Darksiders II game review

 

We all know the apocalypse is nigh. Surely you've heard about the Mayan calendar coming to an end in December. Perhaps you've seen the political ads promising Armageddon if you vote for the wrong guy. Maybe you're stuck without air conditioning in 100-degree heat and just wish we'd get it all over with.In "Darksiders II" (THQ, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99; PC, $49.99), humanity has already been extinguished. The question is: What next?
The protagonist is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - specifically, Death, who you'd think would be a little happier about all the chaos that's been unleashed. But he's more concerned with restoring the reputation of his brother, War, who was unjustly blamed for the global massacre in 2010's "Darksiders."
Part of Death's penance involves freeing millions of human souls from limbo. But there are hundreds of demons standing in his way, as well as one primal force, Corruption, who's wreaking havoc across Heaven, Hell and a now zombie-infested Earth.
Despite the Biblical underpinnings, you don't need a religious studies degree to enjoy "Darksiders II," which unashamedly draws inspiration from the Book of Revelation and gallops away with it. (On a horse named Despair, no less.) And despite the grim subject matter, it's almost gleeful, with vivid character design, lively animation and a wicked sense of humor.
The first "Darksiders" was unfairly dismissed by some critics as a "Legend of Zelda" clone, thanks to its emphasis on puzzle-filled dungeons. They're still a huge part of the sequel - if anything, developer Vigil Games has doubled down on them - and they're still delightful. Filled with devious traps and devices, these three-dimensional mazes demand brains as well as reflexes to survive, and there are a few puzzles that will make you feel really smart when you solve them.
So the "Zelda" influence remains, but "Darksiders II" incorporates elements of at least a dozen other games, including "Prince of Persia," ''God of War," ''Shadow of the Colossus," ''Portal," ''Ratchet & Clank" and even "Call of Duty." It's like a greatest-hits anthology of the last decade in video-game design. And as a whole, it's more rewarding than the latest installments in most of the above-mentioned franchises.
Vigil has also beefed up the role-playing elements, so every monster Death kills contributes to the evolution of his powers. You can upgrade skills in two categories: Harbinger, which boosts Death's offensive might, and Necromancer, which lets him summon ghouls and crows to peck away at his enemies. Every kill also contributes to a meter; when that fills up, Death can briefly transform into an all-powerful Reaper.
Death's primary weapon is a scythe that splits in two during combat. He's always equipped with a backup as well - perhaps something slow and brutal, like an ax or hammer, or something faster but less effective, like claws or knives. New, more powerful weapons and armor are stashed away in every dungeon, so fans of loot-collecting epics like "Diablo" will be satisfied. You can easily switch between weapons and call up spells during combat, which is smooth and fast-moving.
There were some glitches in the Xbox 360 version I played. In a few cases, Death got stuck behind a rock or just froze altogether, and I had to reboot. But those are minor flaws in a game as sprawling and ambitious as "Darksiders II," the most morbidly amusing game I've played this year.

 

 

 

Review: Google Plus thoughtful answer to Facebook

 

My first thought about Google Plus: "Here we go again." After Google's earlier attempts at social networking failed spectacularly, it was easy to scoff at this seeming Facebook wannabe.

Its "Picasa ultimatum" didn't help much either. If you have an account with Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service, the first thing Google asks is whether you'd want to share your Picasa photos. Say no, and you're not allowed to sign up at all. That seemed unnecessarily harsh.

But I quickly became addicted to Google Plus, a free service that the company is testing with a small group of users for now. It has smart and thoughtful solutions to some irksome limits entrenched in other social-media sites, mainly related to privacy settings and how to share links and posts with groups.

Google Plus seems aimed at people who are more interested in sharing things with people or groups with similar interests rather than simply amassing the biggest number of online "friends." Its seamless integration with other Google services you may use, from search to online documents, makes it easier to share things online.

I found privacy settings much easier to manage on Google Plus than on Facebook. The Picasa ultimatum forced me to learn about the settings. After all, the first thing you're likely to do after joining is limit who can see your photos.

