Tuesday, September 24, 2013
'Angry Birds Star Wars' for iOS
What do you get when you combine two franchises that have been done to death? Why the Angry Birds Star Wars, of course.
Angry Birds Star Wars is, as Rovio likes to call it, Angry Birds’ biggest adventure yet. The game is based on the story of the Star Wars franchise and has birds dressed as the characters from the Rebel Alliance whereas the pigs are dressed as the Galactic Empire. After that it’s your usual bird flinging action but with some new abilities. But will that be enough to bring back gamers who have clearly flung enough birds to last a lifetime? Let’s find out.
Title
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Angry Birds Star Wars
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Developer
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Rovio Entertainment Ltd.
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Platform
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iOS
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Android
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Windows Phone 8
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Release Date
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November 8 2012
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Content rating
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4+
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Everyone
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N/A
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Size
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28.3MB (iPhone) / 31.6MB (iPad)
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44MB
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20MB
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Price
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$0.99 (iPhone) / $2.99 (iPad)
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Free (ads) / $2.99 (HD)
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$0.99
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This is possibly the widest release for any game yet, with support for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and Kindle Fire on the mobile side and Windows, Windows 8 and OS X on the desktop side. So kudos to Rovio for managing to pull it off. The Android version is the only one where you can get the game for free but with ads. You can remove the ads by paying $0.99 through in-app purchasing. There is also an HD version for Android where the only difference is that the buttons are bit bigger and easier to tap on high resolution displays (the actual game looks the same).
Premise
The premise of the game can be summed up in the video below. It also helps if you have watched the Star Wars movies.
Gameplay
Gameplay in Angry Birds Star Wars is a combination of old and new. The old part actually comes from two games, the standard Angry Birds and the recent Angry Birds Space. The new part comes with the special abilities that each bird has. Now all the birds from the standard Angry Birds line-up have been changed to vaguely resemble Star Wars character. So the red bird is now Luke Skywalker, black bird is Obi-Wan Kenobi, yellow bird is Han Solo, big red bird is Chewbacca, pink bird is Princess Leia, white bird is C-3PO and the blue bird is Wedge Antilles. There is also a new R2D2 ‘bird’. The pigs, meanwhile, are dressed as all sorts of Empire characters, only ones I know being the Stormtroopers and Darth Vader himself.
With the new characters come new abilities. After a few initial levels, the Luke bird gets a lightsaber that can be used to slice through objects, thus causing a lot more damage than usual. The Ob-Wan bird uses the Force to blast objects away. As soon as he is near something, you have to tap on the screen where you want the objects to go and he sends a shockwave the sends everything flying in that direction. He is definitely one of the coolest birds in the game.
The Han Solo bird shoots laser through his gun. The laser beams can shoot through glass and wood and bounces off steel. The bouncing can be used in some levels to access hard to reach areas. The Chewbacca bird is like a giant wrecking ball. It carries immense weight and can crush entire structures under its weight, making it a joy to use. The blue bird is same as it has been in every Angry Birds game; it splits up into three smaller birds. Worst. Bird. Ever.
The C-3PO and R2D2 birds have their own levels and are not found in the main storyline. You can make C-3PO explode and the fragments destroy everything they touch. R2D2 meanwhile sends out electric bolts in its surrounding, killing any nearby pigs.
The Princess Leia bird is not found in any of the current levels and is expected to be in additional levels that will arrive later.
Now that we are acquainted with the new birds, here’s the boring part; the gameplay is exactly the same as in Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space. Some of the levels are played on land where you have regular gravity and physics similar to Angry Birds, where birds arch downwards after a while of being projected. The space levels play out similar to Angry Birds Space, where no gravity means the birds keep going straight in the direction you send them in as long as they don’t get pulled into a nearby planet’s gravitational field.
The new abilities does make the game interesting and although I haven’t bothered playing Angry Birds in a while the new abilities were enough to make me go through most of the levels (that and I also had to finish this review). However, it became harder to play once the game switches to the Angry Birds Space-esque levels, which come in every now and then. I’ve never been a huge fan of Angry Birds Space and so the space levels were the least interesting aspect about the game for me.
What continues to annoy me about Angry Birds is that although it has a three star rating system it never bothers to tell you what exactly you have to do to get those three stars. The general idea is to get the maximum score, which involves killing all the pigs with as few birds as possible (preferably just one) and get the highest score. Still, without a proper number, it just makes you repeatedly play through each level in the hope that you can get all three stars.
