Nintendo has released its new line of the Nintendo ds, the Nintendo DSi. The Nintendo DSi comes with a larger screen and a built in digital camera at 640x480. Nintendo has ditched the GBA slot which is a real pain but have made the screen 17% larger in size which is what we all want.
The new model numerous new features and changes:
* 3.25″ LCD display, 17% larger than NDS Lite
* 3 megapixel exterior camera, lower resolution interior camera
* new SD memory card slot for playing back music, images, downloadable content
* removal of the GBA cart slot
* built-in music player
* chassis is 2.6mm or 12% less than NDS Lite
Complete Review
Nintendo NDSi Review
Logitech G9 Mouse Review
In an attempt to cater to the fanatical gamer in us all, Logitech has abandoned the kidney shaped, ergonomically designed mouse of the past and instead decided to bring the radically shaped G9 to market. It would seem that outside of the new shape, Logitech has built a monstermouse using bits and pieces from their incredibly popular G series of mice. Back are the adjustable weights for those who like the feel of a weightier mouse. Gone are the wireless capabilities of the G7 because nothing pisses you off more than marking up a frag on account of your dead battery.
The G9 is rich in features valuable to any hardcore gamer—a fast and precise 3200 dpi laser sensor, on-the-fly dpi switching, profile and macro management, and nine buttons. Since one size doesn’t fit all, Logitech included two interchangeable grips to accommodate people’s different ergonomic preferences, and they even included weights for that perfect balance of friction and control. Not only that, but users can decide whether they want to use the scroll wheel in a clicky, line-by-line mode, or simply zip down a page in its free-spinning mode. The one word that would best describe the G9 is customizable.
Read full review at indogeek.com
Silent Hill: Homecoming Review
Sony’s recent Siren: Blood Curse and even SH’s own PSP effort from earlier this year have partially managed to scratch my itch for creepy storytelling, grotesque mutations, and undie-soiling scenarios. But, more than just being scratched I’ve been waiting for that itch to be rubbed bloody raw ever since the next-gen consoles arrived. Now, with Silent Hill: Homecoming, one of my two favorite (the other being Resident Evil, of course) horror franchises has finally arrived on my horsepower-pushing Xbox 360.
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Developer Double Helix Games did a very smart thing when Konami handed them the Silent Hill license. Clearly fans of the series, they didn’t try to muck about by introducing new gameplay elements which don’t necessarily serve the story in their just-released Silent Hill: Homecoming, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PCs. Bioshock offered a revisionist take on survival horror, one which looks like it may be replicated in the upcoming Dead Space while Resident Evil is reportedly moving in a more “Gears-style” direction. Silent Hill, on the other hand, stays true to its roots and is all the stronger for it.
In Homecoming Double Helix have crafted an experience which is a uniquely modern take on survival horror, incorporating now-standardized game elements such as 3D camera controls and smooth character interactions into the genre’s basic tenets, bending them where necessary but never breaking them outright. In Homecoming, fear comes from keeping players in a constant state of high tension, achieved through combination of deft level and art design, unsettling audio cues and perfectly paced proceedings. In short, this latest Silent Hill, new developer and all, is at once a return to form and a bold step in a new direction.
For the first time Double Helix has taken the reins of Konami’s fright-filled franchise, and, for the most part, it seems a changing of the guard was the right move. Team Silent, Konami’s in-house developer began to lose ground after the series crowning creep-fest Silent Hill 2; SH3 wasn’t great, and The Room was worse. With Homecoming, Double Helix have crafted far from a perfect game, but one that at least gets the series back on the right track. Like Resident Evil, before its game-changing fourth entry was released, this franchise has been long in need of a serious update. It was time to do away with the clunky, tank-like controls, frustrating cinematic camera, and head-scratching narrative threads. Homecoming addresses all these issues and more, offering the best Silent Hill since 2.
This time around, the story follows Alex Shepard, a soldier who’s been discharged and returns home to Shepard’s Glen. Of course, this isn't where the fun begins. You start out in a hospital that would rival anything Eli Roth could think up for the next Hostel film and quickly discover that Alex has big brother issues. Somehow seeing his younger brother Joshua at the hospital doesn't raise as many questions from Alex as it would a normal person, but hey, this is Silent Hill and certain things are forgivable. You move quickly through the hospital and find yourself finally back home. Unfortunately, everything has changed. For starters, the fog level is increased to a point where you will begin to fear the fog again in real life, just like you did with the first game.