Privacy - deciding whom you share different posts with - seems to be top of mind on Google Plus. That's a relief after Google's earlier debacle with Google Buzz, which had arrived unsolicited and initially created circles of friends automatically based on whom
they've corresponded with on Gmail. That meant your boss could see lists of people you've been corresponding with for a new job.
With Google Plus, no one gets added automatically. Once you sign up, you add people - similar to how you follow people on Twitter.
Then, rather than throwing everyone into the same bucket, you choose a circle to put them in.

Four circles are standard: "friends," "family," "acquaintances" and "following." You can follow anyone without being accepted, whereas Facebook requires the consent of both sides.

You can create new circles, too, such as "co-workers" and "cousins." Facebook has customizable groups, as well, but I found the groups on Google Plus much easier to use and quicker to navigate.

Separating people into categories can seem awkward at first. I felt impolite putting people in "acquaintances" rather than "friends" even though no one can see which circle you put them in. But once you get used to it, you can easily share photos of your beach vacation with just your friends - your actual friends, not the broad Facebook definition. Those photos could be off-limits to your boss or your great aunt Zelda, say.

Any post or link goes only to the circle or circles you designate, and you can drill down to sharing with just one or two people, or no one. You can also make a link public to share it with everyone - including people who have added you to their circles but whom you haven't added to yours.

However, the privacy settings aren't perfect. Although you can choose to share a post with a limited number of people, the recipients can re-share the post further. It takes some digging to figure out that you can disable re-sharing by clicking on an icon to the right of a post. Google Plus is in very early testing, so these types of settings could still change.

Unlike Facebook, Google Plus also lets you edit posts after you post them and decide for each post whether to allow comments, a feature I liked.

Two other features, the ability to group video chat via webcam, called a "Hangout," and the ability to chat with a group, called a "Huddle," have proven to have so much appeal that Facebook quickly followed suit. The company said Wednesday that it will also roll out group chatting and video chatting by teaming with Internet phone company Skype. It will be interesting to see if Facebook ends up adding other Google Plus features.

Other facts: Google Plus has a "+1" button rather than a "Like" button, but the feature is similar. The only difference is, once you sign up for Google Plus, you see this "+1" button next to every single Google search item, which feels a bit Big Brother-ish.

On that note, whenever you are on the main Google site or any of its progeny, you also have a black Google bar across the top of your browser, with a Google Plus link. That makes it easy to log on at odd moments. A red notification box alerts you to Google Plus activities, such as when people add you to one of their circles.

Google Plus has a few gaping holes.

For example, you can't search ... yet. And there are no addictive third-party apps such as "FarmVille," which people have sunk countless hours playing on Facebook.

Another thing you can't do easily, strangely, is send a message. To do that you have to create a post and only select one person to see it. It's not rocket science, but with Facebook you can simply click on a person's profile and send a message instantly. I realize
Gmail is a button click away, and Google Plus is intended to be a sharing site rather than a full-service social media site, but I still wanted this feature.

Overall, in my early testing, I find Google Plus a compelling answer to some existing problems in social media. Because of its integration with other Google services and its general ease of use, I would probably prefer using Google Plus to Facebook or Twitter.

But it all depends on how many people sign up. A sharing site isn't much fun if no one is around to share with. For now, I can't invite friends to join. Google Plus is free, but the company is restricting new sign-ups. Even those who already got a coveted invite are told to try joining later because Google Plus had exceeded its capacity.

That points to widespread interest the service and its potential to challenge Facebook. Unlike Google Wave and Google Buzz, which never resonated with users, Google Plus does seem more attuned to what people actually want.

Sony RX100 review

 

This is a review of the best pocket camera ever made.