There is also this thing where you can only go so far before you start flinging birds around randomly with the intention to just get through the level. The structures in Angry Birds are designed in a way where there is usually one point to hit that can bring the whole thing down. But with so many birds at your disposal it’s easier just to go ‘screw this’ and just start aiming randomly at things. It also doesn’t help that most levels do really look like they are arranged at random with no easy way to get three stars. When the objective is not clear, a game can go from difficult to frustrating very quickly.
If you just can’t get through a level, you can use this super ability that they added to Angry Birds games recently, where you sacrifice one of your birds for this super awesome bird and wherever it lands that point gets bombarded by a ship that flies over, which usually is enough to destroy the entire level. However, if you win this way you don’t get stars but instead just a medal. These abilities are limited and you get more as you play or you can purchase more using in-app purchasing.
As before, the game is still difficult to play on small screens. When zoomed in, you can either see the birds or the pigs. If you zoom in on the birds, you have no idea where you are aiming. If you zoom out, things become ridiculously tiny. And you have to zoom out completely, otherwise the camera keeps moving left to right annoyingly and often when you don’t want it to. Like when you’re aiming, it would move right and restrict your movement so you can’t aim properly as there is no longer space on the screen on the left side to pull the bird back because the dumb camera shifted right. I have always felt that Angry Birds is best experienced on a big monitor with a mouse where you can zoom out completely and still see everything in proper size, and Angry Birds Star Wars does nothing to change that belief.
The game comes with 80 levels by default, along with 33 bonus levels featuring R2D2 and C-3PO that are unlocked as you keep getting more stars. There are also 40 other levels in the game that are a paid extra. At first I thought this was because I downloaded the free Android version but then realized you have to purchase these levels even in the paid version. Why would Rovio make you pay extra for these levels when you already paid for the game is beyond me.
Graphics and Sound
If you’ve seen one Angry Birds game, you’ve seen them all. Angry Birds Star Wars uses the same art style and level design structure as the previous games. The new birds look nice and you see some nice mish-mash of the Angry Birds and Star Wars universes, such as pigs with Stormtrooper helmets on and a Death Star that looks like a pig but other than that there is nothing new.
Sound-wise, the game once again is acceptable. It mostly uses Star Wars theme with a bit of Angry Birds-ization done to it and it sounds okay. They have new cries for the birds that play when you launch them that sound pretty good and in-line with their characters.
Verdict
If you love Angry Birds games in general, Angry Birds Star Wars would be manna from heaven. It features the same basic gameplay but adds new characters with new abilities that will keep things fresh for Angry Birds fans. However, if you have outgrown the gameplay or were never a fan of it to begin with, Angry Birds Star Wars does not have much to change your mind.
It’s interesting to see Angry Birds and Star Wars collaborate on something. Both continue to make an insane amount of money for their creators and neither of them knows when to stop.
Rating: 3/5
Pros: Star Wars elements neatly integrated into the gameplay, wide availability on multiple platforms
Cons: Gameplay feels stale, still no clarity on how to obtain all three stars, pain to play on small smartphone screens, includes extra levels that need to be bought separately
Download: iPhone/iPod touch | iPad | Android | Kindle Fire | Windows Phone 8
Specs of second-generation Nexus 7 leaked
The alleged images of next-generation affordable tablet from Google have already been leaked and we even saw a video of the upcoming Nexus 7. Now, the specifications of the second-gen of the slate have been revealed in a new leak.
As expected, the second-generation Nexus 7 will sport a 7-inch FullHD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display and will feature a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, 5 megapixel rear camera and 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera. It will run on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, which will be the latest version at the time of its release.
Additionally, the upcoming 7-inch Google made tablet will have slim port support for outputting 1080p video on your television and will support wireless charging. Earlier, a leaked inventory screen had confirmed the pricing of the second-generation Nexus 7 – $229 for a 16 GB version and $269 for 32 GB variant.
Google is expected to officially announce its latest Nexus 7 tablet at its upcoming event on July 24 in San Francisco. Stay tuned as we will be bringing you all the latest details from the event live.
