Infinite Success!!!

“Are you afraid of god?”

“No, But I am afraid of you”

That is the opening line to BioShock and immediately you find yourself in a boat, much like in the original and your make your way towards a lighthouse, now really you have no reason to like Booker, he is not very interesting, however when you make your “ascension” to Columbia, the beautiful city in the sky, there is something about the game, I can’t quite figure it out but once I started I didn’t stop for a good 4 hours and even then I wanted to keep going until the credits rolled. The game had me hooked, I knew I was in for something special.

The first thing I noticed and I am sure you will too, are the visuals. The floating masterpiece in the sky is just amazing, although both were set in completely different setting, you almost feel like you have started Bio 1 and just want to see more, although less confined…

Now unlike “Rapture”, you are not coming across a world that has already had its revolution. Columbia’s revolution is still simmering and Booker (you) visits just in time to see things fall out of the sky, literally.

Once again the graphics are no Final Fantasy, but the quality of a game doesn’t have to be locked to its graphics engine and visuals can shine through regardless.

Columbia is a living, breathing city and the music and sound of the world really draw you into the experience. I never experienced any moments in which I felt that the music or sound design for the game was out of touch. I found myself embraced by the music and sound effects and these helped to greatly lock in my emotional connection to the characters and the world.

Now the next thing might scare you a bit, I did for me, but this game is a companion game and if you look at other games of the same type they are often a disaster, which are faulted with the AI in the way or you end up protecting them.

Well fear no more, Infinite changes all of that and even goes as far as the AI even protects you. Your companion protects you, she throws you items, health and even sometimes money, she doesn’t annoy you by getting in your way sometimes she even goes and does her own thing and brings back allies to help you fight and you can even use her for a little bit of cover, what more could you want from a girl?

BioShock Infinite does not have the eerie vibe that the original BioShock pushed for most of the game, though near the end had a few scenarios that gave me some chills and one particular time that got a jump out of me. The Handymen attempt to take the place of the Big Daddies as the really tough enemies, but as they do not play an important role in the story offering that looming feeling of dread, and don’t show up that often, they fail to make a significant impression other than being a tough enemy to fight.

While Bioshock Infinite is riding on the coattails of the wonderful BioShock, it never feels like a rehashed version of an old success. Bioshock Infinite can comfortably stand alone on its city in the sky. There are no iconic sub-characters/enemies such as the Big Daddies or Little Sisters, but the game takes a much sharper focus on the main characters’ personalities, development and emotional ties, rather than using a silent character and having the story be in the world and environment. This plays out extremely well and gives us one of the best game finales this generation, if not of all time. People will be talking about this one for a long time to come.

BioShock Infinite is a game that has received a lot of hype. I have to admit I went into the game to try and find a flaw, I wanted to find the error, some mistake that would make me put down the controller, but I couldn’t, the errors are so minor you don’t notice them, to be truthfully honest BioShock Infinite is as perfect of a game I have ever seen, not one that should be missed!!

Charge at the Heart

A wire free life, OK I know I go on about it all the time, if look at my previous blog posts like the MYO band and the magic watch you will see my fascination with it, but really, it is the future.

So what am I on about today then? Well, this technology has actually been out for a while, Nokia being the frontrunners in the introducing the technology, but to be fair Nokia hasn’t really got the biggest market so it was about time that somebody else took it upon themselves to create a universal wireless charger.

Let me introduce you to the heart…

 

Created by PowerKiss, a company founded in 2008 in Helsinki, Finland. It aims to make charging easy, simple, convenient and of course universal. at the moment the company provides wireless charging for mobiles and mps players, but it soon hopes to provide charging for laptop and other electrical devices. So let’s take a quick look at the genius technology behind the Heart…

The technology

Now according to their site PowerKiss functions on induction charging and allows us to put the power source inside a bit of furniture, like a table at McDonalds, thus allowing you to charge your handsets without any wires connected to your device.

The source of this power or the transmitter is called “PowerKiss Heart” and when integrated with the furniture, it turns it into a wireless charging platform. When you turn on the Heart, it creates a specific electromagnetic field. Oh it is advised that you don’t connect it to a metal surface, it might go bang so to speak.

The PowerKiss have to be plugged into a power outlet in order to be powered; the max power consumed by the transmitter while charging a device is 12W. When the Heart is activated and in standby mode, it consumes 240mW.

How to use the technology

In order to charge your device via a PowerKiss Hotspot, you will need a receiver – the so-called PowerKiss Ring. Attach it to your handset and place the ring on the place where the special marker indicates a PowerKiss Hotspot and the wireless charging will start automatically – yes, it is that easy. oh and you get to choose different colours…

 Where and How much?

