Archive for February, 2011
Step inside your gaming persona for a bit and think about this: what do you require out of a laptop designed for gaming? Is it the internal hardware? Is it the external design? Is it the added features and functionality it provides?
On the design part, lots of companies produce laptops with key design characteristics that inspire you to think about extreme things.
Alienware is such a company and their gaming laptop product line is designed to look more like really fast planes, rather than laptops. They also include illuminated keyboards with their laptops to make the design stand out from the crowd even more.
ASUS and Toshiba use the same strategy and include sleek, almost aerodynamic, design and highlights in their gaming laptops product line.
Some companies go that extra mile and include a lot of added connectivity options to their laptops so the average gamer isn’t constrained anymore to just playing games, but now has the option of connecting to the internet and keeping in touch with gamers alike.
Having accomplished great external designs, the real battle starts behind the scenes, under the laptop case, on the component level. There are no two laptops alike, and this is far truer in the case of gaming laptops, since every company focuses on key aspects while trying to keep their price requirements at bay so more gamers can afford the extra spec.
So what do you demand from your gaming laptop? Would you like to crank up the visual quality settings to ultra-high? Then you’ll need to afford the extra buck, since gaming laptops which can do that usually come equipped with more than one graphics card and this type of configuration costs quite a lot.
Dungeons and Dragons. These three words bring many thoughts to many different people. People think about nerds, geeks, dorks. Others think of fun, adventurous, stimulating. Some people think of live action role playing (LARPing). The bottom line is that Dungeons and Dragons has been around for quite some time, and has entertained millions of people around the world due to its open world, open imagination based game. Dungeons and Dragons has expanded into a multi-billion dollar idea that has spawned many copies of the D20 system.
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) was first published in 1974. The game quickly grew in popularity and the demand for the basic book sky-rocketed. D&D is a D20 system. D20 systems are role-playing games where each player has a character sheet with statistics, equipment, spells, race, age, class, and other abilities. Players play on either a mat or some other form of board with which the Dungeon Master (DM) molds his story for the players enjoyment. It is called a D20 system because most actions require the player to roll a 20 sided die. D stands for die, 20 the number of sides on the die. In D&D the D20 is used to attack, make saving throws to avoid spell damage, or to use an ability such as stealth or intimidation. Damage rolls on successful attack rolls usually use D6, D8, D10, or D12s. The main focus players have in their characters are the abilities and attacks they can perform. Abilities and attacks depend greatly upon the class of the character.
With Madden 2012 coming out on August 30th, 2011 gamers everywhere are trying to prepare to become the best they can in football video games. There are so many madden 12 tips and strategies that you will need to know in order to compete against the best competition online and in franchise mode. A common practice among active madden players is to buy madden 12 ebooks so that you get the upperhand on your opponents by getting help straight from professional gamers.
These madden strategy guides will give you the best plays on both offense and defense in an easy to understand format so that you can take them online with any of the 32 teams available and dominate other players. One of the best things about becoming skilled in madden 2012 is that you can win money by competing in the various tournaments throughout the United States. Millions of passionate fans buy the madden nfl series every year from major retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Amazon but very few of those people get the upper hand by also buying a premium guide.
All of the madden-school strategy guides include full hd videos as well as complex written breakdowns and is presented to you in a secure digital ebook format. You will then be able to take the information that you get from the guides and use a poor madden 12 team and compete with teams such as the reigning super bowl champion, Green Bay Packers. The blitzes and coverages in the defensive strategy guides will leave your opponent confused and befuddled. You can act like you are the coach of your favorite NFL franchise and lead your team to a conference championship and maybe even a birth in the 2012 NFL Superbowl. The offensive sections of the tips shows you exactly what plays you will want to call and when it is best to call those plays. You will be taught how to properly read the defense and the coverages that they are in. Best of all, you aren’t given a simple list of good plays. A madden 12 strategy guide will include schemes and setups to go along with all of the information presented to you.
After spending over a decade in development, Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released to a public eager to see the return of one of gaming’s greatest heroes. Hardcore Duke Nukem fans will likely enjoy the game’s crude sense of humor, as their hero tosses back beers, visits the strip club, and delivers enough one-liners to make Bruce Campbell proud. The game does an adequate job in capturing the funhouse mirror feel of Duke Nukem’s world- a world chock full of innuendo, and enough rude and crude jokes and advertisements to keep fans of the South Park style of humor giggling. Having Duke bench press 600 pounds, hit a high score in his own “Balls of Steel” pinball machine, admire himself in the mirror, and many other activities all add a maximum bonus to Duke’s health or “ego” meter, which functions much like the shield in Halo. While these “ego” boosting activities are good for a few laughs, they aren’t really given at a set pace and end up feeling random and out of place.
Sadly, this is where the good aspects of Duke Nukem Forever end. Unfortunately, it seems that the painfully long development cycle seems to be one of the game’s biggest problems, as much of it feels like it should have been released 10 years ago. Gamers wanting the next big FPS to tide them over until Modern Warfare 3 or the next Gears of War get released might want to skip this one, as this game plays much like an old school PC shooter with a few modern gaming concepts awkwardly tacked onto it.
El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron exudes all that is good regarding Japanese gaming. From the wild creative art style to its fast paced Devil May Cry/ Bayonetta esque gameplay. El Shaddai of the Metatron definitely has a identity of its own when talking about Japanese action videogames. The demo itself was good and lasted plenty of time giving the gamer a good idea of what to expect from the full retail game.
You take the role of protagonist Enoch in this action beat em up whose ultimate goal i never had a chance figured out. A few things are apparent however, Enoch can take enemies weapons from them and use them with his powers creating powerful attacks. There are items, weapons and collectibles to be had in the demo. Flame of Power and Light of the Blessing are defense and health items Enoch collects as he defeats enemies. I played the demo on my Playstation 3 and the Duel Shock 3 layout is as follows: L1-steal weapons, LS-move, Square-attack, R1-guard and X-jump. The controls are good but not in the same ballpark as say a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. I did like the controls during the 2D section jumping etc.
The demo of El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron takes you to a beautiful artistically designed world but not only in 3D but also 2D. I cannot emphasize how unique the visuals are in this game. The only downside graphically regarding this game would be the facial detail during cutscenes. Otherwise this game has real pleasing art design thats unforgettable. The enemies looked similar to Enoch with names like, Ezeka-H or Ezeka-Z etc. I know, kinda weird names but Japanese developed videogames has always had a charming quirkiness about them to western eyes. As Enoch takes damage his armor is ripped from him. The difficulty was challenging especially the boss battles. And yes, i actually had it on the easy difficulty settings.