December 26, 2011

Command & Conquer: Red Alert– an iOS Game Done Right.

Hard­core games are not hard to find on any smart­phone plat­form, Apple’s iOS included. With most of these titles, the hard­core gamer demo­graphic gen­er­ally has a uni­ver­sal com­plaint: con­trols. Shoot­ers, plat­form­ers, action games and RPGs all prove to be sub­stan­tially more chal­leng­ing and off-putting because of the lack of tac­tile feed­back from a touch­screen inter­face. One game genre, how­ever, doesn’t have this hangup: Real Time Strat­egy. As a mat­ter of fact, RTS games seem tailor-made for a touch­screen inter­face. That being said, I was skep­ti­cal when I first saw an offi­cial Com­mand and Con­quer fran­chise port to iOS– and got even more ner­vous when it turned out to be an exten­sion of one of my favorite C&C series: Red Alert. Thank God I gave it a shot.

Not often will I pay for an app of any kind, but after try­ing the free demo, I bought the full ver­sion of Red Alert the very same day, and then later bought it for a friend so we could play together. I not only bought this game, I bought it twice, and it was worth every penny. The fact of the mat­ter is that RTS is per­haps the only style of hard­core game that will ever be per­fectly exe­cuted on a touch­screen, which is an insane bar­gain for its $.99 price tag.

The first con­cern for many gamers when look­ing at a hard­core mobile game is con­trols. Rest assured, the con­trols for this game, while they have a small learn­ing curve, are com­pletely sen­si­ble. Even with group­ing dif­fer­ent units together for an attack force, the onscreen con­trols are fast and intu­itive. One draw back, how­ever, is that you only get 3 hotkey slots for these groups. As seen on the right, the Apoc­a­lypse Tanks are back. In this screen­shot, they are col­lec­tively fol­low­ing attack orders as group 1– hence the top group slot being high­lighted in red. While at first the idea of only 3 unit groups is off-putting, it really doesn’t present much of a tac­ti­cal issue. This sort of scal­ing back is fairly com­mon through­out all aspects of the game, but sort of makes sense for the smaller nature of the iOS plat­form. One would hope, though, that the game would have a much larger unit cap with bet­ter hard­ware on later iDe­vices. Per­haps if there is a sub­se­quent Com­mand & Con­quer title for iOS, we could even hope to see larger mul­ti­player func­tion­al­ity. In a per­fect world, this would include sup­port for more than two par­tic­i­pants in any given skir­mish or mul­ti­player match, and sup­port for online play. Though all in all, it’s hard to com­plain too loudly about the first attempt at an offi­cial iOS C&C.

Now, the game is good as is when you down­load it from the App Store, and well worth a buck. I will say, how­ever, that I also bought both avail­able expan­sions, which were also worth every last penny (twice). The first is the map pack. Even if you’re con­tent with only two fac­tions, two stock skir­mish maps is a lit­tle harder to defend. For an addi­tional dol­lar, you get all the maps seen on the right in addi­tion to the two the game comes with. This is a mas­sive improve­ment for only cost­ing a buck. And if you really wanna make the game seem big­ger, The Empire of the Ris­ing Sun expan­sion adds a com­plete third playable fac­tion, and its own cam­paign– all for $2.99. While the com­pounded cost may scare away a few play­ers, this is a lot of game for your money, and one with a nearly inde­struc­tible replay value. Besides, all that said, and you’re still only in it for $3.98. That’s a ridicu­lously low price for a qual­ity game. Don’t believe me? Try the free demo. If you’re a fel­low C&C fan, you’ll prob­a­bly buy it just like I did.

November 28, 2011

IntKeys.com Service

With our new part­ners IntKeys behind us and us behind them it seems that it is time to do some inves­tiga­tive report­ing. Well I did just this by mak­ing a pur­chase under an unknown name and got all the ser­vice that I expected and then some. When I took it upon myself to go through with what I had hoped was a good deal I looked every­where and IntKeys is still the best place to pick up keys. Let’s get into the process and how I was left very impressed.

You start out by choos­ing the game that you are want­ing to pur­chase. The details are given straight out of the box and onto the page so that you can see exactly what it is you are think­ing about pur­chas­ing. Price is given plus the retail cost that you would see any­where else.

When you get to the page that asks for a pro­mo­tional code, you can enter ours and get an addi­tional per­cent­age off the price that is listed. Just to give you an idea of how long it took from com­ple­tion of trans­ac­tion to the time I was given my key i’ll include some screen cap­tures of my e-mail inbox below.