The PowerKiss app on your smartphone is the main source of information about where you can find a PowerKiss hotspot. There is none in Ireland at the minute, but McDonalds Europe is planning to have them in all of their stores in the next three years, so fingers crossed. The list of manufacturers whose devices are supported by the technology include: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sony, LG, BlackBerry, Apple, HTC and a lot more.

You can buy the PowerKiss products directly through the company on their website. The Ring is the standard accessory and comes in two variants – supporting micro USB or the charging port of the Apple devices and its price is 19.90 euro. The Heart PRO Integrated comes with EU, UK or US plug. It is fully integrated and has to be installed by a professional and can be got for 235 euro.

JMK

Cell – ebration!!!

 

This week, 3rd of April to be precise, forty years ago, the first mobile telephone conversation took place.I was actually rather shocked about this and as I write this article I am looking at the quality piece of kit I now own. Well its smashed to pieces, but my life would be lost without it. To me the mobile phone only seems like a late 80′s sort of invention, but hey I don’t know everything. So I did some further research into the matter.

In 1973, the often called “Father” of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper, placed a call from his 9 inch, 2.5 pounds, 1 line LED text display, motorola DynaTAC device, which cost a mega 4000 dollars and it didn’t even have a camera…

The first mobile phone conversation took place on the streets of New York City where he phoned his rival at Bell Labs and reportedly said “I’m ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end.” I’d say that was said in a rather cheeky manner, even though it didn’t last very long, with only a 20  minute battery and a crazy 6 hours charging time..

I ask myself, did Mr Cooper, who has changed the lives of everyone (with no exception) , expect this revolutionary invention to take off and forever change how we communicate.

I then found this really cool infographic thing. The folks at Column Five have partnered with Mashable to research and design, a timeline of pivotal moments in cellphone history.

 But please do tell me, Do you remember your first Mobile? What was it? Where do you think mobile technology is heading? Share your memories and insight in the comments below.

James Knight

A Survivor is Born…

If there is one thing I enjoy most about writing gaming blogs, it is the fact that I get to play games as part of  my college work. I believe a job in IGN is what I’d like, even if my journalistic skills are not the best. However, I enjoy writing them and even more so when I get to write about my favourites.

I am a student, which means I am poor, but I tried to resist the temptation of purchasing this for as long as I could, but I soon gave in.

Tomb Raider first appeared to us in 1996, as a busty heroine with deadly skills, but times changed and other games, “Unchartered” stole Lara Croft’s thunder a bit. That so called final installment of the “trilogy” wasn’t anything really to shout about. Its slow game-play, uninteresting story and puzzles annoyed rather than challenged you, and didn’t do the franchise any credit.

So now for a bit of good news, it appears that publishers Square Enix, who took over from Eidos Interactive in 2010, have given creators Crystal Dynamics a good kick up the backside, to create a game that is worthy to be called Tomb Raider.

So what exactly is different? Well for a start, Lara herself has most notably changed with her cup size. Previous TR games over-exaggerated her cup size and made what Lara actually did, seem impossible with her top heavy load, so to disappoint many male viewers they now look realistically rendered. I have to say all the characters in the game look similarly real and the same goes for the amazing environment that they are portrayed in. We also say goodbye to Keeley Hawes as the voice of Lara and welcome in Camilla Luddington who gives Lara a younger, more innocent tone.

What else? The game is still very linear, you can go and explore any hidden mysteries, but in the end there is only one way you can go. The game is starting to move with the times and the platform type of game we were used to has evolved to an action adventure type more in common with the Unchartered series. Of course, the puzzle solving is still one of the most important aspects of the game, but unlike previous installments, they are not frustratingly difficult.

The game has an amazing story which takes us back to Lara’s youth and you learn about how she became that deadly heroine we came to love. The ship she is traveling on sinks and Lara finds herself on an island full of basically religious nuts who want to kill her and the rest of the crew. She is an innocent girl at the beginning, scared and not sure what to do. However, it does take a while for you to get your first piece of action and ultimately her first kill but when it does finally come you are not disappointed. You see that our innocent Lara has to grow up and become the killing machine we know she is. What adds to the story is the fantastic animations that catch you almost off guard during the game. You become lost as she is holding on for dear life and you forget that you need to be button bashing in order to survive.

The game holds an 18’s certificate, due to the gruesome fights and times where you can almost feel her pain, which again is a change from previous installments.

