cent of people. The rest of us have one of each, meaning we are quite literally swinging votes.

Whatever your stress genes, self-management can mitigate the deleterious impact of prolonged periods under pressure. 

XBOX FITNESS

XBOX FITNESS

Invite a slew of extremely fit Americans into your TV

 

If you want to get fit, find

out what psychological tricks your brain responds

to. Need something that sounds scientific ? Take two P90X

and see us in the morning. Maybe you’re attached to your sense of masculinity ? Primal scream to the

Insanity workout. Or perhaps you’re the kind of person science, but likes words that sound

who doesn’t get like they mean something ? In that case, you’ll love Tracy Anderson’s

Omnicentric Metamorphosis All of these programmes are featured in the Xbox Fitness app that’s free to Xbox Live subscribers

on Xbox One. They’re a canny reworking of the hugely profitable but non-interactive fitness videos The workout plays in a window and the

Read more »

WHY DON’T XBOX 360 GAMESWORK ON XBOX ONE ?

WHY DON’T XBOX 360

GAMES WORK ON XBOX ONE ?.

Why backwards compatibility is too forward-thinking

  What’s the story ?

Like with all console transitions

your switch from Xbox 360 to Xbox

One won’t be entirely painless.

The biggest pill to swallow is that

your library of Xbox 360 games

won’t be playable on Microsoft’s

next-gen console. Why? Because

the tech isn’t capable. As one lead

programmer at a key Microsoft

studio explained: "The hardware

between the Xbox One and 360

is so radically different that even

emulation won’t be an option".

   Why should I care ? 

Because eight wondrous years of  

   Xbox 360 games – featuring some

of the greatest titles ever made –

will suddenly be blocked from your

new system. But can’t devs port

the games themselves? Not unless

you want them to spend much of

their time working on old games

as opposed to new ones. “There

are some major hardware and

code design issues to take into

consideration before tackling a

project like this,” says our source.

   What happens next ? 

Looks like we’ll have to bite the

bullet. Our source says “there’s little

chance” of backwards compatibility

ever coming to Xbox One. “Getting a

studio to port the code would be a

reasonable task, but it would take

time, especially if they didn’t write

the original game.” That’s not to say

you won’t ever see old games on

Xbox One – another dev told us that

“a fairly substantial bit of tech was

recently ported between consoles

in only a couple of weeks".