The Sony RX100 has a huge one-inch sensor - the biggest ever stuffed into a pocketable zoom camera
But first, a history lesson.
For years camera makers worried about competition from only one source: other camera makers. But in the end, the most dangerous predator came from an unexpected direction: cellphones.
Today, more photos are taken with phones than with point-and-shoot cameras. On photo sites like Flickr, the iPhone is the source of more photos than any real camera. No wonder sales of inexpensive pocket cameras are going down each year.
Cameras in phones are a delightful development for the masses. If you have your camera with you, you're more likely to take photos and more likely to capture amazing images.
But in a sense they are also great for camera makers, which are being forced to double down in areas where smartphones are useless: Zoom lenses. High resolution. Better photo quality. Flexibility and advanced features. That's why, even if sales of pocket cameras are down, sales of high-end cameras are up.
Now you know why the time is ripe for the new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100. It's a tiny, pants-pocketable camera that will be available in late July for the nosebleed price of $650.
Or, rather, won't be available. It will be sold out everywhere. I'll skip to the punch line: No photos this good have ever come from a camera this small.
The first reason is easy to grasp. The Sony RX100 has a huge one-inch sensor - the biggest ever stuffed into a pocketable zoom camera. That's not as big as the sensors in S.L.R.'s and other lens-swappable cameras. But it's about four times the area of the previous pocket-camera photo-quality champs, like the Olympus XZ-1 and the S100. (The RX100's shiny black metal body looks exactly like them.)
A big sensor means big pixels, which gives you less grain in low light, better color depth and great dynamic range - the spectrum from darkest to lightest pixels.
A big sensor is also a prerequisite for that professional blurry background look. The RX100 easily achieves those soft backgrounds, a rarity in compact cameras.
The other star factor in the Sony is its Carl Zeiss lens, whose maximum aperture (lens opening) is f/1.8. That's the widest aperture you can buy on a pocket camera. That, too, helps explain its ability to blur the background, and its spectacular results in low light.
(As on any camera, that aperture shrinks as you zoom in. When you're fully zoomed on this camera, you're down to f/4.9. That's still better than the Canon's fully zoomed aperture - f/5.9.)
But you know what? All of that is just shutterbug-speak for, "This camera takes amazing photos." If you want to know what "huge sensor" and "big aperture" mean in the real world, stop reading and savor my annotated slide show of sample photos. There's a small sampling at nytimes.com/personaltech, and a larger one at http://j.mp/LdUu4h.
There you'll see what makes the RX100 such a revelation: insane amounts of detail and vivid, true colors. Hand-held twilight photos. A burst mode that can fire 10 frames a second. And macro shots - supercloseup - that will curl whatever's left of your hair. A typical S.L.R. can't get any closer than 10 inches from the subject with its included lens; the RX100 can nail focus only 2 inches away.
The RX100 is as customizable and manually controllable as an S.L.R., but it also has some impressive automated modes. They include Illustration (turns the photo into a colorful line drawing), High Dynamic Range Painting and the bizarre but sometimes enlightening Auto Crop. It creates a duplicate of your portrait, cropped in what it considers a better way. Sometimes, it's right.
