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Metro Last Light Gameplay Demo
While I still need to write up my impressions of Metro 2033 the game and the book, which I finished a short while ago, here’s a trailer for Metro Last Light. Last Light is a sequel and picks off where the first game finished (don’t worry, this post is spoiler free!) with you playing as Artyom again.
iOS Notifications
I’ve had one major gripe with iOS since a while back – the handling of notifications. There are various concepts floating about and there are even implemented solutions, provided your device is jailbroken. I still wonder, why haven’t Apple addressed this yet? I wouldn’t be surprised if they have something being worked on in the background – as always, Apple are all about trying to release something once they feel it’s ready and done correctly (cut, copy and paste anyone?). It’s just a real shame that it’s been this long and this far into iOS’s life that we still don’t have any real way of managing notifications.
A designer has made a pretty nice mock up of how they’d love to see notifications. I’d urge you to follow the link and watch the video, since it does look pretty cool. Apple, pretty please?
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/03/designer-pitches-concept-for-usable-ios-notifications-in-video/
Streets of Rage Remake
Now this is insane. I remember playing Streets of Rage ages ago at friend’s houses on the Sega Mega Drive. What I didn’t know was that a group of fans started remaking the game in 2003, and 8 years later have completed a mind-blowing remake!
I’ll be downloading this myself very soon to try it out, but read more here.
Download can be found through:
http://www.bombergames.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1012
Update: Sadly, Sega has since had this remake pulled to protect their intellectual property rights. A real shame for those who didn’t get the chance to download it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still floating around online here and there however…
BioShock, Borderlands, CoD: Modern Warfare all on Mac App Store
Today was the first time in a while that I sat down to actually go on my Mac and do something useful. I started off by browsing the App Store a bit – I still hadn’t done that since the release of the App Store earlier this year. I was greeted with BioShock on the front page, and after delving deeper, I found Borderlands and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare!
The disappointing thing about this however, are the prices for each of the games. BioShock is £24 while Borderlands and Modern Warfare are £30 each. I understand that this isn’t a direct release of the original games, but a port by Feral Interactive. However, having such high price points for games that are pretty old doesn’t help much for gaming on the Mac. It’s a shame that games like these, as top class as they are, are still so expensive. Regardless, they are available on the Mac now.
No more VLC for iOS
VLC Media Player is arguably the best media player out there thanks to its compatibility with a variety of different media files. It’s also available across all operating systems – Windows, Mac and Linux. An iOS version was released a while ago and there was some debate about the legitimacy of it, considering it allowed users to play any file type. Today, finally, it has been pulled from the App Store, which is sad news in my opinion. Luckily, I did download the app and have it, so I can continue using it, however if anyone now wants to get it they’ll be unable to do so. It’s a sad day, VLC Media Player allowed any media file to be transferred to the iPhone and played.
Mirror’s Edge for iPhone/iPod Free Today
Part of the 12 Days of Christmas app for iPhone, Mirror’s Edge is free today so be sure to pick it up for download while you still can!
Day 2: Steam disappointment, Burnout fun, GFW blunders
So second day of my precious holiday and boy, the time is flying by! I can’t actually believe the weekend, and Christmas Day & Boxing Day have gone by so quickly. I didn’t even watch any of the Christmas TV programmes, although I have been informed that there wasn’t anything special on anyway. I’m not much of a TV person as it is, I find that 99% of it is junk.
First of all, Steam sales. Today was a bit of a disappointment. Rather than put out new daily sales, they decided to put a top deals one up instead. So for people who missed out on particular deals such as Witcher, Borderlands, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and others, here’s your chance to pick them up. Oh and Mass Effect (1&2) is there as well. I was tempted by ME, however with the huge backlog of games to play, I decided I don’t need to replay ME at this point in time. Plus I do already own both Collector Editions on 360.
With Steam sales aside, one game that I have been playing and enjoying is Burnout Paradise. I’ve always enjoyed Burnout games since the first PlayStation, and I remember playing it tons on the PSP. Burnout Paradise runs like a charm on my Alienware M11x, and what’s even better is that I can plug it into the 32″ HD TV that’s wall mounted, and enjoy a fantastic experience with an XBox 360 controller. Now you may ask why didn’t I just buy it for 360? Well I only got it for about £3 on Steam anyway, and secondly I can play it anytime on my laptop at great frame rates. It’s an awesome to just jump into and play for short bursts, mash up some cars and have a race through the city and hills.
I also bought Batman: Arkham Asylum off Steam, again for about £3. After downloading it (about 8gb) and then starting it up, I found myself encountering Games for Windows setting itself up. Not only that, but after signing in with my Live account, it started updating with the game at the menu screen in the background. I couldn’t so anything with the menu screen however, I just had to wait for the update. Along with other installations from GFW. Then it restarted the game and guess what, another update! Surely GFW can do this in the background as it was updating it’s own client rather than the game. It’s a pretty drawn out process that’s unnecessary and a bit frustrating.
That’s all for today though. I’m going to try make some more progress with Metro 2033 tomorrow since I’m just over the halfway point in that. Let’s see how it goes!
Steam for Mac Update
The first Wednesday has hit since the launch of Steam for Mac, and as promised, Valve has put out some games. Probably not as big as you’d be hoping, but they are cross-platform multiplayer titles with Killing Floor, Altitude and Madballs in Babo: Invasion.
Edit – Here’s the list of new games:
Madballs in Babo: Invasion
Killing Floor
Altitude
Europa Universalis 3
Hearts of Iron 3
Sam & Max Season 2
Sam & Max Season 3 – Ep. 2
Chains
Simplz Zoo
Caster
Eschalon Book 1
Windosill
iPad – Apple’s Latest Creation
iPad, the name of Apple’s latest creation, is a tablet. A touchscreen device, which is essentially a large iPod. There are plenty of websites out there with the specifications of the product, so I won’t bother going into detail regarding that. Instead, I’ll give my views on it.
The iPad is a 10″ tablet screen. Steve Jobs described it as something “magical” when he was introducing this new product. He also said that he wanted to address the gap between iPods and MacBooks, and felt netbooks did not really address it. Hence, we have the iPad.
Quite frankly, the iPad is a heap of disappointment. When I say it’s a large iPod, it really is just that. It does not contain Mac OS X, but rather the same interface as the iPhone or iPod Touch. Therefore, you can only run one application at a time, and you’re extremely limited with what you can do. That means no plugging USB devices in and multi-tasking. There’s also a lack of webcam or any camera on the device.
So what exactly are Apple aiming for with the iPad? They feel they can appeal to people who read eBooks a lot. And also to people who want to be able to browse the Internet on the go, as some models have a 3G modem built-in. The price plan for these in the USA seem somewhat baffling, $15 for 250MB bandwidth? 250MB bandwidth is miniscule, although it’s $30 for unlimited. I’m sure there is some fair usage policy with that.
So on the whole, no multi-tasking, same iPhone/iPod Touch interface, a few new applications (office suite available, but for purchase through App Store), native support for all existing applications, mobile Internet. That’s the iPad.
I just hope in the future they can put Mac OS X onto it.
Mass Effect Galaxy Version 1.1
A new version of ME Galaxy has been released yesterday, or the day before, for the iPhone/iPod. This version improves stability, and boy does it show.
I previously blogged about how the game is completely unplayable on the first generation iPhone. This update fixes that, and also decreases the horrendous loading times, making this game somewhat playable.
It is still much better on the second generation iPod simply due to the faster processor.
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