All in all, a fast ser­vice with proof of pur­chase. If you have to do busi­ness with key ven­dors, these guys are top notch.

October 25, 2011

The Ultimate Gaming FPS simulator or the 1^st Holodeck!

This ulti­mate gamFPS sim­u­la­tor was built by the crew at “The Gad­get Show” a tech show from Eng­land on Chan­nel 5. Armed with the E3 demo of Bat­tle­field 3 and about $650,000 they have made the clos­est thing to a holodeck I’ve ever seen! Using ambi­ent light­ing, a hacked Kinect con­troller, a floor that lets you sim­u­late walk­ing with­out mov­ing, some remote con­tolled paint­ball guns, and a 360 degree full room screen these guys have built some­thing insanly cool!

So, if you got that kinda scratch lying around watch the video to learn how to build your own!

Source: Engad­get

October 21, 2011

Gunnar Optiks: Yellow-Tinted Gaming Glasses

While I typ­i­cally tend to ignore most of the ads on the side of my Face­book page, I occa­sion­ally find one that inter­ests me. That’s how I found out about my now-favorite game store, and it’s also how I first heard about Gun­nar Optiks. Gun­nar Optiks pro­duces glasses that reduce eye strain and enhance con­trast on screens, and are mar­keted towards both fre­quent com­puter users who suf­fer from var­i­ous eye­strain related symp­toms, and towards the pro­fes­sional gam­ing com­mu­nity. Two of the gam­ing mod­els in the Gun­nar prod­uct lineup are endorsed by MLG, and a few more bear the SteelSeries name.

When I first heard about these, I won­dered about them for only a few min­utes before I moved on. They bear a pretty hefty price tag for some­thing that may or may not actu­ally help you at all. How­ever, a full year later, curios­ity and incred­i­bly sen­si­tive, fre­quently blood­shot eyes got the best of me. I got the “PPK” model from Best Buy for about $80 on Tues­day.  My opin­ion of them has fluc­tu­ated, but after using them for a few days, I’m happy with my pur­chase. I’ll talk you through my experience.

One thing to note is that these are not “glasses” in the tra­di­tional sense; they’re designed for peo­ple with nor­mal vision and are more com­pa­ra­ble in func­tion to sun­shades. If you use glasses, I might sug­gest wear­ing con­tacts under­neath these if you truly feel you need the strain reduc­tion. How­ever, in that case, I’d rec­om­mend talk­ing to your optometrist to see if there’s a bet­ter solution.

When I first put on the Gun­nars, I was quite under­whelmed. They turn every­thing yel­low. That’s pretty much all it looks like they do. Look at a screen, and everything’s yel­lower than nor­mal. I was fairly dis­ap­pointed in them within the first hour or so, but I decided to keep them on through­out the day to see how well they worked. It should be noted that an adver­tised fea­ture of these glasses is screen glare reduc­tion. It does this mod­er­ately well, but if your screen is kind of dirty and has an enor­mous win­dow shin­ing on it like mine does, there’s only so much it can be helped.

I really began to notice a dif­fer­ence on the first night of using the Gun­nars. The pri­mary light source in my room is a giant flu­o­res­cent bulb built into my desk, less than two feet from my face when I’m using the com­puter. It’s typ­i­cally a bright, shiny punch to the eye­balls, but the Gun­nars really cut down on the strain that it gen­er­ally causes. It turns out that these glasses are far more effec­tive at com­bat­ing strain in set­tings where your pri­mary light source is flu­o­res­cent or incan­des­cent. In day­light, they’re less nec­es­sary. When I woke up the next morn­ing after first using the Gun­nars, I was incred­i­bly impressed by the lack of red­ness in my eyes. Typ­i­cally, they’re blood­shot if I use the com­puter past midnight.

After a few days of play­ing all sorts of games with these glasses on, I can attest to their per­for­mance enhanc­ing capa­bil­i­ties. How­ever, these aren’t “100 meter dash” glasses, they’re more suited to gam­ing marathons. Wear­ing them dur­ing a com­pet­i­tive match won’t really do much more than cut a bit of screen glare and pos­si­bly increase the con­trast a bit. How­ever, if you’re plan­ning on play­ing a fairly ocu­lar inten­sive game (such as a first per­son shooter or a game with a lot of small things on screen to pay atten­tion to) for hours on end, these will def­i­nitely save you a lot of headache (lit­er­ally). Play for five hours straight with a naked eye, and try again the next day with Gun­nars; you’ll def­i­nitely notice a difference.