Source
Sony admits all 77 million PSN and Qriocity accounts have been compromised in a response to the US C
Oh, boy, is this getting messy or what? Sony finds itself in all kinds of trouble following the recent attack that brought down the PSN network and compromised millions of accounts, containing sensitive personal data and credit card information.
The Representative Corporate Executive Officer and Executive Deputy President of Sony Corporation, Kazuo Hirai, has just posted an open letter to the US congress, admitting that all 77 million accounts have been compromised.
However the company is still unable to tell how much personal info has actually leaked. Still with over 12 million credit-cards numbers recorded in the PSN and Qriocity accounts there are all kinds of reasons to feel worried.
Also Sony is still unable to identify who stands behind the attack �C no organization has taken responsibility for the hacking just yet and all they have right now is a file on one of the servers named “Anonymous” containing the words “We are Legion”.
You can find the full letter on the PlayStation blog.
Source
7 things I love about the N9
I’ve been using the Nokia N9 for a while now and I’m totally awed by the user experience. Now I regularly find myself swiping other touch phones with the intention of dismissing program screens and whatnot. Yeah, I’m surprised at myself too. I’m an old dog that doesn’t like to learn new tricks but this whole swiping thing on MeeGo, it totally got me. Yes, the Nokia N9 grew on me. Big time.
It’s really a sad thing that the N9 might just be the last MeeGo handset and that it comes with this OS that hardly has any developers appeal or even future. If you are not happy about the available out-of-the-box apps on the N9, you can safely call it a day. There’s no “eventually” in the possibility of getting a wider variety. And although Nokia has worked hard to deliver the modern-day basics such as Facebook, Skype and Angry Birds (who plays that anymore?), there are still apps that I do miss from iOS and Android. But I digress.
The most important thing about my experience with the N9 is the positives. That stuff I took from it and the stuff that make it enjoyable to use day after day. And you gotta believe me when I say it, I am a tough customer. I get to play around with all the latest and greatest in mobile software and mobile hardware so it’s easy to get spoiled. It’s so rarely that I see something new that when I get my hands on something truly unique and innovative, I’m all in. But that’s what this job does to you, anyway.
Back to the Nokia N9, it’s so different that any other current mobile OS that it immediately got my attention. I’ve been using it as my main smartphone for more than ten days now even though technically, it’s not my job to have it after we got the review out the door. But I’m hooked. It’s different in so many aspects that it amuses me every day. In the same time, it’s feels surprisingly familiar. MeeGo has borrowed some small neat stuff from the best in business and getting what I expect to see made me feel at home right from the very first day.
For me, it’s clear that we won’t last long. It’s like a fledgling romantic relationship that you start while on vacation and that you both don’t intend on continuing once you’re back home, but still, you enjoy every minute of it.
I knew the Nokia N9 wasn’t really gonna be one of these long-lasting relationships that you commit to. With a price tag of 400+ euro, I didn’t think it was reasonable for anyone with a knack for smartphones to buy it, let alone me. Plus I no longer have the patience to commit to a new OS and a new ecosystem much like I did back in the first days of iOS. These days are all gone. Now it’s either iOS or Android for me and I’m already too deep into those to leave it all for a one-week romantic getaway with some stranger.
So as much as I enjoyed the N9 and its MeeGo OS, we’ll part ways quite soon. But as I went about using the N9 day after day, I made mental notes of all the little things that I’d really miss once I return to the mainstream. Some of those are really minute, but I find them all immensely helpful in delivering a richer user experience.
So here’s my list of the 7 things I love about the N9 (besides the impressive industrial design that deserves an article of its own). Hopefully, one day I’ll see some of the items in this list implemented elsewhere in other mobile OS’s.
1. The always-on clock. This might seem like a really minor thing but I’m one of these guys that got rid of the wristwatch ever since they got their first cellphone. And words are not enough to explain how useful it is to be able to check the time with only a glance on the N9, not having to pick up your phone. And the clock is equally visible both in the dark when the phone’s lying on my bedside (so wrong having it there, I know), as in broad daylight.
2. The double-tap-to-wake gesture. Waking your phone just by double-tapping it seems like the most natural thing to do right from the very first time you try it. I bet that keeps the accelerometer in an always on mode, but I’d have it any day over some of the supposed battery life gains of doing without it.
3. The clock interface when setting up alarms and the time. Now, you gotta give it to MeeGo devs. They’ve come up with a unique way of interacting with the clock, unlike most other manufacturers who simply chose to copy the iOS way. The interface mimics the hands of a analog clock, but it’s as modern as it gets.
