Category: Computer

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Microsoft Hedging Its Bets With Oculus Rift!

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It is clear Microsoft is unsure about the possibilities of true virtual reality gaming.  On one hand VR has been dreamed of for years as the ultimate immersive gaming experience, and on the other hand everything that has come out up to now has been pretty gimmicky.  Sony is all in with Project Morpheus as is Valve with Vive, but Microsoft’s approach has been wait and see.  Their headset HoloLens is augmented reality not virtual reality, so announcing a partnership with Oculus Rift makes a lot of sense.  It means they get to do nothing while appearing to be in the game.

Facebook will get a major partner, and Microsoft will be able to say, “hey we got a VR headset too!”  True the integration is just streaming of current Xbox games, so they will still be 2D, but just on what seems to be a massive screen.  It will be a nice option if you pick up an Oculus Rift and have an Xbox One, and if it becomes super popular they can always further the integration and start to develop games specifically for it.

It looks like 1.6% stake Microsoft bought of Facebook is paying off.  It got them on Facebook’s board, and it lets them play with Facebook’s toys.  Still if VR takes off it looks like Sony is the best setup to take advantage since everyone with a PS4 has compatible hardware.  Vive and Oculus Rift have some pretty steep computer requirements spec wise, so only the hardcore end of the computer gaming population will be able to run them.  Though if Microsoft makes the Oculus Rift work natively with Xbox One that could level the playing field a bit.

The VR game is shaping up to be an interesting fight.  It has a lot of major players involved, but there still hasn’t been a proven demand for the product.  This is one of those fights that no matter who wins, everyone looses.  Which given Microsoft’s limited investment would probably be alright with them.

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Shmee Plays With A Dirty Bomb!

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Splash Damage, the creators of one of the classic multiplayer games Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, has been looking for its next big hit for what seems like forever.  Quake Wars was fun, but it never ran quite right and it was a little too big if that is possible.  Brink was flat out broken even if it did introduce free running to multiplayer games, but because Enemy Territory was so good I decided to give their new free-to-play game Dirty Bomb a chance.  Splash Damage may have their next hit on their hands.

Dirty Bomb is set in future London after a bomb has gone off, but don’t let that grim scenario throw you.  This is a pretty whimsical game.  You play as a mercenary carrying out missions for random corporations scavenging old London for the treasures people left behind.  In practice this means you are going to shoot people in front of you, but also do your best to work with your team to complete objectives, or conversely try and stop people from completing their objectives.  Kind of like every other Splash Damage game.

You will also pick a character class like a medic, mechanic, sniper, and so on.  This is were Splash Damage wants to make its money.  Everyone will get two characters from the start.  A basic soldier and a medic.  They will also give you free limited time mercenaries to play with as well.  You can either play Dirty Bomb a lot (I mean a lot), and unlock all the mercs, or you can just pay a little real world cash to save yourself some time.  You can also buy cases which give your mercs different gear.  You don’t know what each case contains, so you may be buying the same loadout you have got three times before for that character you never play, but it is fun, and they are reasonably cheap, so you don’t have to play a lot to unlock them, or, you know, really buy them.

That being said, I never felt limited by not paying any money.  I was able to hold my own with the mercenaries available, and the cases that I had unlocked by just playing a few rounds.  So while Dirty Bomb is free-to-play it definitely is not pay-to-win.  I do wish that instead of waiting for the free mercs to rotate that you could play them once for free to see if they are worth paying for.  Though that is just me being impatient.

Dirty Bomb is really just a prettier version of Enemy Territory with a more light hearted feel, but honestly that should be a selling point.  It runs on the Unreal 3 engine, so you don’t need a monster rig to play it, and the entry price is right.  It is not a giant leap for first person shooters, but it is fun, free, and runs well on a lot of computers, so what I am saying is that you should give it a try.

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Things We Learned From The Fallout 4 Trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE2BkLqMef4

The Fallout 4 trailer (as seen above) launched yesterday, and that is all that video game nerds like myself could talk about.  It was a pretty good trailer, though nothing too interesting happens in it.  They are not ready to give away everything yet, but it does give us a few hints about the game:

1: The game takes place in Boston.  I still think this is an uninspired choice, but it is fine.  There are a lot of good landmarks that will be fun to see decaying, and it will give greater tie-in to Fallout 3 (Washington D.C.).

2: The dog is back.  I hope he lives longer than ten minutes this time around.

3: It looks like they are going to go more in to the back story of the nuclear war that put people in the Vaults in the first place.  That should be interesting!

4:  You are from Vault 111 this time around.  I wonder what sort of terrible things Vault-Tec did to those poor saps.

