A New Look

Well…I had a good friend of mine who likes to design things help make a new banner for my blog. Check it out. Tell me what you think. It shall be added soon.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t243/damson_rhee/Banners%20and%20Avatars/LBbanner.gif

2009 Holiday Console Rundown

If you don’t know by now, I’ll go ahead and let you know: I love technology. I’m the biggest techno-geek I know. I have so many gizmos and gadgets; I don’t always know what to do with them all. I’m also a gamer. I’ve played just about every console in existence. The recent incarnations are from the big three: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. They each have a console that has been out for two years now, and you parents out there are probably wondering which one(s) you should get for your kids, right? Well, here’s your rundown of what to expect from each one. It’s Technically Speaking’s Holiday Console Rundown special.

Sony PlayStation 3

The Good

• Ready to go out of the box.
• Able to play in 1080P
• Still the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market
• Comes with composite cables
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is $20
• Uncharted 2
• Finally have some good titles to carry it through the holiday
• The PS3 slim is finally out
• PSN is free
• A new Ratchet & Clank game
• Accepts all media card types, so you can view your pictures and videos on your PS3
• Hardcore and episodic gamers get their egos stroked
• You can surf the Web using wifi or Ethernet

The Bad

• Price for the console is still $299
• It’s a huge hulking piece of machinery
• No backwards compatibility anymore (sorry, PS2 owners, you got screwed here)
• STILL no streaming video or movie service
• Games are Blu-rays, which makes them $60 a pop
• Load times in-game are longer than other consoles, so kids will probably die of boredom from waiting for a level to load
• The SIXAXIS system
• Not many games for players under the age of 17
• PSN is buggy and clunky
• Still no Kingdom Hearts 3
• Casual gamers still get a giant middle finger

The Games

All games mentioned are out now, unless otherwise noted

• Gran Turismo 5 (March 2010)
• Uncharted 2
• Assassin’s Creed 2 (November 17^th)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 (November 10^th)
• Tekken 6
• Fallout 3
• God of War 3 (March 2010)
• MAG (January 26^th, 2010)
• Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots
• Burnout Paradise
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time

Nintendo Wii

The Good

• Casual gamers rejoice
• Great for little kids and (a few) big kids alike
• Wii Motion Plus is actually an improvement
• A lot of titles are out for it
• Backwards compatible with GameCube games
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Up to 4 players can play at once
• Online play is free
• Price point at $199
• Games are priced around $30
• You can buy other Nintendo and Sega titles from the online store on the console
• A few games are finally out for older gamers
• Quick load times
• Many of the games have some replay value to them
• Rayman: Raving Rabbids
• You can surf the Internet using wifi in your house (it uses Opera’s browser)

The Bad

• The games for older/hardcore gamers phone it in hardcore
• A giant middle finger to hardcore gamers
• Hard drive on the console is a lot smaller than the other systems out
• No DVD player
• No HD gameplay
• Few games use Wii Motion Plus
• Wii Sports Resort
• Wii Fit
• Your kids will probably be bored of it once the holiday season ends
• The endless gimmicks and peripherals that were made for it
• Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

The Games

All games mentioned are out now, unless otherwise noted

• Super Mario Galaxy 2 (February 10^th, 2010)
• Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
• Wii Sports Resort
• Wii Fit
• Wii Play
• Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii (November 15^th, 2009)
• Red Steel 2 (February 16^th, 2010)

Microsoft Xbox 360

The Good

• A HUGE online community in Xbox LIVE
• Halo 3
• Halo 3: ODST’s Firefight mode
• Rock Band 2
• You can stream and rent movies from Netflix right on your console
• Customizable avatars
• Lots of games for lots of age groups
• You can finally control your DVD playback with the controller
• A wireless controller comes with certain consoles
• Lots of downloadable content in the Marketplace for games
• Complete arcade market for casual games and new game developers
• ‘Splosion Man
• The Achievements you can get from games
• Facebook and Twitter integration will soon be added

The Bad

• Project Natal is still months (or a year or more) away
• Microsoft thinks you’re made of money
• Three levels of consoles (Arcade, Plus, and Elite)
• Many games are still in the $39-$45 range
• No Blu-ray playback
• Even with the Elite console, you still have to buy and HDMI cable
• The Xbox LIVE gaming community
• You have to pay for Xbox LIVE Gold member status to get pretty much anything cool out of the console
• No free online play
• The Red Ring of Death problem is still around
• Too much emphasis on multiplayer in almost every game
• No Internet surfing capability
• You have to buy the 360 Elite to enjoy most of the perks

The Games

All games mentioned are out now, unless otherwise noted

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 (November 10^th)
• Left 4 Dead 2 (November 17^th)
• Lego Rock Band
• The Saboteur (December 8^th)
• Burnout Paradise
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
• Halo 3
• Halo 3: ODST

Well, out of all the good and bad in each of the consoles, I made my decision on which console I recommend for this holiday season. The winner is:

Xbox 360

Because of the replay value most of the games have, I recommend this console. Also, because multiplayer is easy to connect to, ready to go, and encouraged in most of the games, this console gets my nod. Though it doesn’t have the kiddie games like the Wii or the capabilities to play Blu-rays like the PS3, the games on the 360 look fantastic (when played at full resolution). Once again, the replay value with them is worth it alone. I’ve played through Halo 3 a few times now, and I have a different experience each time. Microsoft did a good job with their console this year. They really did do what they set out to do, make a great entertainment console. The Netflix integration is probably the biggest selling point of this console for me. It’s the only one that has this kind of capability at all. Though the 360 isn’t geared toward you soccer moms out there, it does have something for everyone, and is probably the best buy out there for this holiday season (if you’re willing to spend a few bucks, of course).