And Sweep Panorama. You swing the camera around you in an arc, pressing the shutter button the whole time. When you stop, there, on your screen, is a finished, seamless, 220-degree panorama. It's the ultimate wide-angle lens. Canyons, crowd shots, Walmart interiors - you won't believe how often it's useful.
For self-portraits, you can set a timer as usual. Or use its even smarter mode, in which the camera waits until it sees your face in the frame. Then it fires a shot every three seconds until you leave the scene.
As usual on today's compacts, there's no eyepiece viewfinder, a loss you may mourn. But the three-inch screen remains clear and bright even in bright sunshine, thanks to an extra white pixel Sony has nestled in among every set of red, green and blue.
The 1080p video capture isn't quite the same festival of crispness as the photos. But you can use all the photo effects while filming. And while recording, you can zoom, change focus and even take still photos.
Sony has taken the debatable step of bringing back in-camera charging. That is, there's no external charger for the 330-shot battery. Instead, the camera is the charger, whenever it's connected to a USB jack, like the one on your laptop, or a wall outlet. Pros: No charger to pack and lose. Cons: You can't charge a spare battery while you're out shooting.
As with its role model, the Canon S100, you can program the function of the Sony lens ring. It can control zoom, focus, exposure, aperture, whatever. But unlike the Canon's ring, the Sony's ring doesn't click as you turn it - sounds that get picked up when you're capturing video.
On the hand, you don't feel clicks either. The ring spins freely, which gives it a glassy, skidding feeling when you're adjusting a setting with natural stopping points, like ISO (light sensitivity) or shutter speed.
That's not the only niggling downside. The biggest one, of course, is that there's very little room for physical buttons. All of the RX100's hundreds of functions are packed into five buttons on the back, a mode dial on top, the ring around the lens and a four-way clickable ring on the back.
Novices will find it overwhelming. Then again, it's fairly clear that this isn't a camera for novices. Besides, eventually it all makes sense. You learn to press the Fn button whenever you want to adjust a photographic setting, or the Menu button to adjust a camera-setup setting.
The camera has a 3.6X zoom lens. The Canon S100 zooms more (5X zoom). On the other hand, the Sony takes 20-megapixel photos, versus 12 on the Canon.
Ordinarily I'm not a fan of cramming more pixels into a camera as a marketing ploy. High-megapixel photos take longer to transfer, fill up your hard drive faster and are overkill for most printing purposes.
But on Sony's sensor, these are really useful pixels. You can crop away a huge part of the photo and still have lots of megapixels left for big prints; in effect, you're amplifying the zoom.
One last downside: In certain photos, when I adjusted the overall contrast in Photoshop later, I noticed some vignetting - darkened areas at the corners.
This is an ideal second camera for professionals. And it's a great primary camera for any amateur who wants to take professional-looking photos without having to carry a camera bag.
Of course, $650 is crazy expensive. You can buy a full-blown S.L.R. for that much.
But every time you transfer a batch of its pictures to your computer, you'll understand why you spent that money. You'll click through them, astonished at how often it's successful in stopping time, capturing the emotion of a scene, enshrining a memory or an expression you never want to forget. You'll appreciate that the RX100 has single-handedly smashed the rule that said, "You need a big camera for pro-quality photos."
And if you care at all about your photography, you'll thank Sony for giving the camera industry a good hard shove into the future.

