Review
Journey Review (PS3)
April 14, 2012
Thatgamecompany is back with their third game, Journey, which sees the player travel across a strange and beautiful land to their ultimate destination, with other real players accompanying them along the way. While the gameplay and visuals are unique, the ethos and atmosphere behind Journey harks back to the wonderful worlds of both flOw and Flower. And much like its predecessors, exposition is a visual experience, left for the player to interpret.
The player is given control of a small, robed and hooded figure who can run, jump and slide and that’s about it. Beautiful in its simplicity, the game naturally introduces its salient features and mechanics through player discovery. Anyone seeking a complex platforming system and an arsenal of special moves may be disappointed because that is the very antithesis of Journey.
Continue reading »Joe Danger: Special Edition Review (Xbox 360)
March 3, 2012
Finally, I hear some of you say. It was only 18 months ago that Joe Danger was released on the PSN so it’s good to see its release on Xbox LIVE. I have to be honest and say I’d only played a little bit of the game on the PSN and enjoyed what I saw. So I was definitely interested in getting my hands on it again when I heard the Special Edition was being released on Xbox LIVE.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Review (PS3)
February 15, 2012
Naughty Dog have really set the bar with the Uncharted franchise, starting with Drake’s Fortune and the critically acclaimed sequel in the form of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The storylines are like Hollywood blockbusters and the gameplay is second to none. So people were yet again expecting something special with Drake’s Deception. But have Naughty Dog been able to deliver yet another classic?
Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 Speakers Review
January 30, 2012
If you’ve been reading my posts over the past few years on a regular basis, you’ll know by know that I’m a self confessed audiophile. My iTunes library is full of lossless tracks that I’ve ripped from my growing CD collection (yes, until I can download music losslessly, I will continue to buy CDs and vinyls), but until now I haven’t had a truly great pair of speakers that can do all of those tracks justice.
The Bowers and Wilkins MM-1s caught my eye a few months back, with their promise of great sound and technology taken from their studio speakers, not to mention the incredible design work that is clearly present in every aspect of the units.
Continue reading »HTC Sensation XL With Beats Audio Review
January 27, 2012
When I took a look at the original HTC Sensation last summer, I was left impressed by its qHD display and the speed at which the phone carried out tasks, thanks in no small part to its 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who enjoyed using it either, as it’s proved popular enough for HTC to partner with Beats Audio and release the new HTC Sensation XL with Beats earphones bundled in.
After setting the bar so high with the original model, though, can the Sensation XL live up to its name? Let’s take a closer look and find out!
Continue reading »Boxee 1.5 For Windows, Mac And Linux Review
January 7, 2012
I’m a huge fan of Boxee’s media centre software, having used it for three years now. Since the release of the Boxee Box in 2010, however, development of the PC version has suffered from a lack of support and updates.
We’ve been promised Boxee 1.0, the same version that originally shipped on the Boxee Box, for over a year now, but it turns out that all this time the Boxee team was hard at work creating Boxee 1.5 for the PC instead, bringing it right in line with the software that’s currently available on the set top box. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this update is the last that we’ll see Boxee ship for the PC, as the company is now focusing all of its resources on the Boxee Box instead, which you can’t really blame them for as that’s where the revenue is. So is Boxee 1.5 for PC the grand finale that we’ve all been waiting for, or is it an anti-climax to compete with LOST’s finale? Let’s take a look and find out!
Continue reading »Invisor For Mac Review
January 4, 2012
I really dislike optical media. This partly stems from the fact that I am incredibly clumsy and tend to have a tech-related accident at least three times a week, and it also stems from the amount of space that optical media takes in cupboards and on shelves and underneath televisions. You get the idea.
So for any one of the reasons listed above, I do my best to keep optical media at a minimum. To ensure I don’t compromise on quality, a big part of this effort involves remuxing (ripping, without compression) my blu-ray discs with MakeMKV whilst keeping the original video and audio tracks uncompressed and at the best quality possible.
Continue reading »Sparrow 1.5 For Mac Review
January 4, 2012
The last time we looked at Sparrow for the Mac, it was fresh off its original release and creating quite a bit of buzz on various blogs and social networks. It takes a lot of good design work to take email down to a Twitter sized client but the Sparrow team managed it well, creating an application that was as minimalist as possible whilst doing a lot of the things a full sized client such as Mail or Postbox could do.
Despite this, there were a few key features missing from Sparrow when it first launched, and the user interface had a tendency to be a little too simple at times. With this in mind, the Sparrow team has just updated the application to version 1.5 and there are a number of new features well worth checking out, so let’s get to it!
Continue reading »Nokia Lumia 800 Review
January 3, 2012
After a much hyped launch, many Windows Phone 7 devices saw underwhelming sales figures in their first year on the market. With the inability to apply custom skins and unique features to devices, manufacturers such as HTC have so far failed to turn Microsoft’s new mobile operating system into the storming success as they have done with Android, but that hasn’t stopped Nokia from going all in with Windows Phone.
Following a lacklustre performance from Symbian devices up against competitors such as the iPhone, Nokia certainly needs to side with the right software provider for their latest generation of smartphones, and Microsoft seemed like the only logical choice outside of Google’s Android, which the Finnish company seems reluctant to consider.
The first flagship Windows Phone 7 device to come out of Nokia is the Lumia 800, which is available on Three here in the UK. With Nokia’s hardware and Microsoft’s software this phone should blow the competition away, but does it live up to expectations or fall flat on its face? Let’s take a closer look…
Continue reading »Sky Sports News iPad App (2012) Review
January 3, 2012
With the current football season well under way and an exciting FA Cup weekend fast approaching, BSkyB has launched a brand new Sky Sports app for the iPad, which takes a lot of cues from the existing Sky News app that was released on the iPad in the Spring of last year.
Curiously, the old Sky Sports News app which is compatible with both the iPhone and iPad has remained on the App Store, with this new version simply being called “Sky Sports News for iPad” in the App Store. Not to bother, we’ve gotten around that particular confusion and installed the app so that you can see all the good and bad things that it has to offer!
Continue reading »
