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Top 5 must-buy games for Playstation 3 from now to next month
By admin on August 19th, 2008 | No Comments

August didn’t have alot of games that interest me, except Siren: Blood Curse. But end of this month, we can expect two good games being released and at least three more next month (based on my preference of course, you might find these games boring). With all these great games coming out, for sure I will be broke in the next few months.

I will now briefly write about each one.

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice
I have never heard of the Disgaea series before, apparently its a Japanese anime style with 2d sprite characters turn base SRPG game. I’m a big fan of this type of RPG, aside from the sprites, the environments are in 3D, the special effects are amazing as well. And I’m always attracted to number games and this game definitely caught my attention with its million point damage! From the trailers, it has many different combo attacks, 100+ hours of play time (not sure if that is actually a good thing though, unless it is really that fun) and over 270 customizable characters!
Expect a review once I get my hands on this.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Ever since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I haven’t really paid attention to other first person/third person shooter game, well of course except Metal Gear Solid 4. Mercenaries 2 lets you play the main campaign with your friends. It offers a wide range of vehicles to take control and you can earn money to purchase gears as well. I’ve also checked out some trailers but I found the computer constantly calling for backup and saying the same thing over and over again which was annoying. But overall this game should be fun for those that enjoy blowing up stuff!

And coming in September:

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
One of most anticipated games this year is finally here in September. A lot of trailers have shown what the impressive Havok Physics™ system can do when Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, your character, uses the “force” on enemies or on non-living objects like boxes or even a large ship. Graphics are impressive as well and makes the gameplay even more enjoyable in combination with the physics engine and other new technologies that are introduced for the first time. Demo will be available on August 21st. I can’t wait til get my hands on this one.

LEGO Batman
Ahh need I say more? LEGO Batman. You can never get enough of LEGO, anything with LEGO is almost a instant win. LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones were/are pretty popular. There is a lot of replay value in all the LEGO games because you can unlock characters each with his/her own unique ability which will allow you to go to places you previously couldn’t. And don’t ever think the audio and graphics are childish either, they are amazing as I’ve seen from the LEGO Indiana Jones demo. I’m actually curious why the demo was released after the full version.

Silent Hill Homecoming
I’m a big fan of survival horror games like Resident Evil, Fatal Frame and Siren. I feel that every new series gets nastier and each with a more twisted storyline. If you are a fan of past Silent Hill, you should not miss this one. And this game isn’t for everyone, if you can’t handle the “sickness” and the “twistedness” from the movie, (I think I just introduced a new word there) then this game isn’t suitable for you. For those that are a fan of the deadly but sexy nurses, they are back!

I would like to hear your must-buy list!
Tomb Raider: Under World Trailer
By admin on August 18th, 2008 | No Comments

The first Tomb Raider was released in 1996 and it was a big hit for the PC. Another chapter of Lara Croft is coming in a few months, November based on Gametrailers.com. This is one of those must get games. So far with two trailers, I can see the new game offers, as you can imagine, much better graphics, somewhat Uncharted-ish since both are rather similar type of game where you explore different places, but of course Tomb Raider being the more original. But I cannot comment anymore without seeing more actual game plays.

For now please drool over a more recent trailer or check out the HD version at Gametrailers.com.
ThinkPad X301 – new notebook from Lenovo
By admin on August 18th, 2008 | No Comments

Apple came out with the Mac Book Air a while ago and it is extremely thin. Although very lightweight, thin and with a user friendly keyboard. It does not have a lot of guts inside such as no built-in Ethernet port and no built-in DVD drive to name a few. Don’t get me wrong though, I love the MBA, I would even get one if it gets cheaper and has more built-in hardware inside.

Lenovo announced its own version of thin labtop, for sure not as thin and sleek looking as the Air. But being able to carry a smaller and lighter labtop is always welcome. The ThinkPad x300 is getting a make over and will be named to x301.

The specs:
ULV Intel Core 2 Duo U9300 (1.2GHz) or U9400 (1.4GHz) processor
13.3-inch LED display
DDR3 memory
64GB solid state drive (SSD) and 128GB SSD as option
WiMAX support

It will start at $2,599 and be launched on Aug 26. I hope the SSD technology will improve to the point where it can support 500 and up GB, nowadays I don’t think even a 128GD is going to last long.

