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Symbian Experimenting with the Atom

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:48:55 -0500

How do blokes at the S60 on Symbian Consumer Operations (SOSCO) contend with monotony that usually plagues people at workplaces with such unimaginative names? They savagely slaughter time through such wild undertakings as the porting of Symbian to an off-the-shelf Atom-based motherboard – please do try that at home.

“ A few of the bright and capable guys in the SOSCO (S60 on Symbian Customer Operations) team have Symbian compiling via GCC and now running on an off the shelf Atom based motherboard from Intel,” Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, wrote in a blog post.

Williams wrote that the “responsiveness of the UI and upper application layers” impressed him the most. Williams’ bluster apart, the screenshots are rather vapid.

Mass Effect

Norman Chan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:23:06 -0500

Fans of Star Wars and Star Trek finally have a role-playing game that’s worthy of their love. Mass Effect takes the most compelling themes and ideas of both franchises and mind-melds them into one of the best science fiction games we’ve ever played.

Character feats like Lift and Warp let you throw enemies off-guard. Just don't call them Force powers

After fleshing out our digital avatar with the robust character customization engine (we created a bad-ass female war hero), we dived into an engaging story that put the fate of the galaxy in our hands.

The primary quest charged us with investigating the reemergence of a long-lost race of machines that wiped out an entire species of advanced aliens 50,000 years ago. Through the 20-hour campaign, we explored numerous planets, resolved alien conspiracies, and forged relationships with a believable cast of NPC allies.

Mass Effect’s rich selection of side quests helps flesh out the main story, and we loved the innovative conversation system. Dialogue trees are presented in an intuitive radial selection circle that lets us steer conversations in a plethora of directions depending on the tone of our language—all the characters are amazingly voice-acted as well.

When talking couldn’t get the job done, we turned to the fast-paced combat system, which actually requires some skill. Aiming with a mouse helped us survive firefights, and the newly designed PC combat interface is much better than the Xbox 360 version’s. It’s too bad the inventory system hasn’t been improved—rifling through hundreds of weapon upgrades in the equipment menu is a drag.

But we forgot about the game’s little annoyances after being immersed in the gorgeous high-resolution graphics—Mass Effect runs smoothly at 2560x1600 resolution (though turning off the “film grain” option is recommended).
Mass Effect’s epic story is both moving and fulfilling; the game’s universe is rich with details and feels infused with life. We can’t wait for the inevitable sequel. –norman chan

Assassin's Creed

Norman Chan — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:24:31 -0500

The death-defying urban acrobatics of free running—seen recently on the big screen in the Casino Royale remake, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Live Free or Die Hard—are replicated to great effect in Assassin’s Creed, an action-adventure console port that puts you in the nimble shoes of a 12th-century assassin. Light feet and tremendous upper-body strength, rather than overwhelming firepower, are your greatest assets as you scale walls and barrel across rooftops in one of the most refreshing games we’ve played.

As the assassin Altair, you are charged with executing nine high-profile targets spread across three Middle Eastern metropolises. Hunting down these ruthless slave traders and hedonistic rulers is no easy task—you must first complete a series of mini-quests to acquire information about your target. Eavesdropping and pick-pocketing missions test your patience and ability to blend into dense crowds, while eliminating tower guards and racing across rooftops challenge your ability to vault across the tops of cities with finesse.

We were entranced by the free-running aspect of the game and spent hours exploring the highly detailed open world. Climbing the tallest peaks of each city let us survey breathtaking vistas—gorgeous visuals justify the game’s high system requirements. Mouse and keyboard control let us deftly navigate the world with ease, but we found the gamepad to be more intuitive when complicated sword fighting was required. The story—an unraveling conspiracy—featured enough twists to keep us interested but became secondary to the unrelenting action.

It’s not often that we come across a game that not only introduces revolutionary gameplay mechanics but does so without compromising a sense of fun. Assassin’s Creed does for action-platformers what Grand Theft Auto III did for driving games—infuses a wondrous sense of exploration and open-endedness into the genre. We can’t help but admire its ambitious design and adore its killer execution.

Game Theory: Rainbow 5 1/2

Thomas McDonald — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:56:22 -0500

OK, so maybe I got this whole “glorious future of console/PC convergence” a little wrong. I still think we’ll see games that can be played on either PC or the Xbox-whatever, and this means more big-budget games for an increasingly underserviced PC market. It’s the “glorious” part that’s beginning to worry me, and the cause of this latest concern is Rainbow Six: Vegas.

Don’t get me wrong. R6 Vegas is a boffo bit of action gaming. I played it through on Xbox 360 because, well, all the cool kids hang out there, since PC ports generally hit later than the console versions of games. I like R6 Vegas a lot, even though it largely re-creates the Rainbow Six PC experience I loved, sans everything I love about Rainbow Six.

This is a splashy new game for an impatient new generation, and the slow, methodical, simulation-style uber-realism that defined the series had an anchor tied to its thoughtful bits and heaved overboard, with only a trail of bubbles and some fond memories to mark its passing. Gone are those beloved tactical planning sessions, where you map routes through hostile territory and issue go-codes to remote team members. Gone also are “real” team members who can get terminally ventilated thanks to the smallest miscalculation in your planning.

We saw some of these changes in the PC port of R6: Lockdown but assumed they were merely a temporary aberration, the result of a console incarnation migrating to PC. There was some reason to hope for a deeper R6: Vegas PC experience. When Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter finally made it to the PC, it was a bigger, deeper, more challenging game than the Xbox version.

The planning sessions and team dynamics of the original R6 might have seemed like fusty leftovers for strat geeks, but they marked something new and original on the PC gaming scene in 1998. The hardcore tactical shooter is like a flight sim with legs, and the genre now looks to be going the way of the flight sim. Perhaps only a small percentage of players actually relished the complex elements that defined the series on PC, but that percentage was loyal, hardcore, dedicated. They were the true believers who spread the word about the original Rainbow Six, and it would be a mistake for developers to pitch them overboard.