It’s been a bit of a slow week for us techies. The biggest thing this week was the New Android Announcement, but some smaller things have seemed to fly under the radar. Thankfully, we picked them up and put them together in one place for you to read:
Lenovo’s new phone can beam a touch screen onto any surface
Remember that joke video that went around a few years back about the iPhone with the projector keyboard? Well now it’s a reality. Dubbed “Smart Cast”, the phone can project anything onto a flat surface, and use the projection for input. It’s just a demo, but we hope Lenovo announced more in the future about when we can get our hands on this.
Fifa 16 to include women
It’s been a long time coming. Fifa 16 will finally let you play in womens teams. EA claim to have built the models from scratch, instead of just putting a women’s face on the male models. Only 12 team are playable, the international USA, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Sweden teams. It’s a small step, but it’s only the first.
Journalist crashes unreleased Chevy Camaro
This makes us feel bad for laughing, but a journalist in the U.S. was given the opportunity to test drive the unreleased Chevrolet Camaro, he obliged and then proceeded to crash it into a wall. There’s not much else to say about this one. Just watch the video.
Man gets fined for using his Apple Watch while driving
It was only a matter of time, a man has been fined for using his watch to skip a song on his phone while driving. Jeffrey Macesin was pulled over by cops who gave him a $120 dollar fine and four points on his license. He was skipping a song on his phone that was connected to the stereo. “It’s not so much handheld. It’s a watch,” argues Macesin, who is contesting the fine. As if the watch wasn’t expensive enough.
Assassin’s Creed Unity was a bit of a jumble during the hands-on time I had with the game over the weekend. As a huge fan of the series, I hoped that Unity would be a leap forward over last year’s spectacular Black Flag, but when I put the controller down, I was left quite worried as to how the final product would turn out. The game had performance issues, the gameplay was tweaked in ways that moved it away from the core series and the environment felt all too familiar to earlier games in the series.
The game is set in the midst of the French Revolution in the late 1700s. While this is a new era for the series to explore, running across rooftops and cathedrals gave me a strong sense of déjà vu, harkening me back to two previous Assassin’s Creed games that were set in Italy. It felt like if you had told me that I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2 with better graphics, I would’ve believed you without question. Black Flag showed that a different setting and environment is just what the series needed as a breath of life, but it feels like Ubisoft is regressing right back to its comfort zone.
The same rooftops with the same stacked boxes to climb on littered the city and nothing was able to distinguish Unity as its own game.
With that said, being able to go inside buildings and huge halls certainly felt new, previous games have had indoor sections, but not nearly to the same extent as Unity.
The gameplay obviously had to be tweaked in order to accommodate this new element; and that’s where a cover system comes into play. Being able to hide behind any object is a great idea that accommodates the small spaces, but it changes the way Assassin’s Creed is normally played. Running across rooftops and assassinating unwitting guards has been an AC staple for literally 7 years now, and it’s instantly familiar, but taking cover and dashing between statues felt out of place and a bit jarring for me, as the series has always been about having many options and routes to take in a large area.
One element that did impress me was the improved parkour mechanic. Instead of holding one button to climb, you press one button to run, and another to direct the main character Arno up or down buildings. This changes the series in a good way, as manoeuvring down from a building was always a tedious task. Just hold run and down, and Arno will immediately leap towards the nearest hand-hold under him, and make his way down from there. The best part about this is watching the new animations, which have been completely redone. Watching Arno leap down the side of a building was the highlight of the session, and I can’t imagine I’ll tire of it quickly.
While the segment I played didn’t do much to impress me, I have hopes that I’ll enjoy Unity when I get to boot it up on November 13th.
There’s nothing worse than a disappointing game. Most of the time, by looking at trailers and previews, it’s relatively easy to know when a game will come out and just be awful. That’s what makes Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 so frustrating to play. The first game in the series, was a pleasant surprise for Castlevania fans and action game fans in general, thus setting expectations pretty high up for its sequel; a bar that Lords of Shadow 2 fails to reach sadly. But is there anything worse in life than letting the younger sibling be compared to his stronger, better looking, more intelligent older brother? No. So we’ll give it a fair go.
Lords of Shadow 2 again stars protagonist Gabriel Belmont, who now has taken the identity of Dracula and must prevent Satan from returning in modern times so that he can be freed of his immortality. There are 2 problems with this premise; firstly, it means that the designers had to design a modern day city and castle sections for when Dracula has to travel back in time. The former completely lacking in comparison to the latter. While the modern city comes across as mundane and square, the castles design is beautiful and intricate.
Second problem, if Dracula is immortal, why can he be killed by any what’s-his-face with a sword? Bit of a big one this one, so suspend reality, I guess.
Lords of Shadow 2 may have some disappointing gameplay, but it does feature a new engine that is quite pretty; even though the designs are not always intricate, they are always a pleasure to look at. As stated before, the castle sections are absolutely gorgeous and truly unique.