I use a Lenovo T61 at work, its not exactly the greatest looking piece of hardware, but I think it is light enough for me to carry around comfortably. Since it does not have a full keyboard, it still feels cramped (I was given a full size one though, so problem solved). I really want to get my hands on an X series and compare side by side with the T series. But unless my company starts replacing them, my dream will probably not come true unless I pay from my own wallet which will not happen either.

Check out some Lenovo ThinkPad deals on eBay

Classic 1942 turns 3D – 1942: Joint Strike demo

By admin on August 14th, 2008 | No Comments

As soon as I saw 1942: Joint Strike demo on PSN, I downloaded it immediately. 1942 was and still is one of the most addicting war plane shooter games of all time. Its simply classic. The remake is in 3D and the graphics are just so crisp and sharp. Back then when the plans blow up, it was just a simple blow up image, now the planes actually break into pieces and disappear.

In terms of game play, like I said, its just as addictive as the classic version, it also has stunning graphics. You have more ways of blowing up your enemies now. You have this new shooting mode where you hold the shoot button, it will fire a stronger shot like from the yet another classic plane shooter called R-Type in addition to the classic shooting mode but I didn’t find that new mode effective. Aside from normal shooting, you will have the bombs that will basically wipe out anything on the screen. Missiles is also another new weapon where, if I remember correctly, you get to use them by shooting down enemies. And finally, instead of getting killed in one shot, this version of 1942 features a life bar instead, life bars are nothing new to plane shooters but its a nice addition.

The demo features one quick level, as you can guess, there will be a boss at the end of the level. The memories of playing the classic version just came back to me when I had to dodge all over the place just to not get hit by the many bullets just fly towards you. It was amazingly fun!

I highly recommend this game for those that find plane shooters addictive. With better graphics and game play, 1942: Joint Strike is worth every $9.99USD/CAD that you are going to pay for! I might even get the full version later.

If you want to look for a copy of the original 1942 on NES, I’ve found some on eBay.

Incoming search terms:

Web 2.0 Style Data Visualizer – Widgenie

By admin on August 12th, 2008 | No Comments

I recently received an email from an employee from a business intelligence company called LogiXML. She asked if I could write a review for LogiXML’s new SaaS (software as a service) product which is currently in beta, called ,Widgenie. I thought it would be interesting to check out something new and it was also the first time someone asked me to write a review on something since the start of this blog 20-something days ago, so it really meant a lot to me and its my honor to write this review.

First thing I noticed when I looked at the site, my impression was that its a very nice web 2.0 feel website with the use very vibrant colors, clean and organized layout. Page loading was quick for me, even for the movies in the multimedia section. I sort of have an idea of the product so I quickly signed up, the process was quick as well. I received a confirmation within a minute, once my account was activated, I logged in right away to give it a test drive.

The interface is extremely easy to use I am sure anyone that knows how to surf the internet can use it right off the bat. You just have to follow the steps and you can create your own widget in no time. Keep in mind though these widgets are good for display statistics by uploading your own Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets and/or CSV files. Once you have uploaded one or some of your own data files, you can create 6 different widgets such as tabular, animated line chart, animated bar chart, animated area chart, animated pie chart and text cloud widget. Hope there will be more to choose from in the future. Once you have picked a widget type, the next step is interactive drag and drop your elements from your data files into say for example, the y axis or the x axis of an animated bar chart. The program gives you control over which element goes into which field.

Again the whole process is intuitive and I won’t go further into how to setup a widget.

Once you are done customizing your widget, you can then publish it by choosing from the 5 given types:

embedding into your site directly, like I have here

as a simple link

embed into iGoogle

embed into Facebook

or embed into Blogger

And finally here is my test widget end product:

Finally, the Widgenie also provides statistics of how many views, number of unique visitors and from what sites which is a very good addition to tracking which of your widgets people are mostly interested in.

I’m sure I havn’t covered every aspect of Widgenie but this should give you an idea of what it is capable of, I think this program is particularly useful for people that deals with a lot of statistical data, such as number of visitors, number of site views and the time spent on the site etc. Instead of looking at boring text and numbers on an Excel spreadsheet, Widgenie will display them in a more interactive and engaging way.