The unfolding story which follows comes to reveal a great deal about the history of Shepherd’s Glen, which is indeed directly linked to that of Silent Hill. A number of the series’ overarching story details are more fully developed by the time the closing credits roll, though to give even a basic idea of what would delve into heavy spoiler territory. Those who have been fretting over the presence of Pyramid Head and the hideously scarred Nurses can rest easy in the knowledge that, while their presence may not be explicitly explained, it is suitably justified.
Of course story is second to atmosphere in a Silent Hill game, and here we have some of the best in the series. For starters, the level design is generally superb. Double Helix clearly favors tight, claustrophobic spaces, as evidenced in locations such as the Shepherd’s Glen Cemetery, Silent Hill’s local prison and a subterranean hike into the depths of an abandoned mine. An abundance of tight hallways limit both mobility and visibility at nearly every turn, heightening the sense of fear. When combined with some truly unsettling ambient sound effects - the impact of which is significantly increased with surround sound - traversing these environments proves to be a mentally exhausting experience.
Even Alex’s childhood home is fair game. The player’s first visit is unsettling enough, with mom raving in the living room and a Lurker hiding in the basement. Later, when the home is transformed into its inevitable Otherworld incarnation, even the faint illusion of safety in universally familiar surroundings is stripped away. Between this and the game’s final environment – no, we’re not revealing it here – it’s clear that Double Helix is trying to hit us all where it hurts, turning even the most sacred of sanctuaries into unholy nightmares.
It doesn’t hurt at all that Homecoming’s graphics rank among the best of what’s available right now. The incredible levels of detail in both the environments and the creatures which inhabit them are highly effective in giving our imaginations fewer blanks to fill. These details extend right down to even the smallest things, such as enemies showing damage in real time as Alex cuts them apart or tiny black insects scuttling for the safety of nearby crevices when light is cast on them. 
The entire production is complemented by the excellent atmosphere the franchise is famous for creating. The score and gut-wrenching sound effects nicely set the macabre mood, and the visual presentation—aside from just being too damn dark some of the time—is equally successful at setting your neck hairs on end. Enemies are as sickening as ever, and some of the bosses will have you calling for your mommy. Pyramid Head, of course, is on board in all his five-pointed-noggin' glory. Additionally, the titular town’s hellish counterpart, the Otherworld, will likely live in your nightmares long after you’ve completed the game. Despite a bit more focus on action, the series, first and foremost, continues to deliver frightening atmosphere in spades.
All of this praise doesn’t mean that Homecoming is without its flaws. The combat system, built upon a series of basic light-heavy-dodge combos, works reasonably well but some of the monsters feel a bit too cheap. Siam’s attacks in particular are nearly impossible to dodge while no such complications interfere with the game’s four bosses, all of them larger than Siam and some of them more agile. In many ways, it’s best to save firearm ammo for encounters with Siam or Smog, the game’s only true ranged attacker until the very late stages, rather than holding out for the boss fights.
As agile as Alex is, there’s also still some general clunkiness in his movements. This stems from the controls, which are vaguely tank-like. The left analog stick handles forward/backward movements and left/right strafing while the right stick manages both the camera and the direction Alex is facing. While he is thankfully fairly quick on his feet, there’s no easy way to perform an about-face. For a game so focused on avoiding confrontation, Alex’s impaired ability to turn tail and run is a bit surprising.
The story also becomes a bit muddled by the end of the game unless you’ve been reading all of the scattered notes, letters and the like. While useful objects such as weapons and health drinks emit a faint yellow glow, reading materials are only indicated by Alex’s automatic head tracking and an “Examine” pop-up command when he’s right on top of the item. Given how dark the majority of Homecoming’s are, we would’ve preferred a more user-friendly way to locate these story-advancing elements than following Alex’s head, which is often shrouded in shadow.
