Tech2

The way the audio industry has been measuring subwoofers for decades has turned out to be inadequate. But the new method they’ve come up with may be causing as much confusion as the old one.

I recently took a bit of a road trip for my summer vacation. All told, it was about 1,000 miles, starting in rural New Hampshire (is there any other kind?), down through New York into rural-ish Pennsylvania, and back again.

Most video games, especially the big-name, high-budget ones, are created by a huge team of people. Some are in charge of how the game plays, others design the levels, others still do the sound.

Before the nuts and bytes get tightened, most games start with an idea. To give the entire team a visual representation of what the "look" of the game is going to be, most companies hire a concept artist, just like movies do.

This concept art can give the game a direction, but on their own, they can be fascinating visual adventures in their own right. Here's some brilliant art from some recent games, and some info on the incredibly talented artists behind them.

One of the best weekends of my life involved a train trip to visit a new, out-of-state girlfriend. I barely remember my time with her, but I vividly remember what I read on the way: Vance Dickason’s Loudspeaker Design Cookbook.

I played the first Dead Space because I had to. It was one of my first game reviews for ­S+V. It was inconsistent, regularly annoying, but fairly enjoyable. The sequel was a better game overall, but lacking some of the first game's raw scariness.

The universe, story, and concept were sound enough that I was actually looking forward to DS3.

Here's what I found.