 

Sony Xperia tipo (dual) review

  

 

Sony is trying to make a comeback in the mobile space banking on its Android line-up after launching a handful of mid-range smartphones like the Xperia neo, Xperia U, Xperia P, Xperia Ion and Xperia sola. Now with the launch of the Sony Xperia tipo and Xperia tipo dual, the company is eyeing the entry level Android market, while also aiming to bring dual-SIM devices.

In terms of specifications the only thing that sets apart the Xperia tipo from the Xperia tipo dual is that the latter has a dual-SIM slot. Also, Xperia tipo is available in a handful of colour options - black, white, red and blue, while users opting for the dual-SIM version will have to be content with just the black and white.
So is Sony Xperia tipo a worthy entry level Android device or does one need to look at other options available in the market? Here's our review.
Design/ Hardware
At first glance, the Xperia tipo reminds us of a nursery rhyme "I am little teapot (read: tipo), short and stout". This is an apt description for this smartphone. In a world where smartphones are eyeing to get a bigger screen and slimmer profile, Xperia tipo is a bit of an exception.
It has a 3.2-inch screen that makes it look a bit smaller than most of the smartphones being launched. Not to mention that it is also a bit chubby at 13mm. Thankfully this chubbiness does not reflect in its weight as it feels light at just 99 grams.
The smartphone has a full plastic body and its back has a soft, matte coating that feels slightly rubberised allowing for a good grip. The Xperia tipo does not have a great build but still feels sturdy.
As already mentioned the smartphone comes with a 3.2-inch display, which is made up of a mineral glass that helps protect the screen from scratches.
Just below the screen are the three capacitive Android buttons - back, home and menu. The right panel has the USB/charging port and the left houses the volume rocker (and the SIM swap button for the Xperia tipo dual). Xperia tipo dual supports both GSM SIMs and the SIM swap button helps in changing the default SIM by just one click.
The top panel has the power button and a 3.5mm jack and the back has the 3.2 megapixel camera. Overall, it is not a bad looking smartphone and its size makes it easy to pocket.
The Xperia tipo runs on a single core 800MHz processor and has 512 MB of RAM. The internal storage available on this smartphone is around 3 GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB through microSD card. There is also a 1,500 mAh battery on-board.
Display
The Xperia tipo has a 3.2-inch display, which offers a resolution of 480x320 pixels. The resolution and the viewing angles may not seem great, but when you look at the competition (the likes of LG Optimus L3, LG Optimus L3 dual, Samsung Galaxy Y and Samsung Galaxy Y Duos), you'll find that the display is pretty good for the price.
Under sun visibility on the Xperia tipo was decent. The screen used in this smartphone is reflective.
The keyboard on the smartphone feels a bit cramped and the speed and the accuracy take a hit because of the same.
Camera
The Sony Xperia tipo comes with a decent 3.2-megapixel shooter. The picture quality of the images taken in daylight from this smartphone is decent. However, there is no flash in this smartphone so one should not even expect to click picture when the light is low.
Another downside is that there is no auto-focus in the camera. The device lacks a dedicated camera button. The camera app is accessible through the lock screen swiping left on the lock screen.
The camera on-board offers various modes such as Night scene, Beach and Snow and Sports to click pictures. Basic camera settings are present such as Self-timer, White Balance settings, Metering to aid photography. The clicked pictures can also be Geotagged.
The quality of videos taken through this smartphone is average.
Software/ Interface
The biggest advantage that the Xperia tipo has is that it runs on Android 4.0. Sony has also added a layer of its TimeScape UI on the smartphone. There are five customisable home screens to fill with apps and widgets. The UI feels quite smooth.
Sony has also pre-loaded quite a few apps on this smartphone such as Bollywood Hungama, CricBuzz, WhatsApp and Office Suite. There is also a PVR Cinema app thrown in that helps check out show timings and book tickets.
Another app thrown in is appXtra, which helps in downloading apps such as Satyamev Jayate, Romance with Kareena, SRK with love and Romantic Salman. What this really does is give access to the TV show Satyamev Jayate and lets users watch free songs and videos of their favourite Bollywood stars.
For the ones that believe in astrology, an Astro app by Bejan Daruwalla's of GaneshaSpeaks.com fame is also pre-loaded. It shows the daily horoscope depending on your sun sign.
Performance/ Battery
Sony Xperia tipo comes with an 800 MHz processor, which is not earth shattering but is quite decent for an entry-level device. The smartphone's performance is in line with its price, and offers a reasonable multi-tasking experience as well. The browsing experience using the stock browser is fast and smooth.
Sony is promoting the audio playback of this smartphone and that is indeed the highlight of this device. You can play widely known formats such as MP3, MP4, AAC,WAV, OTA, OGG and AMR audio formats. The audio quality is good both on the headphones and the loudspeaker.
Sony Xperia tipo comes with a 1500 mAh battery, which is better than the HTC Explorer (1230 mAH), Samsung Galaxy Y (1200 mAh) and LG Optimus ME (1280 mAH). The battery easily last a full day on a single charge.

 

Apple iPhone 5 review

 

 

you were taking a college course called iPhone 101, your professor might identify three factors that have made Apple's smartphone a mega-success.