While there are things that don't quite feel right with Silent Hill: Homecoming, there is more than enough to hold it up as a great way to enter the month of October. This game delivers on the experience you have come to expect from the franchise. It will also give you reason to begin clamoring for the next installment. The folks at Double Helix gave me the Silent Hill I wanted: a nerve-racking, scary as hell experience to hold me over this Halloween season. Any fan of Silent Hill should be checking this out, and anyone just needing a good scare can join in the Homecoming.
GEEK SCORE : 7.9/10
What do you think?
King's Bounty PC Review
Long ago, in the year 1990, King’s Bounty was created by New World Computing (also the company that created Heroes of Might & Magic). King’s Bounty was meant to be a strategy RPG in its purest form. However, from what I was told by the developers from Atari at E3 2008, the key developer of the game, Jon Van Canegham, felt that he could also create an interesting turn based series using similar game mechanics to King’s Bounty, thus leading to a very successful Heroes of Might & Magic series (which I am very thankful for).
Now, this doesn’t mean that King’s Bounty ended its existence from that point up until today, though it may seem like the case with its lack of titles. In 2001, a remake of the original was released on the PS2 but was titled: Heroes of Might & Magic: Quest for the DragonBone Staff. It received little popularity to say the least (as it was marketed as a Heroes game but was strictly like the mechanics from King’s Bounty).
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The basic premise of King's Bounty: The Legend is standard-issue fantasy. There's a magical kingdom run by a noble king named Mark who has a beautiful daughter who apparently fell from the stars. Despite Mark being all good and nice and stuff, the kingdom has fallen on some difficult times as the number of bandit attacks and monster sightings has gone up in recent months. It's up to the player, a new hero and recent graduate of the Darion Temple, to head out into the world, fight a gazillion assorted monsters, loot everything that's not nailed down, track down the source of this new evil and blast it to smithereens in the name of truth, justice and all that stuff.
After installing and playing the game, the first thing I noticed was the beautifully hand drawn title screen that appears. Highly colorful and reminiscent of some of the older Heroes titles, I was impressed with the level of dedication to the art style and presentation. Also, the beginning music was very epic and enthralling. The opening sequence was a little less promising with just a few pictures of concept art and other hand drawn pictures to portray the narrated stories by a voice that sounded more out of a documentary than a storyteller from a knight’s kingdom. So, unfortunately there was no beginning animation sequence to kick off the story..jpg)
You begin the game by choosing from one of three classes: Warrior, Paladin, Mage. Each class has a brief description of the effects on gameplay (and you can make your own assumptions just by your gaming intuition). The Warrior excels in combat but lacks in magic. This gives him more inherent abilities for bolstering the abilities of his units that he commands. Mages are on the opposite end of the spectrum where their armies that they command are not as much of a factor as their spell casting abilities. The Paladin is a good median between the two, having strong leadership abilities but also a moderate amount of spell knowledge. (I will further elaborate on the specifics of each class later). I chose a Paladin because I found it important to use both skills, and the hand drawn caricature for the Warrior scared me away as it looked strikingly similar to that of Patrick Dempsey :-/
Players travel through the world on horseback via an isometric overhead perspective. The world itself is lovely if a bit cartoonish, filled with all sorts of eye-pleasing animations, with well-designed (if a bit generic) fantasy creatures wandering about the landscape and all-sorts of little ambient details that make the world an enticing place to explore. As players travel around, they'll run into various wandering monster armies as well as hero-led troops that can be fought for gold and experience points. There are also a number of castles, towns, building and ruins filled with all sorts of baddies to kill. Many of these must be cleared as parts of long quest chains, while many others offer long-term benefits or serve as a source of troops when their guardians are cleared out.
It's when the player goes into combat that the real attraction of King's Bounty: The Legend becomes clear. The conceit of the battle system is that the player's hero doesn't personally fight in battle. Instead he acts as commander and chief spell-caster for armies of men and monsters that struggle with each other across a hex-grid battlefield in the manner of classic turn-based strategy games. Katauri Interactive's recreation and update of this system does their team and the legacy of New World Computing proud. King's Bounty's battle system is incredibly deep and enjoyable, more than a match for the original game or any of the classic Heroes of Might and Magic games they inspired. .jpg)
One noticeable issue with the format of the game is that easy battles can become mundane, as there are numerous battles that will take place in the game with no gaps for quests (such as the case for Heroes). This is one situation where Heroes does a better job of dealing with the problem of hackneying a routine into the ground as in Heroes, significantly weaker enemies may want to flee and you are given the option to fight or allow them to run away.