The franchise has changed with this new release, without doubt. I think it has changed for the better, but the question is, do you?

JMK

XCOM for iOS

Okay there are two things in this life I love, thats my apple products and XCOM enemy unknown, I wont let the missus hear me say that, but anyway they are my two favourite things. So when 2K games announced that XCOM is coming to the iPhone/ipad , well let’s just say it was a great day for the parish.

For people who don’t know what XCOM is, you are not my friend if you don’t. Well its a turn based stratigie game were you have to protect the world from the impending threat of an alien invasion, you must create a team of highly experienced troops from around the world and defend the planet, obviously there is a lot more it than just this but you get the idea.

Yesterday it was announced that the game with provide gamers with the FULL XCOM experience!! I know its cool right. I know many games have made the switch to the iOS platform but not to great effect, we saw last year Civilisation Revolution make the transition to iOS with not much succes , so the fact this is to provide the full experience it is pretty impressive.

I took a look at a little video I found, I found, apart from little graphical losses, the game was the same, it was amazing.  According to 2K, the creators, the hard work isn’t the power of the hardware you need but the file size that is needed. The PC version eats around 20GB of space on the hard drive, which obviously isn’t possible on a tablet let alone a phone. So even though the video looks impressive there just has to be some loss of quality somewhere.

But for the moment I am not going to worry about that, now 2K hasn’t announced how much the port should cost, I will expect it will cost around the 8.99 euro mark, but it will be well worth it.

Troops attack!!!

James Knight

SimCity Disaster

“I’m happy to report that the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us.”

The Best words I have heard in a long time. I am of course referring to the problems Maxis has been experiencing with its new SimCity game.

So what exactly was the problem, basically in stupid English the servers crashed and caused too many people logged on at once, which is more than they expected. I say stupid, they say “Dumb” actual words from Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw. I think a reason for this was because of the not so successful previous game SimCity Societies and the fact it was only line play. Kind of makes me hope that Elder Scrolls online doesn’t crash either, that would be horrible :O
Okay so what now? Well a blog release on their website yesterday told us that..

“players have been able to connect to their cities in the game for nearly 8 million hours of gameplay time and we’ve reduced game crashes by 92% from day one. A combination of optimizing our server architecture and response times, deploying these enhancements on both a series of new and the original servers and issuing a few critical client updates has achieved getting virtually everyone into the game and, once in, having a great time building cities and sharing regions.”

She noted that she had hoped that all would be sorted on the  night of the 9th but that they need a few more days to have everything all  sorted, I feel sorry for them, maybe because I am a huge fan of the series, but also their apology was so heart felt and made me want to give her a big hug, Sad I know.

Another thing that made me go awwwh, was there apology included a free game, I know right.

“and to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio.  On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.”

So I am still in love with Maxis the question is are you? and is this little blip going to stop from buying it? let me know, actually if you have anything bad to say just don’t bother, I can moderate the comments.

JMK

Playstation What????

I realise that I am coming in a bit late writing about the Playstaion 4, but to be honest, I was waiting for more information to come out and a least a picture. but no, Song are keeping it as a surprise or more than likely, as we have seen in reports recently, many people in Sony don’t even know what it looks like.

This then begs the question as why they launched the console without a picture or even a proper release date. My thought on this matter takes us back to November 5th 2005 and the release of the Xbox 360 or as I like to think of it, A smack in the spuds for Sony. Microsoft caught Sony by surprise and took nearly a full year for Sony to respond with the Playstaion 3. This really did hurt Sony and although it made a good comeback, a year was a long time to be behind, so back to 2013 and Sony were not going to let that happen again. there launch actually caught everyone, especially Microsoft, we were all expecting the launch in and around the time of E3 ,which is when the Xbox are going to announce, but Sony pushed it forward without pictures or prices to give them the head start.

Good idea or not?? Well I personally think it didn’t do anything wrong, yes there were no pictures, price or release date, but we were given 2 hours of new games, new social aspect of the console and what we can expect. So why people are complaining is beyond me.

So far Sony has given Microsoft a lot to think about but with E3 getting ever closer it will be interesting to see what Sony give us this coming summer.

JMK

4 Pictures, 2 Words….. NO LIFE

By far the most highly addictive game in the world, a game that has basically taken away my social life, destroyed my college work and has left me sleep deprived and wanting to smash my phone into a million pieces.