While the Gun­nars do a pretty good job of per­form­ing their adver­tised func­tions, they also have to be judged on the same qual­i­ties as any other sort of eye­wear. They’re still, in essence, a cloth­ing arti­cle, so com­fort and style come into play. The PPKs are some of the most nar­row of the bunch, and they look nice, sleek, and pro­fes­sional. They’re com­fort­able to wear for long peri­ods of time, and the tem­ples are thin and flat so as to not inter­fere with headset-wearing. They’ve worked with every head­set I’ve tried wear­ing with them, but there could pos­si­bly be an issue with espe­cially large over-the-ear head­sets. All of the Gun­nar gam­ing mod­els are designed with headset-wearing in mind, and they come in a vari­ety of styles (espe­cially pop­u­lar are the MLG Leg­ends, which are an “Avi­a­tor” style).

All in all, I feel as though the Gun­nar Optiks PPK glasses were a good addi­tion to my set of gam­ing gear. Those of you who don’t pull long stints ingame and don’t have sen­si­tive eyes or headaches might want to give them a pass, but for me, they’re great per­for­mance enhancers. You can order Gun­nars online, or buy them at Best Buy and a num­ber of other stores. The Gun­nar Optiks web­site has a handy store locator.

Pros:

• Com­fort­able and stylish
• Good for sen­si­tive eyes, strain-induced headaches, and long gam­ing sessions
• Don’t inter­fere with head­set usage

October 16, 2011

The Temporary Solution to the ailing DVD…..

I’ll never for­get my first DVD player. I received my first DVD player for my 16^th birth­day, it was huge. The “fat” PS3 looks pale in com­par­i­son. I also received The Sixth Sense on DVD, one of M. Night Shitaki’s bet­ter movies and bet­ter than the Joel Schu­macher Bat bun­gle I have on while writ­ing this. The great pic­ture and sound com­ing from what looked like a CD; changed my movie view expe­ri­ence into some­thing spe­cial. Would this catch on or would the VHS pre­vail and still rule as the pop­u­lar media format?

As his­tory would have it the DVD became the dream media for­mat; cheap, greater pic­ture and sound, and backed by top stu­dios and com­pa­nies. In 2000 and in 2001 it became the stan­dard in gam­ing. The PS2 and Xbox would usher in a new era in gam­ing media by incor­po­rat­ing this for­mat and in being DVD play­ers them­selves. This move would also define future con­soles, being the media hubs that they are today. In 2006 the DVD had two new chal­lengers to com­pete for the media’s all mighty dol­lars. The Blu-ray disc and the HD-DVD would do bat­tle for two years try­ing to become the suc­ces­sor to the DVD and bring HD to the for-front of media enter­tain­ment. In 2008 Blu-Ray, with the help of the PS3 using the for­mat as its pro­pri­etary for­mat; defeated HD-DVD to become the only disc based HD format.

The Xbox 360 is cur­rently the only HD con­sole still using this for­mat, and its age is start­ing to show. The aver­age DVD holds around 4.5 GB worth of infor­ma­tion; on a duel layer disc 8.5 GB. With games like Rage, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Final Fan­tasy 13 com­ing on some times 4 discs, com­pared to their PS3 counter parts only requir­ing 1 disc, there seems to be a need for a new for­mat. A new Xbox is still, at the very least, two years out. With no new con­sole and a for­mat that is age­ing, what is the quick fix? Enter the hard drive.

For quite some time we have been able to install games on the Xbox to the hard drive, but not until recently has it been a viable option. Forza 3 was the first game that I ever installed on my hard drive and for good rea­son. A por­tion of the cars and tracks were on a sep­a­rate disc. After installing the sec­ond disc every­thing was acces­si­ble with the first disc and adding more con­tent. Bat­tle­field 3 will have an optional install as well to pro­vide bet­ter tex­tures and faster load times. I recently picked up a copy of Rage for the 360 and it spans 3 discs; the first two for the cam­paign the third for the mul­ti­player. It too has an optional install to reduce the load times and down to one disc, albeit tak­ing up a whoop­ing 22GB. After the install the game runs beau­ti­fully. I have a 250GB hard drive and would not mind par­ti­tion­ing more of my hard drive to these types of installs if they would reduce disc swap­ping and break­ing the “experience”.