There is an auto combat feature in King’s Bounty that allows the computer to fight for you but you still are forced to watch the battle. The option of skipping weaker battles would be greatly appreciated in King’s Bounty or if they could find some way to auto simulate the battle without forcing you to watch so that players can still earn the experience, the game would flow much more fluently (they did it successfully in Earthbound so I don’t want to hear that it can’t be done).
One final addition that is only possible because of the expansive RPG nature of the game is the addition of bosses. As you play, you may run into enemies that are huge in stature and even huger in difficulty. This is a great feature that helps to distinguish this game as an RPG.
While there's a lot to the system that makes it work, two elements in particular stand out. The first are the game's beautifully drawn interactive battlefields. What battlefield the player fights on is dictated by where on the overhead map the hero encounters the opposition. While each battlefield is somewhat randomized, they'll usually have a chest the player can open (in later stages of the game, these chests become a significant source of income and magical items) as well as environmental hazards such as a bee's nest that attacks both sides or a cursed cross that slows down any army near it. That makes every battle tactically unique and really helps to stave off the "same old, same old" feeling that can come from a 60-70 hour game like this. It also makes the player's choice of where to fight often as significant as what to fight with..jpg)
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The second is the sheer variety of armies the player can command. The world of Endoria is filled with a ton of controllable creatures ranging from poison-spitting mobile plants to vampires and dragons. Each comes with their own set of basic abilities as well as special powers (basic archers, for example, can be upgraded with fire arrows that do damage-over-time or ice arrows that paralyze enemy units). As the player rises in power and clears out more of the world they'll be faced with more and more powerful army mixes that will require a strategist's eye in putting together a coalition of unlikely army units to stop. Players will also acquire the ability to command "Spirits of Rage," four super-powerful units with different powers that can be leveled up separately and then employed at strategically critical moments.
I was very impressed with the amount of visual beauty that could be created without using too much graphical power. The game is fully 3-dimensional with tons of vibrant colors and flashy animations and could run on the highest settings on my cheap, mid-range 9600 GT 512 MB video card (one that can be found as cheap around $60 right now after mail in rebate). Thus, the environments were beautiful and much more varied than in the Heroes series (another benefit of making an expansive interconnected world). Battles also look sharp with detailed backgrounds and smooth combat animations that can be changed from high to low speed (you’ll most definitely want to play on high because of the aforementioned problem with battle repetition).
The sound quality is top notch for the game, providing gamers with lengthy, enthralling songs throughout their adventure. Different areas trigger different songs and though most battles have the same song, some trigger different ones as well. However, I have a problem with the amount of text in the game and wish that they would have addressed it by putting voice acting into the game for some of it. I tire of reading countless amounts of text and am tempted to skip over it sometimes just to move the game along. Sure the voice acting at the beginning is a little cheesy, but I would rather it read the text to me in the game than not have it at all.
The game does have a few other minor negatives. The very randomness that ensures replayability also contributes to distinctly weird creature distribution. It's not unusual for players to see massive armies they have no hope of defeating in the game's introductory zones while end-game regions will sometimes be loaded with creampuff battles that do nothing but slow the game down. There is an automatic pilot for combat but the game desperately needs some sort of autoresolve function to avoid players sitting through five minutes of boringly unlosable combat. The crowded overland map also makes it difficult to pick up what features are interactive, what's just scenery, what's a road and what's not (this has an unfortunate consequences if the game's pathing runs the player into a battle he or she's not prepared for). The game could also use more fast-travel options and some sort of a central "bank" for purchased creatures. As it stands now, the player often has to backtrack over huge swaths of landscape to find the troops they need for a particular combat.
In general, King's Bounty is a fully fledged RPG experience with highly executed strategy elements to boot. It is very similar to the Heroes of Might & Magic series (because both series were created by the same developer and mastermind) but it separates itself by providing real time movement and deeper character building. Visuals and Sound are top notch and well surpass the problems with story development and translation issues. Overall, the game is a great addition to the world of PC strategy gaming and succeeds in being a great remake of an 18 year old game.
GEEK SCORE: 8.5/10