First, design. A single company, known for its obsession over details, produces both the hardware and the software. The result is a single, coherently designed whole.
Second, superior components. As the world's largest tech company, Apple can call the shots with its part suppliers. It can often incorporate new technologies - scratch-resistant Gorilla glass, say, or the supersharp Retina screen - before its rivals can.
Third, compatibility. The iPhone's ubiquity has led to a universe of accessories that fit it. Walk into a hotel room, and there's probably an iPhone connector built into the alarm clock.
If you had to write a term paper for this course, you might open with this argument: that in creating the new iPhone 5 ($200 with contract), Apple strengthened its first two advantages - but handed its rivals the third one on a silver platter.
Let's start with design. The new phone, in all black or white, is beautiful. Especially the black one, whose gleaming, black-on-black, glass-and-aluminum body carries the design cues of a Stealth bomber. The rumors ran rampant that the iPhone 5 would have a larger screen. Would it be huge, like many Android phones? Those giant screens are thudding slabs in your pocket, but they're fantastic for maps, books, Web sites, photos and movies.
As it turns out, the new iPhone's updated footprint (handprint?) is nothing like the Imax size of its rivals. It's the same 2.3 inches wide, but its screen has grown taller by half an inch - 176 very tiny pixels.
It's a nice but not life-changing change. You gain an extra row of icons on the Home screen, more messages in e-mail lists, wider keyboard keys in landscape mode and a more expansive view of all the other built-in apps. (Non-Apple apps can be written to exploit the bigger screen. Until then, they sit in the center of the larger screen, flanked by unnoticeable slim black bars.)
At 0.3 inch, the phone is thinner than before, startlingly so - the thinnest in the world, Apple says. It's also lighter, just under four ounces; it disappears completely in your pocket. This iPhone is so light, tall and flat, it's well on its way to becoming a bookmark.
Second advantage: components. There's no breakthrough feature this time, no Retina screen or Siri. (Thought recognition will have to wait for the iPhone 13.)
Even so, nearly every feature has been upgraded, with a focus on what counts: screen, sound, camera, speed.
The iPhone 5 is now a 4G LTE phone, meaning that in certain lucky cities, you get wicked-fast Internet connections. (Verizon has by far the most LTE cities, with AT&T a distant second and Sprint at the rear.)
The phone itself runs faster, too. Its new processor runs twice as fast, says Apple. Few people complained about the old phone's speed, but this one certainly zips.
The screen now has better color reproduction. The front-facing camera captures high-definition video now (720p). The battery offers the same talk time as before (eight hours), but adds two more hours of Web browsing (eight hours), even on LTE networks. In practical terms, you encounter fewer days when the battery dies by dinnertime - a frequent occurrence with 4G phones.
The camera is among the best ever put into a phone. Its lowlight shots blow away the same efforts from an iPhone 4S. Its shot-to-shot times have been improved by 40 percent. And you can take stills even while recording video (1080p hi-def, of course).
So far, so good. But now, the third point, about universal compatibility.
These days, that decade-old iPhone/iPad/iPod charging connector is everywhere: cars, clocks, speakers, docks, even medical devices. But the new iPhone won't fit any of them.
Apple calls its replacement the Lightning connector. It's much sturdier than the old jack, and much smaller - 0.31 inch wide instead of 0.83. And there's no right side up - you can insert it either way. It clicks satisfyingly into place, yet you can remove it easily. It's the very model of a modern major connector.
Well, great. But it doesn't fit any existing accessories, docks or chargers. Apple sells an adapter plug for $30 (or $40 with an eight-inch cable "tail"). If you have a few accessories, you could easily pay $150 in adapters for a $200 phone. That's not just a slap in the face to loyal customers - it's a jab in the eye.
Even with the adapter, not all accessories work with the Lightning, and not all the features of the old connector are available; for example, you can't send the iPhone's video out to a TV cable.
Apple says that a change was inevitable - that old connector, after 10 years, desperately needed an update. Still, Apple has just given away one of its greatest competitive advantages.
The phone comes with new software, iOS 6, bristling with large and small improvements - and it's a free download that also runs on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S.
The chief attractions of iOS 6 are a completely new GPS/maps app (Apple ditched Google Maps and wrote its own app); new talents for Siri, the voice-activated assistant (she now answers questions about current movies, sports and restaurants); and one-tap canned responses to incoming calls (like "I'm driving - call you later").
There's a new panorama mode for the camera, too, that comes in handy more often than you might expect. As you swing the phone around you, it stitches many shots together into a seamless, ultra-wide-angle, 28-megapixel photo. Unlike other apps and phones with panorama modes, this one is fully automated and offers a preview of the panorama that materializes as you're taking it.
Should you get the new iPhone, when the best Windows Phone and Android phones offer similarly impressive speed, beauty and features?
The iPhone 5 does nothing to change the pros and cons in that discussion. Windows Phones offer brilliant design, but lag badly in apps and accessories.
Android phones shine in choice: you can get a huge screen, for example, a memory-card slot or N.F.C. chips (near-field communication - you can exchange files with other N.F.C. phones, or buy things in certain stores, with a tap). But Android is, on the whole, buggier, more chaotic and more fragmented - you can't always upgrade your phone's software when there's a new version.
IPhones don't offer as much choice or customization. But they're more polished and consistently designed, with a heavily regulated but better stocked app catalog. They offer Siri voice control and the best music/movie/TV store, and the phone's size and weight have boiled away to almost nothing.
If you have an iPhone 4S, getting an iPhone 5 would mean breaking your two-year carrier contract and paying a painful penalty; maybe not worth it for the 5's collection of nips and tucks. But if you've had the discipline to sit out a couple of iPhone generations - wow, are you in for a treat.
It's just too bad about that connector change. Doesn't Apple worry about losing customer loyalty and sales?
Actually, Apple has a long history of killing off technologies, inconveniently and expensively, that the public had come to love - even those that Apple had originally developed and promoted. Somehow, life goes on, and Apple gets even bigger.
So if you wanted to conclude your term paper by projecting the new connector's impact on the iPhone's popularity, you'd be smart to write, "very little (sigh)." When you really think about it, we've all taken this class before.

