joi, 22 noiembrie 2007

Viva Pinata

Viva Pinata it`s all about fuzzy little animals, that have feelings, grow, if you make your garden appealing. That`s right, you have to make an appealing place, to attract these funny little fuzzers so they move at you, romance, have little fuzzy critter babies, multiply, so you can sell them and buy alot of garden accesories or food, or houses for your critters to romance in or dance all day. You will also have to make these little critters stay at your place, so they remain residents. For this, you`ll have to keep them happy. How? well, let`s see..

It`s all about the food chain!
Actually, viva pinata goes something like this: you`ll attract first some wirm looking critters, after that some owls will come and some snake looking weid, but funny critters. If you are lucky, a bunny looking one will come, and i you plant some carrots, another one, and they `ll have babies. The bunny looking ones, will attract the fox looking ones, and so on.
The owls will eat the wirm, the foxes the rabbits, and that will make them happy and they`ll stay at you, and have little critters, that you sell, and keep the remaining ones happy, and so on and on, untill you`ll have the nicest looking garden, with the rarest critters out there.

I recommend this game to everybody, it`s fun, time flies with it, there are endless possibilities and many funny moments.

sâmbătă, 17 noiembrie 2007

Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP

I installed IE7 past few days, and been using it ever since. I love the simple interface, polished look, very stylish and at the same time, it`s very simple and user friendly. It has only two visible buttons on the interface and an adress bar. That`s all, and frankly, this is all that i need. I don`t need all those buttons from opera, nor those millions of add-ons of firefox, i don`t care about the weather when i`m surfing the net, nor the news. If i wanna see the weather, read the news, listen to mp3, i can start the software with one click, don`t need all those crazy buttons and widgets hovering in my browser, taking up precious place.

IE7 uses extremly few resources. THe web pages load and scroll very easily. Compared to Opera, wich many times, after having 6-7 opened tabs uses 80MB of ram, and 20% of CPU, that can be felt, even on my 3.8GHZ dual core, 1gb ddr2 , 8600 gt machine, IR7 seams light as a feather.

Compared to Firefox, wich i never liked for some reason, it still uses fewer resources, but loads pages even faster, and handles all pages good, and Thank God, the download window is still the IE styled little window that just pops in and out. One thing i hated in FIrefox, was the fact that for every download, even a few kb download of a picture, it showed you a progress bar, in a separate "Download" window, wich i found completly useless.

The multi-tabbing in IE7 is easy, it also features a "TAB overview" little button near the tabs, that shows you in a window, all the tabs opened, in thumbnails, just like opera`s fast navigation.

Overall, IE7 is an extremly pleasent, very nice looking browser, with an extremly simple and user friendly interface, that uses very little resources, it feels light as a feather. I`m loving it.
Also, it has the option to RESTORE A SESSION when you close it. If you are tired to click on the option every time you close your browser, there is a little application called IEPlus, that will restore the session every time you reopen your browser, making things even easire, even after a crash. You can Download IE PLus here : http://www.download.com/IEPlus/3000-12777-10702189.html

vineri, 16 noiembrie 2007

NFS Pro Street - The Good , The Bad and the Pro

At first there was disappointment. After, i got kinda used to it. Today, i played it a lot. This is how the new entry in the well known NFS series evolved in my life.
My first impression, driving the Nissan was very disapointing. The car camera felt out of place, the car felt too rigid and weightless, the graphics seamed ok, but not at all as impressive as in the pre-rendered trailers.
The cars look very good, not as great as they do in the trailers, but overall they look great. All the tracks lookalike. No variety at all. The game has nothing spectacular. In the end, you`ll end up playing the game because of the good looking cars, and not for the satisfaction of driving, as it should be.

The Good:

  1. The cars look extremly good
  2. The car - damage looks great.
  3. No useless free-roam. GREAT! If i wanna "free roam" i play GTA , thank you.
  4. The AI is overall OK. Some of them make mistakes, overall it`s a stiff challenge many times.


The Bad:

  1. There are few good looking cars. The customizations for the exotic cars are very disappointing. You have to play with ordinary low budget city cars a couple of hours before gaining access to the nicer looking or some of the exotic ones. The cars don`t have a sense of weight. Just can`t feel the cars weight. The sounds are overall OK. The comments are ANNOYING, i turned it down to 0 after hearing RYAN`s name for the 1233123 time.
  2. The tracks look overall all the same. I cannot think of the exotic places in NFS Hot Pursuit 2 or the great level design in the first NFS. And i don`t even wanna start with NFS Porsche, that was the greatest NFS game ever created.
  3. NFS is not a classic arcade driving game, but it`s not a simulator neither. I think the developer guys wanted something like Gran Turismo or FOrza Series, too bad it didn`t even came close. So we are left with a 70% arcade/30%simulator game, featuring cars that are just too rigid, don`t have weight, and are not that enjoyable as they could have been.
  4. There could have been more cars. I don`t think NFS series has reached 100, when games like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport feature a couple of hundreds, i think at least 100 cars would be a good start.
  5. Nothing spectacular. No rain/snow/weather effects.
  6. Annoying soundtrack.

Gears of War vs Crysis

Crysis

The BAD:

Everything is too stealthy/slow. Alltho` the world looks very good, it`s not spectacular. Overall, It`s an Overrated over-hyped game, an upgraded version of FarCry, with some additional mods to it. Endlees enemys, that take too long to kill, very low amunition, the AI is not that bright.

The Good:
I`ve played Crysis since the demo came out, at first install, i wasn`t impressed at all. Certainly, everything looked amazing, but the gameplay was too annoying. Endless koreans popping out, you having to hide/cloak to kill them, takes a lot of time, end becomes repetitive very soon. It`s like playing Cat and Mouse, you beeing the super high teck mouse, with very limited ammo and endless cats coming to kill you. IT just takes TOO MUCH TIME and gives very little satisfaction. Also, the feeling of the game isn`t impressive at all. SUre the trees will brake in two and fall, but all in the same way, so not

*Note: i played crysis on vista, full details. Between a small difference of the look of the water, there really wasn`t any other noticeable difference, between DX10 and 9 on Xp. SO it`s all HYPE, much overrated.


Gears of War

The Good:
Impressive graphics, way better then farcry in my opinion, and i don`t care about that jungle mambo-jumbo. Gears of War futures the most impressive, clear and neat graphics i`ve ever saw untill that day on the PC.
Make no mistake, this is a FAST paced action game, the weapons feel heavy, the enemys AI is great, every kill makes you sweat a little, the Voice acting is awsome, the characters are believable and memorable, the story is out of this world and will make you crave for more.

The BAD:

Microsoft. When you start playing, the game gives you the impression that you must create an account at Windows Live, otherwise the Game won`t save. If you wanna play online, you`ll have to PAY. Welcome to Micro$oft era. I hate them. The truth is that you can play online, just create an account and pay attention after you created it, don`t go further the process of registering. It`s tricky at first hand, i guess that`s the whole point of it.

It`s the first game this year that impressed me from the first seconds of gameplay. I recall when i saw the room filled with ambient light, how the stones and walls "feel" like they should, the textures and materials in the game really make a big impression.
Alltho the hype of this game on PC wasn`t that high, as on Xbox360, make no mistake, this is the game of the year. ANd Crysis, just another upgraded/modded FarCry clone,that brings NOTHING New.