5:  It looks like there may be some color this time around.  It was nice to see something other than gray, brown, and tan in a Fallout game.  I hope that continues.  Color in a Fallout game would be a welcome change.

6:  Home base might be more than just a place to store your stuff.  They showed some power armor up on a tool bench.  Maybe the home shop will be a place for some serious customization?

7:  Did the main character talk?  That would be a first for any Bethesda game let alone a Fallout game.  That would be quite the change.  You never know, the guy at the end may have just been a side character, but I doubt it!

Anything you noticed about the trailer that you think we should all know about?  Please let us know!

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Windows 10 Preview Update!!!

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Microsoft has unveiled the launch date of its new operating system Windows 10: July 29th 2015.  For desktops and laptops that is.  They have yet to give us the date for phone, Xbox One, or their other devices such as HoloLens and Surface Hub.  I am sure they will let us know soon.  As for the computer and the phone, I have been using them awhile, and I thought I would let you know what to expect!

For computers Windows 10 is pretty much a streamlined Windows 8.  It has a better Start Menu and Notification Center.  The settings are finally all in one place, and they are launching a new browser Edge.  It is really the Windows 8 we wanted the first time around, so it seems Microsoft is sticking with the every other version of Windows is the one to get.  The last couple of updates to Windows 10 have been pretty much bug fixes, and it is running a lot better.  If we get a couple of more updates like this Windows will have no trouble hitting their July 29th launch date.

Windows 10 is also including a few fun features as well.  There is now an Xbox App that works a little like Steam allowing you to buy games from a store, chat with your Xbox Live friends, control your Xbox One, and also stream Xbox One games to your PC to free up your TV for your significant other.  The last feature is the one I can’t wait for!  Windows 10 will also see the launch of DirectX 12.  Apparently this upgrade to the massively popular API stack can increase performance in games by as much as 20%-50%, and even more if you got a lot of cores in your CPU.  We will see, but since I have an eight core processor, I really hope so.

On the phone side, things are not as cheery.  Windows 10 Mobile is slow and crashes a lot.  I am hoping that with the PC version only two months away from completion we will start to see some updates to the poor mobile builds.  You can see what they are going for, and things are laid out better.  The Mail, Office, and other apps are way more useful.  Having the phone store merged with the computer store should help out the app selection as well.  Until there are a few more updates however, I would stay far away from the Windows 10 Mobile test.

As for the Xbox One, I am in the preview program, but there is not a lot to write home about, and they haven’t started the Windows 10 preview.  There have been rumors that the Windows 10 test for that platform will launch after it is talked about at E3 this month.  Here is hoping.  I don’t know what we will see for Windows 10 on the Xbox One, but again the unified store should be cool.  I would think they are going to do something soon because they are going to want to have Windows 10 on the Xbox One before Christmas buying season.

There you go.  Windows 10 on the computer, good!  Windows 10 on the phone, bad (for now)!  I will be back in a couple of months with my full review of the PC version of the OS, and I hope that I will have better things to say about the mobile version as well.  Until then be sure and reserve your free copy of Windows 10 for computers (if you have Windows 8 or 7) by clicking on the new Windows icon in your task bar!

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Exploring The Broken Age! (Part 2 Update)

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I am not going to go over the first part of the Broken Age, but you can read my thoughts here.

I loved Broken Age part one by Tim Schafer and Double Fine games, and for the most part I love part 2, but it lacks a little something from the first half.  That little something is discovery.  There are only a couple of new areas in the second half of Broken Age, and they come towards the end of the game.  Discovering the beautiful areas Tim and his team thought up were a lot of what I enjoyed in the first part, so going back over the same areas wasn’t exciting.  This may have been less disappointing had I waited to play the whole game once it was finished instead of playing the first half so long ago.

That doesn’t mean I think the game is a bad.  Far from it.  People wanting challenging puzzles should be happy, they upped the puzzle count a lot, and none of them are as obvious as the puzzles in the first half, so you really have to think things through and go back over all the areas to find what you missed.  I know this made a lot of people angry, but it is an adventure game so what were they expecting?

Also the wonderful characters are still here, and it is great to see Vela and Shay try and save the people they love while continuing their coming of age tale.  Story telling really is the strength of adventure games, and Tim Schafer doesn’t waste this opportunity.  The story feels a little rushed at the end, but everything leading up to the conclusion is wonderful.

Games like Broken Age are why I love Double Fine studios so much.  They create games from the heart that tell great stories that charm and delight.  You may never get your action game fix from them, but you will get something unique and thought provoking, so I think you should give Broken Age a shot.  It is going to be out on pretty much every major platform (except Xbox), so there is no reason not to give it a try.  Well unless you hate adventure games.