In the gam­ing indus­try the DVD is becom­ing some­what of an antiq­uity. Games are becom­ing more com­plex, being cre­ated on excit­ing new tech­nolo­gies, and with those traits require more space to avoid fur­ther decom­pres­sion and cre­at­ing an unbal­anced expe­ri­ence across plat­forms. We dis­cussed on this past week’s Gamer­Chat about Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion and if it could be the future of Microsoft’s next con­sole. Hard Dri­ves are hit­ting 2TB and are rel­a­tively cheap the only thing that could hin­der this type of for­mat is the ISP and restrict­ing band­width and down­load speeds. The Hard Drive fix can only last till the end of this gen­er­a­tion, Microsoft either part­ners with Sony and accepts the Blu-Ray for­mat, or we suf­fer at the hands of ISPs try­ing to down­load a 22GB game on wire­less con­nec­tions. I would like my game sooner than later.

I have the feel­ing a lot of my ques­tions will be answered at E3 2012 where Microsoft is rumored to give details about the 360s replace­ment. Tech­nol­ogy is ever chang­ing; in cam­eras film has been replaced by high per­form­ing mem­ory cards, hard dri­ves are hit­ting enor­mous space amounts and leav­ing mov­ing com­po­nents behind, the MP3 had left every other music for­mat in the dust. The DVDs best years are behind it, com­mer­cials are now even stat­ing “Avail­able now on Blu-Ray” instead of putting DVDs first. Sleep well sweet prince of new mil­len­nium tech­nol­ogy, you have changed so much in your short time.

September 17, 2011

More Bang for Your Microsoft Buck?

It’s no secret that Xbox Live costs the most of all con­sole net­works. Nintendo’s Wifi ser­vice is free, PlaySta­tion Net­work is free and an iden­tity thief’s wet dream, and Xbox Live costs, at best, $50 a year. Is it really that much better? Whether it’s worth it or not, I’m pay­ing. As a pay­ing cus­tomer, there are a few fea­tures I’d like to sug­gest, and almost feel inclined to claim a sort of share­holder lever­age to pitch

If only…

First off, I’d like to see adjustable stan­dard head­sets. Yes, I am aware that they are already adjustable to a large extent, but they have one major flaw for large-headed indi­vid­u­als like me. I can choose to either have the ear­piece cen­tered com­fort­ably on my ear, or have the mic close enough to my mouth to pick up things I say at a nat­ural vol­ume… not both. Is it so much to ask? Granted, I don’t know the par­tic­u­lars of all the other tech­ni­cal glitches that seem to plague Xbox Live voice chat, but this one seems like an easy fix. With the sim­ple appli­ca­tion of the same adjustable size mech­a­nism on the head­band to the microphone’s arm, my com­plaint would go away.

Next is another chat issue. Don’t mis­un­der­stand me; I love my Chat­pad– I really do. I dropped $30 on the new black one to match the rest of my all-black Elite setup. My prob­lem is that I just don’t get to use it as much as I’d like. Some­times voice chat just isn’t what I want to use, but nobody uses Win­dows Live Mes­sen­ger. Every­body I know is on Face­book Chat, if any­thing. Can’t we just accept that? Face­book is already avail­able on the dash­board, so why not imple­ment a chat medium that your friends actu­ally use? Who knows, the notion might even result in more Chat­pad sales (hint hint).

So how about it, Microsoft? Can some of the money I pay you for the priv­i­lege of play­ing your games go toward mak­ing it a bet­ter expe­ri­ence? Don’t make my go elsewhere…

How about all of you? Leave a com­ment if you have another good idea for an Xbox Live fea­ture that we’re already pay­ing for but not getting.

September 6, 2011

New site for a new day

We have been work­ing on updat­ing the site thanks to cssigniter.com. This small team from Greece has helped up develop a great future for review­ing games and bring­ing you the news. We hope that in the future you will refer friends or whomever you wish to take from these guys, years of expe­ri­ence in their designs and coding.

The lay­out themes that they pro­duce for word­press are pre­mium when it comes down to the use and ver­sa­til­ity. We sin­cerely hope the best for these guys and want to extend to our com­mu­nity the knowl­edge that these guys are “The Real McCoy”

The ser­vice with these guys was defin­i­tively the great­est expe­ri­ence I have ever had with a fel­low coder/designer. I hope for all inten­sive pur­poses that other com­pa­nies can fol­low along in their foot­steps. Even though our time dif­fer­ence made some com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers it also in some ways helped me to be deter­mined in find­ing solutions.

Their cod­ing is, dare I say, mas­ter­ful. It had me in awe for the first 4 hours or so rifling through it all. I could not believe how well writ­ten and clean it was. I was able to eas­ily take cer­tain lines and bend them to my will. It was odd how well designed the mul­ti­tude of script was han­dled in con­junc­tion with the actual pages.

