Our choice for Android Free Game of the Week is Plague Inc. Plague Inc, which can be found for free (ad supported) on the Google Play Store is a game about creating a disease and spreading it across the globe, creating as much havoc as possible until a cure is found for the disease you created.
Although the premise might sound a bit macabre, the game itself can be quite humorous. Some of the status updates from the game which include a hilarious scrolling newsfeed are very tongue in cheek, especially when you consider that the game itself is about spreading a plague and wiping out the human race. You even get to name the disease yourself, which often leads to great messages like "DickButts is spreading". If the thought of worldwide annihilation doesn't bother you, go check out this week's Android Free Game selection.
I discovered one of the crazier/glorious things that the internet has come up with recently while browsing reddit. A user created an IRC script that translates user input from the chatroom into key presses inside a Gameboy emulator running pokemon. This was then broadcasted on twitch.tv. This glorious idea is Twitch Plays Pokemon.
The story of what has happened so far can be found on this wiki posted on reddit. It really has become this great experiment in social gaming. Go check it out.
Respawn has opened up the closed beta for Titanfall for everyone on XBoxOne and PC. If you had previously registered for the beta but didn't get an invite, you will be quite pleased to find the Titanfall beta ready to load in your Origin dashboard today.
If you're too lazy for the 13gb install, check out some of the videos I've uploaded of the beta thus far.
Today I received my beta invite for the Steam In-Home Streaming function. For those who haven't heard about this before, Steam Home Streaming allows for you to stream your Steam games from your main gaming PC to any other pc in your home that you have the Steam Client installed on.
This has completely changed my future plans for home pc gaming, as I was already considering building a 2nd gaming pc to keep in the living room (albeit a bit underpowered and on a budget). I was already running a 50 foot HDMI cable and bluetooth connection from our bedroom to the living room in order to play games like Resident Evil 6 on our big screen. Steam In-Home streaming seems like it could eliminate that mess of cables and placate an annoyed fiance.
Well, how does it work? (via linus tech tips)
So how did it work out for me? In short, pretty damn well.
My main pc specs:
i7 3770k
AMD Radeon 7870 XT (Tahiti LE)
8gb of ram
Corsair SSD, Velociraptor, Some Standard 7200 rpm drives
My streaming device specs:
i7 3840QM
8 gb of ram
Intel HD4000 integrated graphics
My home network specs:
10/100 going through 2 powerline adapters (we rent so I can't run my own data drops at the moment)
Wireless N network via my bargain TP-Link WR841N
After some fiddling, I found the streaming to be pretty good. The sound and video was quite clear and was coming out at full resolution. I didn't find out how many FPS I'm currently getting through the stream, but from my understanding that is dependent on your network infrastructure. I'm sure once I get my home gigabit network up and running that will jump.
There is a slight input delay. I was using my wired xbox 360 controller attached to the stream laptop and there was a delay of a few milliseconds. This might be a problem if you're playing a game that requires some twitch reaction play, but it should be fine for most single player games.
I'll post some HQ videos up once I get some more data, but from my initial impressions of the beta, I'm quite pleased and I can't wait until it gets officially rolled out to the masses.