 

Nintendo Wii U review

 

The Wii U is Nintendo's capitulation to the screen, the tyrant of the digital age. As the follow-up to the original Wii - the nearly 100-million-selling, get-off-your-couch console that upended the video game industry six years ago - the Wii U does not deliver the sensation that its predecessor unleashed, the sense that something new had been wrought upon this earth. It was not always routine for grandparents and grandchildren to gather in front of the television to wield plastic sticks and pretend to bowl.

Instead, the Wii U feels like an accommodation to the new mode of living that Apple's iPhone and iPad have introduced. That lifestyle was evoked by a New Yorker cover this summer that featured family members posing for a beach vacation snapshot while engrossed in their personal devices.

The Wii U, which is to be released on Sunday, works with the motion-control remotes you probably already own from the original Wii, and it plays most of the original games. What's new - beyond high-definition graphics and some Internet-enabled features that won't be turned on until Sunday - is the Wii U GamePad, a roughly 10-by-5-inch touch-screen controller. With a six-inch display surrounded by thumbsticks, buttons and triggers, the GamePad is the offspring of an iPad Mini and a traditional video game controller.

In its marketing buildup to the Wii U introduction, Nintendo emphasized the benefits of two-screen gaming, particularly competitions in which the player with the GamePad sees something different from what the other players watch on the television. In so doing, Nintendo played down a simpler concept, one more easily understood by casual players and Apple fans: the touch screen.

By merging touch-screen gaming with a video game system that is designed to live next to your TV set rather than be carried around in your pocket or purse, Nintendo is not merely acceding to the cultural tide. It is also trying - valiantly, perhaps quixotically - to stem it. After creating a world in which we are no longer bowling alone (because we are all Wii-bowling together), Nintendo is seeking to invent a new way for us to commune with our screens. The company's hope is that the Wii U will bring families together in their living rooms for touch-screen gaming rather than leave them isolated with their tablets and smartphones.

Touch has always been a part of gaming, of course, because the physical interaction between player and device is central to the medium. But in recent years the growing complexity of the standard controller has become an obstacle for new players who did not grow up adapting to each iteration: the shift from one button to two buttons to four, or from one joystick to a directional pad to two thumbsticks and a directional pad - not to mention triggers and bumpers and start and select buttons. Easy, right?