I can only really say good things about these guys, they are top notch and if you are in the mood to get a great set of cus­tom themes for the price they are unmatched. There are a ton of themes avail­able across the net but of the ones I have seen, most are bland or just a fla­vor of the same thing, these are all orig­i­nal con­tent and that is what makes them worth the investment.

All in all, if you have some time to spend, some money to spend, and you want a great theme to show off your site with.… then CSSIgniter.com is the place you need to visit.

September 2, 2011

Netflix News…. None of it Good!

In a Press Release issued today Starz has announced that they have ended nego­ti­a­tions with Net­flix to renew stream­ing rights of Starz con­tent. The cur­rent agree­ment will expire Feb­ru­ary 28^th 2012 and all con­tent will be removed from Net­flix streaming.

It was rumored that nego­ti­a­tions broke down due to Starz insis­tence that Net­flix adopt tiered pric­ing even after they have already imple­mented a huge pric­ing increase sep­a­rat­ing the disc and stream­ing options of their ser­vice. This means los­ing access to Starz series like Spar­ta­cus and Camelot and also los­ing con­tent from Sony and Dis­ney of whom Starz has exclu­sive rights to. Mak­ing mat­ters worse this bomb­shell was released on the same day that the new pric­ing model kicks in for Netflix!

So how many peo­ple are think­ing about dump­ing Net­flix? In my opin­ion they had bet­ter post some seri­ous con­tent for stream­ing to jus­tify the increase if they want me to keep pay­ing! This news isn’t bod­ing well for my deci­sion into keep­ing the ser­vice either!

source: Engadget

August 26, 2011

Deus Ex: the Eyeborg Documentary

To coin­cide with the crit­i­cal suc­cess of Deus Ex: Human Rev­o­lu­tion Square Enix has called upon Rob Spence, who’s also know as Eye­borg to make a film about human aug­men­ta­tion, pros­thet­ics, and cyber­net­ics at today’s cur­rent level of technology.

Rob Spence has him­self been aug­mented with a cam­era replac­ing the eye he had lost in a shot gun acci­dent so he brings a unique per­spec­tive to the sub­ject of cur­rent human aug­men­ta­tion , com­pares it to Deus Ex: Human Rev­o­lu­tion and how far away are we from achiev­ing the level of tech dis­played in the game.

In the doc­u­men­tary he looks at the pio­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy from the lead­ing cre­ators of biotech­nol­ogy. He also talks with sev­eral peo­ple who’s lives have been changed by this bur­geon­ing field.

Check it out….

So would you want to be aug­mented or are you totally against human machine bio­me­chan­ics? Les see some feedback!!

August 24, 2011

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

In a state­ment released by Apple’s Board of Direc­tors ear­lier today they announced that Steve Jobs will be step­ping down as Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Apple effec­tive today. The exec­u­tive board then elected Jobs as Chair­man of the Board so he will still be involved in Apple to some extent. Replac­ing Steve Jobs will be Tim Cook Apple’s Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer respon­si­ble for world­wide sales and operations.

Art Levin­son, Chair­men of Genen­tech, stated on behalf of Apple’s Board:

“Steve’s extra­or­di­nary vision and lead­er­ship saved Apple and guided it to its posi­tion as the world’s most inno­v­a­tive and valu­able tech­nol­ogy com­pany. Steve has made count­less con­tri­bu­tions to Apple’s suc­cess, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely cre­ative employ­ees and world class exec­u­tive team. In his new role as Chair­man of the Board, Steve will con­tinue to serve Apple with his unique insights, cre­ativ­ity and inspiration.”

Levin­son also stated that the Board had com­plete con­fi­dence in Tim Cook and that he was the right choice to be Apple’s next CEO.

When Jobs sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion he also strongly rec­om­mended that Cook be his replace­ment as CEO in a per­sonal state­ment noted here:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expec­ta­tions as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfor­tu­nately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chair­man of the Board, direc­tor and Apple employee.

As far as my suc­ces­sor goes, I strongly rec­om­mend that we exe­cute our suc­ces­sion plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s bright­est and most inno­v­a­tive days are ahead of it. And I look for­ward to watch­ing and con­tribut­ing to its suc­cess in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work along­side you.

Steve

So what do you guys think?  Will this affect Apple’s future? Do you care or are you clutch­ing your Iphone curled in the cor­ner cry­ing why? Why? Do all the good ones have to leave?.… Haha.  I per­sonal haven’t been a fan for some time now because of the iron­clad con­trol they keep over their hard­ware and soft­ware squeez­ing out us lit­tle guys who like to tin­ker and cre­ate our own builds! Who knows maybe Apple will bring back the golden age of the Mac once again, but only time will tell!

source: engad­get