What am I am talking about? What is this game? Well let me introduce to you 4 Pics, 1 Word.
A simple game, yet highly addictive, that gives you four pictures that are in someway linked together, you are given 12 letters which you must put together to create the word. You are given some help with the ability to reveal letters and remove letters, you can only do this with coins which you get from completing a level. Simple.
Well, maybe not so simple. I found myself in my first sitting of the game getting through 27 pictures in about half an hour. I sent 3 of them to one of my friends to solve for me, I even resorted to using Google. I finally put the game down after my urge to throw the iPhone out the window got rather worrying.c

Two weeks later, struggling relationship and failing college life I find myself on level 330 and waiting desperately for the update to come around. This is a huge hint to game creators LOTUM GmbH to get their rears into gear.

This app is a must have and is one that you just cannot put down. You tell yourself just one more level in which you end up doing ten. Which then leads to the problem of when your are stuck and it is not possible to leave down your phone until you complete it.

Overall the app is amazing, LOTUM GmbH take a simple idea and create this masterpiece. It is available for free on the app store and the play store. Be careful though, or you could end up like me!!

The Magic Watch

Okay well it is not really magic, but the idea of it has filled my dreams since I was a little boy. The idea of being able to control a device from your wrist is mesmerising. I must have watched the video a million times, I think I am more excited about this than the Playstation 4! Which is saying something. Now I am not saying that this device is going to replace the phone but everything has to start somewhere.
But all I can say is this thing is amazing!! I have actually emailed them several times to see find out when they are shipping to Ireland. The watch is created by a small group called kick-starts, who created a device for blackberry from used mobile phone parts, after this they received endless requests from people about when the watch will be iPhone compatible.
Fast forward a few years and a few million dollars, 10 million to be precise, and you have Pebble.
What is it I hear you ask? Well it’s a watch, but let me get the fancy jargon out of the way first, It has a built in Accelerometer, an ARM Processor, Bluetooth 4.0, WaterProof to 5ATM, a Magnometer, a vibrating motor, and a really kick ass E-Paper display that just looks fantastic.  But enough of that, to me it is a magical device that saves me a few seconds each time my phone vibrates, which is pretty awesome.
It is of course a fully working watch that can tell the time, be a stop watch, alarm, things you would expect a watch to do, but this little beauty also connects to your iPhone or Android phone via Bluetooth and can display Caller ID, text messages, E-mails, Twitter and any other types of alerts your phone can send out.  Which is, if I may say so myself  bloody cool!! Imagine being able to read a txt on your watch and then deciding if you want to fish your phone out of your pocket to respond.  Better yet, if you get a phone call you can view the caller id and then you can decide if you want to answer it, end a call, all without touching your phone.
It just keeps getting better, For those people, with loads of disposable income unlike myself and can afford really cool docking station for your phone, another cool feature is the ability to control your iTunes music from the watch itself.  You can simply press play, pause and skip between songs and it gives you the name of the song, the artist and the album. Seriously I want one now.
There are a few things that need to be ironed out but hey its only 1.o software and with all 1.0 software there are problems, like Rome wasn’t built in a day!!

Temple Run – Review

App Store fads come and go, and I think it’s safe to say that the endless runner has been on its way out for a while now.  But a brand new endless runner by Imangi Studios, has captivated my for the past year or so.

Now Temple run isn’t new in employing that age old tactic of just automatic running and swiping either left or right, but it does add a delightful sense of urgency to the game. You never quite know what will be around the next corner  until it’s about to smack you in the face.

Corners are something you see a lot of in Temple Run. The game eschews the more traditional one button jumping control of most runners for a swiping method that still allows for one-handed play . You can swipe up to jump, down to slide, and left or right to turn. This control setup is risky,  it’s much easier to mess up a swipe than a tap, but I have to say it works. Though the world is randomly generated, the addition of twists, turns and crossroads makes it feel more organic, like more of an adventure.

Think of it like an Indiana Jones movie, you control an explorer who has just “borrowed” an ancient idol. The bad monkey things wake up and chase you down. You have to run across ancient ruins, duck under huge trees and jump over fire statues. One slip and you can could an early dinner for the guardians. It’s a magnificent chase scene with will never end basically.

Oh I forgot to mention that while you’re dodging death, you can tilt your device gently to collect coins that appear on either side of the path. You’ll collect hundreds each time you set out for a run, and they actually go to a good cause: powerups. There are four powerups to unlock, and each one adds something fun to the game like invisibility or bonus coins. They can each be upgraded to become stronger or more valuable. You can also purchase a resurrection item that you trigger by double tapping on the screen. Once you do, it will save you from your next death.

I have a link to the app store for you, but I’d say you have already played it.

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/temple-run/id420009108?mt=8