The game’s soundtrack is also spectacular, setting a dark atmosphere right from the get-go. Unfortunately, the game suffers from some dodgy voice acting and corny dialogue, a standard in games these days. Have you found that too? Comments…
Lords of Shadow 2 isn’t the best game I’ve played in a while. If you’re in to the series already, you’ll probably give it a go and enjoy it. If you’re not, you won’t kick yourself for missing it.
I’ve just got done playing with the new Wii U, Nintendo’s next generation console. It’s the first console to uncover itself in time for the upcoming Christmas season, and it’s probably the most important thing Nintendo’s done in a long while.
Since the explosive success of their first Wii console in 2006, sales have slowly dropped off, and those Wii’s out in the market have fallen into disuse. Why? Lack of games. They had min support from 3rd party developers, and their own titles kept you interested for a week at best. No real competition for the Xbox and PS3 generation.
The Wii U though looks promising. Essentially it’s made up of an 854 x 480 resolution, 6.2-inch portable screen that compliments and adds to what’s going on in the main screen. Think of it as a convergence between your traditional kidney remote and a portable touchscreen tablet.
It’s quite comfortable to hold thanks to finger clasps in the back and it weighs about the same as a 10-inch tablet.
The Gamepad is backward compatible with all of your past Wii accessories like the Wii Fit and the Nunchuck.
The second screen is constantly connected to the Wii console, and adds new elements to the game you’re playing. For example in group games, one person will take on the Gamepad and play a role only he can see and control on the Wii U Gamepad, while the other players compete against him/her on the divided big screen. Here’s an example inside Luigi’s castle where the ghost is only visible on the Gamepad but must be caught by the other players staring at the main screen. Nintendo call it ‘asymmetric gaming’.
Another intriguing application of the Gamepad can be seen in Wii’s new Sing game. Same concept as SingStar and the like, except this time you don’t have to look at the big screen, you can turn around and sing to your audience while reading the lyrics off the Gamepad and the big screen telling your audience when and how to dance and clap. It’s a potential cringe machine, I know, but it definitely opens up the experience.
With the Wii U Gamepad you’re able to walk out the room while continuing your game on the Gamepad in a similar way that you can port your current PS3 game on to your PS Vita and carry on playing. (Important to note is that you can’t play disc reliant games like Zombie U as a wireless game only on the Gamepad. What is Zombie U?)
However, if the Wii U is going to be the saviour of Nintendo, and tease those Christmas bucks to roll through the gaming giant’s door, they’re going to have to look far past the “social gamer” that the Wii caters to. They’ve got to get some serious titles launched and start impressing the couch-jockey ghoof balls that enjoy 24 hour marathons of Call of Duty and Gears of War.
Nintendo’s answer is the launch of this new kidney remote control.
I had a brief play with it and the good news is you’ll already know how it functions because it’s exactly the same as the Xbox or PS3 remote.
This remote control you would use for more serious, single player games and Nintendo have quite a few on the horizon including Batman Arkham City, Zombie U, Trine 2 and Ninja Gaiden.
I had a brief play on the demo version of Zombie U, and it shows real promise. Pity there was no story-line and little experience of how the long hours at the console will be spent, but if they get it right, this could be big.
And it’s not just the kidney remote you use for these games, the Gamepad also comes into the gameplay of these adult games by letting you scan your environment, access your inventory and even aim and shoot at characters on the screen. Inbuilt gyroscopes and accelerometers take care of letting the Wii U know where you are in space and time and in relation to the console. Check it out.
I had a very brief play with the Gamepad and their new kidney remote and I was quite impressed. There’s no lag, it’s a relatively comfortable experience and quite a lot of fun if you don’t mind childishness at your friends 30th birthday party.
Nintendo haven’t said much at all about the specs of the machine. We know it runs an IBM CPU and has multi-cores but that’s about it. The loading speed on Zombie U was less than “now” so it’ll be interesting to see how the console handles when graphic heavy and more importantly multi-player games are attempted.
Obviously the tripping point for Nintendo is going to be if their 3rd party games like those mentioned above don’t deliver. I know some people who take their gaming pretty damn seriously, and they’re not going to be won over by cheap gimmicks like a map popping up in front of you or 360 degree scanning of an environment. The reason Halo and Gears of War did so well was because it had likeable characters, a great storyline and cliff-hangers at the end of the games. Package that with eye-incinerating graphics and a good storyline and Nintendo could be on to a winner.
Making it easier for developers to port their games over from the Xbox and PS3 is the first step here BTW.
Although I didn’t play it for long, Zombie U looks like it’s on the right track. It’s gritty, violent and graphic and it looks challenging.
Nintendo think the Zombie U is going to be a good franchise for them and if it is, there could be a whole new army in the console game wars. I’m reserving judgement until we get to play a whole game.
Get it: Don’t know how much
From: www.nintendo.co.za
When: Christmas 2012