Simplicity was a large part of the broad appeal of the first Wii, and though playing with the Wii U is not quite as uncomplicated as standing up and waving your arms around, the touch screen is straightforward compared with the controllers used with an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3. Selecting songs in Sing Party, a karaoke game published by Nintendo, is done by swiping through tiles on the GamePad's touch screen and then tapping the song you want. The same goes for Ubisoft's Just Dance 4, with the added wrinkle that a player can use the touch screen to choose dance moves, midsong, for the other players to perform.

In Balloon Trip Breeze, one of the mini-games bundled on the Nintendo Land anthology that comes with the $350 Wii U deluxe edition, the player uses a stylus to make quick swipes - familiar to anyone who has played Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja - to make a character pop balloons on the television. In Takamaru's Ninja Castle, another Nintendo Land game, similar swipes hurl martial arts stars at cartoonish cutouts. In Pikmin Adventure, from the same disc, enemies are defeated by tapping on them as they appear on the GamePad screen. In Yoshi's Fruit Cart players scrawl a path on the touch screen and then watch a character follow it on television.

The touch screen also allows the GamePad to morph swiftly into a TV remote control; you can adjust the volume on your set or quickly check the score of a football game without reaching for a separate device. And if you like what you see on cable, or if you want to allow someone else to watch TV in the same room, you can switch from playing a game of New Super Mario Bros. U on television to watching it unfold on your GamePad.

As that last trick indicates, the GamePad is more than just a touch screen, and Nintendo Land provides a sketch of other possibilities. The camera inside the GamePad is used in the game Octopus Dance to project the player's genuine, human face onto the television, a merger of the virtual with the corporeal that goes by the name "augmented reality."

Lightly blowing into the GamePad's microphone in Donkey Kong's Crash Course turns a windmill that moves a cart skyward. The GamePad can be used as a viewfinder in Metroid Blast and the Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest to target enemies for destruction. And in some other Nintendo Land games, characters can be moved by turning or tilting or lifting the GamePad into the air, another technique borrowed from mobile and tablet gaming.

Equally promising, if not more so, are the possibilities the GamePad presents for intensive, single-player gaming. In Ubisoft's ZombiU, the GamePad transforms, if not eliminates, some of the metaphors gamers are accustomed to: The map is no longer a tiny icon in the lower-right corner of your television, nor a menu that must be reached by punching a sequence of buttons. It is something you hold in your hands and look down at, something that draws your attention away from the world (of zombies) around you.

Your inventory - the items you carry - also becomes less abstract as you peer into your GamePad to see what's in your backpack and then physically move, say, a pistol into your hand by sliding it with your finger into an open slot. Similarly, digging through lockers, file cabinets and suitcases in the game world becomes closer to a genuine interaction.

Then again, when the first Wii console felt new, as with Microsoft's Kinect more recently, many decreed that motion controls would be swiftly and widely integrated into long, narrative games. Surely the intuitive interface of Wii Sports would be merged with storytelling ambition. By and large, that didn't happen. So, spoiler alert: I have no idea what the Wii U augurs, or whether it will permanently alter how we play, alone or together.

Smartphone use increases security risks

           Modern smartphones are becoming technologically more advance and so does the latest security threats and risks.Though all mobile os, including android ,are trying to be accurate and block all the loopholes ; but there are always some drawbacks, as complication arises.So programmers have to balance between them. Functionality and security are inverse to each other.It means that if a system is supposed to be functionally better, then it's security is not that much perfect.Programmers have to balance between them, they have consider both functionality and security. So, there always exists some security loopholes.

         1. Cyber criminals are using phony applications and messages to hijack mobile.
         2.Open Wi-fi increases the security risks.
         3.Android and windows devices are reported that often targeted by spyware, including one system called FinFisher, capable of taking a mobile device, or Loozfon, "an information-stealing piece of malware."
         4.Some fraudsters are using Twitter ads offering special discounts for popular gifts, linking to malicious software.
         5.Be careful what you do on public Wi-Fi networks especially when you're shopping. Do not expose passwords, account numbers or credit card information unless you are certain that you are on a secure connection.
       So, you have to use secure wi-fi and download apps for trusted website.