There’s An App for That: Social Networking

These apps are involved with social networking or instant messaging of some sort. I decided last minute to take out the Twitter clients and make them their own edition. That will be up shortly…or whenever I get a free minute. Anyways, here ya go.

• Yahoo! Instant Messenger (YIM) – This app, as the name implies is for using YIM. My extended usage of this app has lent me a review of “schizophrenic”. I have a major love-hate relationship with this app. I love the app because I can make conversations take place with the landscape keyboard, it’s very easy to use, and you can still use most of the YIM emoticons. I hate it because some conversations take FOREVER to load, even if they are only one or 2 messages long. In addition, the actual connection time to the app is the equivalent to waiting for the buss when the bullet train passes you by. I love the ability to quickly add new contacts (or edit old ones) on the fly, but I hate the fact I can’t change my freaking avatar picture to something else. I like that I can view my contacts as their screen names or as their contact information names, but I hate that YIM gets to choose for itself and randomly decides for me sometimes when I start up. I love the push messaging when not in the app, but I hate the freaking sound the push messages make when an IM is received. It’s like for every step they take forward, they take one more back.  Overall, this is a good app to have if you’re a veteran to the YIM program. It does its job, and does it well, even if it has some shortcomings. Price: Free.
• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) – This is the old standby for everyone who has used an IM client before. AIM is what you would expect it to be…..AIM. No real bells and whistles here other than the push notifications when not in the app. They just recently added a “Lifestream” element to it that displays status updates to your contacts much like the Feed View in Facebook. Other than that, it’s just AIM. It loads quickly, allows you to be logged in for extended periods of time (up to 24 hours) without being logged out, and lets you adjust your information. It even lets you change your avatar picture to a picture on your iPhone if you want. Price: Free. Also available: Ad-free version with the ability to have landscape IM conversations. Price: $2.99.
• ICQ – The ICQ client app is just what it sounds like, a client that lets you use your ICQ instant messaging tag to communicate to your friends online. Once again, no bells and whistles here. It also comes with push notifications and sounds. You can create room with multiple users on it (which is a plus over YIM and AIM), and that’s the frill. I’ve only had limited usage with it, so if anyone has used it more, let me know your experience. Price: Free.
• Facebook – This app is Facebook’s opus to the iPhone (and iPod Touch) world. This app lets you do almost everything you can do with the full version on your computer, minus many of the frills. They have streamlined the whole Facebook experience down to the essentials. Once plus over the website is that you can drag your favorite friends’ pages (or pages you’re a fan of) to a separate page for quick viewing access. You can do everything with the Facebook app that you can on the website (except post in the “Links” section). My problems with this app are that it is majorly broken. Before they released their last update, Java pages used to make the app crash worse than a 16 year old at a party. Even with it, the app can slow down majorly if there is a link to a Java page or to yet another random (not to mention pointless) Facebook website application. There were also some quirks I had with the reading of messages and mail within the app. I’d read a message, and it would be marked as read, yet, when I open the app back up later, it doesn’t say it’s been read. It comes up as new……WTF? Another problem that I saw is that there is no push notification or badge updates with the Notification system. You could have 5 people who replied to a status of yours, and you wouldn’t know until you’ve opened the app to see that you have them. Then, if you close the app, the badge is updated…..Come one, Facebook, get it together. One thing they do well is picture uploading and tagging. They nailed that aspect right on the head. All together, this app isn’t bad. It’s not awesome, either. It’s average. Still worth the get because it DOES make Facebook very quick to view. Price: Free.
• Loopt – See my first “There’s An App for That” story to see this one.
• Loopt Mix – This app was born out of the original Loopt application. It started as a single button, and grew into a giant social networking app. I equate this app to a dating hotline site or MySpace more than I do a social networking medium. Why? Download the app, look at some of the pictures you see people post of themselves, and you’ll understand why. Price: Free.
• MySpace – The original social networking site makes its debut on the iPhone. What can I say about it? Nothing, really. It’s just the mobile site as an app. There’s literally no difference other than it has an app icon. If you already have used it on the mobile site, then you aren’t missing anything. One broken aspect of this app is that the pages you view of other people may not necessarily be the mobile page when you click their links. (It made a giant “WTF?” thought-bubble pop up above my head when I was using it.) Of course, half the time, you won’t see anything on their pages, because most of it is Flash based. Either way, this old time site is slated to die soon, if you ask me. However, like fine wine, it may just get better with age. Price: Free.