M.A.G Review

M.A.G is an upcoming PS3  exclusive which is expected to arrive January 26, 2010.  Now despite how the game is yet to be released I did happen to get in on the beta which is highly impressive. MAG is going to be the first game oMAGf its kind (that I know of) which falls into the genre of MMOFPS (massively multilayer on-line first person shooter).

So typically the MMO genre applies to PC games such as World of Warcraft, and Aion. With lots and lots of people (pretty sure WoW is up to about 10 million as of Jan 22,2008). MAG on the other hand is a 256 person on-line game which is extremely high for a normal console FPS.

According to developers the game dose not contain any soundtrack to produce any of the battle noises. All of the noises are said to be made by the surrounding battles and so all of the noises you hear in the game are user created. Along with the amazing idea with the sound the graphics were not sub par and the game played EXTREMELY smooth and despite the not so great Playstation Network there was no lag in the times that I played. The game modes that were in the beta seemed to resemble those of typical first person shooters aka team deathmatch capture and hold and attack and defend.  The game uses an RPG style when leveling such as you earn skill points when levels are gained to add to your character to make him more proficient in something or unlock new weapons. All of the weapons have additions that can be added to them such as stocks, silencers and sights. And finally the thing that appealed to me the most which is something actually very petty is the control scheme. MAG uses a very simple control scheme that is very very generic for an FPS. This is good because its almost  as if you have played an FPS before you can just pick this game up and play, no learning controls or anything ; all is kept very simple.

MAG comes out on January 26, 2010 in North America and is an exclusive for the Playstation 3

Borderlands Review

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Borderlands is an FPSRPG (First person shooter role playing game) which focuses a characters story in quest for the “vault’. First off the character selection in the game is between four different characters or more accurately described as classes. You can choose to be Mordecai a “hunter” who is proclaimed to be proficient in snipers and revolvers; Roland the “soldier” class who is proficient in assault rifles and shotguns;  Brick whom is the “tank” class and is proficent with explosives; and finially Lilith who is pretty much the mage class. Now as all the characters have proclaimed proficiency’s any character can use any gun and become proficient with it.

This game is made by Gearbox who actually made a specific engine to generate guns. This makes the estimated number of 17750000 possible guns actually, well, possible.  The text in which the guns are written in are all colored designating rarity; such as in order from very common to very rare white, blue, purple, yellow, orange, dark orange. Guns can also have different elemental effects added onto them such as explosive, fire, corrosive,and electrical. All of the elemental effects have added benefits against certain enemies (fire burning flesh, shock destroying shields, corrosive against armor,and explosive  is kind of self explanatory)

So now for my personal review. I am currently on my first play through with Mordecai (lvl21) and so far I love the game. The graphics look beautiful and the style used was somewhat original which made it all the better.  The game uses a leveling system much like most RPG’s you kill things you get  exp, you do quests you get exp every level you ding it takes more exp to hit the next level along with adding to your total health. The game is said to have a level 50 cap which I was skeptical about at first seeming low and worrieng about hitting the cap before reaching the end of the game coughfallout3. This is totally prevented by  Gearbox making it so you have to play through the whole game then having to do a second play though to actually hit 50 (aka adding replay value). Everything in this game looks and works perfect and well is just fantastic. Now for the down sides. In the game you can get one just one vehicle with two different weapon attachment options (rockets and machine gun).You can use a lock on feature for both and the machine gun is terrible in every way. I found this to be kind of lame do the the ridiculous amounts of guns that are in the game that no one person can possess they could have added one or two more different types of vehicles. The driving mechanics are awful enough said. And although we have not totally tested this out yet I seem to not be able to get critical hits on targets really far away(not necessarily a bad thing but just annoying).

Over all the game is amazing easily a 9 out of 10. The expansion “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned” is due to be out very son and will cost about $10.  Game is amazing and would recommend 110%

It is available on all systems (PS3, Xbox360, And PC) and is rated M for mature.

Dell Mini 10v Unboxing

Specs

  • Intel Atom processor N280, 1.66GHz 667Mhz, 512K L2 Cache
  • 1GB DDR2 SDRAM,1 DIMM
  • 10.1 Inch Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
  • Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
  • 120GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • Windows XP Home Edition SP3
  • Dell Wireless 1510 802.11n Half Mini Card
  • Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
  • 24WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (3-cell)

Google Chrome OS

Google recently unveiled that they are currently developing a eventually open-source operating system to run on netbooks to regular PCs. The OS will first be implemented with netbooks then expanded to PCs and possibly other devices in the near future. Google as also stated that this project has no affiliation with the Google Android project. Not many details about Chrome OS have been release except that it runs off a Linux kernel it incorporates custom window manager system and a “security layer” built into the OS. Google has partnered up with several different companies throughout the industry including Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments. Which means Chrome OS will not only run on x86 but ARM processors as well. Since it is believed to be a Web OS because of the mention of developing new applications with Web technologies. So it its believed to basically be a sort of Cloud Computing OS. But we will wait to see what the future has to unfold for the future of this project in the second half of 2010.

Firefox 3.5 Officially Available for Download

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Firefox 3.5 is now released to the public and available for download. Get or Upgrade Firefox.

Awesome new features…

  • Firefox 3.5 is available in more than 70 languages – get your local version.
  • Tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode, and the ability to go back in time and Clear Recent History.
  • Firefox 3.5 has support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.
  • The browser features faster performance on complex websites thanks to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
  • Users can enjoy Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
  • Web developers can make use of native JSON parsing, and web worker threads.
  • This release includes improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
  • Firefox 3.5 supports new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.