4. The amazing touch haptics. Touch the screen and feel a vibration exactly where you touched it. And not only that, but it’s a vibration so finely tuned it feels like the whole screen is clicking under your thumb. I’ll just say this: When it comes to typing usability, the Nokia N9 can eat the two generations of BlackBerry Storm‘s for breakfast and then have some more.
5. Scrolling your contacts. The alphabetical scroll is light years ahead of the competition, working incredibly reliably. I almost never find myself skipping the alphabet letter I’m looking for. It’s super smooth and yet highly precise.
6. The unified message inbox. The Message center houses all your threaded conversations including those from SMS, Facebook and Skype chats, now how cool is that?
Another nice trick is that when you have an email opened, to get to the next one you just swipe across the screen. No need to get back to the Inbox list of emails.
7. The music player auto-generating its album art. The Nokia N9 music player might be somewhat limited regarding extra features such as equalizer presets and repeat options but it makes your music look really great by auto generating Album Art for you. Yup, those text-only icons below, are auto-generated based on the Album’s name.
Another nifty feature is that clicking on the More… button while you are playing a track from the album takes you to a screen that automatically suggests music for you based on the artist.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Almost every part of the Nokia N9 interface has its own character. It’s often unlike anything you’ve seen and it’s surprisingly easy to use and get used to. I certainly wish the platform had more future ahead – both in hardware and software aspects. It’s always refreshing to try out a new OS for a size, but eventually we all get back to the mainstream. Pleasure meeting you Nokia N9, I hope we bump into each other some day again.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Suitable Utilization of sony xl39h Guard
There are many principles guiding the production of Xperia Z Ultra case.In other words, there are so many purposes that this powerful cover is supposed to serve.Many users may regards a protective case as a guard to protect their device, if you put it further more, then you will get to know your Xperia Z Ultra has become outstanding from others with the extra fashion elements added.
We are all clear of the fact that if we do not use any protector, our machine will be left at the hands of unwanted damages which can bring fatal harms to the decent appearance.When you seen the shabby appearance of the reckless users’ cell phone, you will find how significant it is to use a skin case for Xperia Z Ultra.Only through extending extensive care to the cell phone can it remain integrated. For the perfect protection purpose, sony xperia z ultra bumper frame and leather flip cover are often in the list of this task, for it’s hard to find other ones to do a better job on the protection. The revelation of veteran users will help you further confirm the greatest strength of aluminum bumpers. When it comes to xperia z ultra flip casess, something will remind us to the high durability as well as the flexibility. Users of various age groups acclaim the suppleness of sony xperia z ultra flip covers of which texture guarantees them an impressive touch feeling.
We guess you have learned much from our discussion about stout covers for Xperia Z Ultra, perhaps you also need to see some other trends that are famous for the chic appearances.Eye-catching items included in this group are such covers as flower case, cute back cover and so on. Any user of these Xperia Z Ultra case will be thought of as true fashionmongers excelling at leading a new vogue. Admittedly, their overall flavors still differ, while the flattering effects they bring to your machine are alike.
Xperia Z Ultra flower case, for instance, is often a trend catering for girl customers, and get the greatest reputation among female uses. A different category is the cute covers that is of neutral styles.In other words, both men and women are their target customers.Besides the fresh fashion elements they assimilate, these chic covers for Xperia Z Ultra have equally outstanding resisting capabilities so that they enjoy a larger customer base.
Reasonable users are always emphasizing the importance of make a good study of what good qualities account for the popularity of one Xperia Z Ultra cover but not the other.Strength, needless to say, comes first on the list of their concerns.Right materials always engender dependable wear ability. In the second place, it must the properly designed style that contributes to the popularity of Xperia Z Ultra covers among users. All the most welcomed case are of the same elements which is the high quality bases on super material, plus great fashion design which is perfectly match the original Xperia Z Ultra style. Experienced customer will keep their eyes stick on these sort of case and give a dame to other ordinary case. People’s crazy performance on Xperia Z Ultra Battery case could prove this. Case designer show us their imagination can be so wonderful to bring everything into reality. It not only keeps your machine safe from all types of damages but also prolong the limited standby time. This battery design could be the most unconventional improvement for the Xperia Z Ultra.