FreeWareCentral

As I mentioned in my last post, I was getting a bluetooth dongle and a gamepad. Well, here are the reviews.

The Bluetooth dongle I purchased is a Rocketfish Bluetooth Dongle (link) from Bestbuy. It is about $50.00 CAN, though I got it for free because they told me the laptop I purchased had Bluetooth built in. I’ve used the dongle so far to connect to a) my cellphone and b) 3 wii controllers. I’ve found that there are some problems (it disables your speakers and you have to manually disable its new speaker driver), as well as some times where it disconnected, but overall its worked great. I’ve been able to play Cortex Command with a Wii controller and transferred my pictures off my cellphone. I’d still recommend you get bluetooth built in, but this dongle is still pretty good.

The gamepad I got was a Logitech Dual Action Gamepad (link) from Bestbuy. I’ve only had it for a few days yet I’ve already decided to return it. It feels cheap, with a grip that’s worthless and a low-quality plastic build. The d-pad and various buttons all have reasonably good tactile-feedback. There’s no rumble. The analogue sticks are what really bring the product down, though. Firstly, the hole is square-shaped, making it next to impossible to push directly left-right-up-or-down. Secondly, they have a very low-quality rubber top. Overall, this gamepad is cheap-feeling and not very well designed. I wouldn’t pay more than $5.00 for it and will be returning it shortly.

Final product is the Nyko Wii Charge Base (link) bought from, you guessed it, Bestbuy. They’re $40.00 CAN and, if you play the Wii fairly often, well worth the price. You get 1 charge base and 2 rechargeable battery packs. It is a pretty good package, as it saves a lot of money on batteries. Its high quality, convenient, and not that expensive. I would definitely recommend it.

Well, that’s it. I’ll be posting that review of Cortex Command soon, as well as finally finishing the site updates within two weeks. Until next post,

-Dravailo

Well, I just tried connecting a Wii controller to use in Cortex Command and lo and behold, no bluetooth adapter is in my computer! Turns out the Best Buy employee who sold it to me wasn’t quite accurate about the details. They’ve offered 50% off on a bluetooth adapter in their store, but I’m a little worried about the quality of their bluetooth adapters. I already bought a Kensington adapter that promptly caused bluescreens and crashes on my old Inspiron computer. I hope the Rocketfish one they’re selling won’t have similar problems.

Anyway, I am also looking at the purchase of a dual-analog gamepad. Not sure what model I’ll go with, any suggestions? In the main time I’ll use my Logitech WingMan joystick and Wii controllers.

Also, I’ll be putting up a review of Cortex Command within a few days. This gamepad is actually to see how it plays in multiplayer (no internet mode, unfortunately). It’s currently still a beta game/engine, at Build 14. Here’s the link, but be warned that it has a lot of blood, despite being a side-view pixel-graphics game.

Hey, I’ve been testing several games now. Such as Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, America’s Army 8.2, Supreme Commander, Battlefield 2142, Day of Defeat, Cellfactor Revolution, Black Shades, Ichor, KartRider, Toblo, and Tremulous. Overall, a mix of commercial and freeware games.

First up, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. This game is, in my opinion, what the series is about: stealth. You sneak into secure buildings and/or facilities to find out information, destroy files, kill a particular person, etc. Actually, the story doesn’t really seem to matter that much. However, the best feature of Chaos Theory is, in my opinion, the Co-Op. Co-op is a mode where you and another player can, over LAN or internet, play together to reach a goal. Though it can be confusing at first, after getting used to the co-op moves you can perform it becomes a really cool and refreshing way to play the game. Though there’s only about 6 missions available, more can be downloaded. Overall, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is a good game.

Ah, America’s Army (or AA) is an interesting free game that the US army is actually using to try and recruit people. Despite this, and the excessive file size for that matter (2.5 GB in v8.2), the game isn’t as fun as some of the other first-person-shooters available. The graphics are decent, nothing like the Source game engine, but not that bad either. The weapons are realistic, you can go prone, toggle between sprinting and whatnot. Overall, the gameplay is very realistic. Online mode is also fairly fun. The thing that really makes the game a pain is that you cannot play online until you finish Basic Training. You see, they’ve actually made it extremely realistic compared to real army tests. For example, you have to shoot pop-up targets from within a firing zone, you have to listen to their talks about how to operate machinery. For medic training, you even have to take a multiple-choice test on clearing airways and whatnot. However, in game, this training is irrelevant. As a medic, you just have to run up to a person and hold F until they’re healed. Often, using the strategies that they present in training does not work online as it will get you killed. On top of that, online play isn’t anything spectacular. Go play Battlefield if you want to have more FPS fun.

As for Battlefield 2142, the game is great! I’ve found that it has a tendency to crash every few hours on Vista, but other than that there are very few complaints I have about it. The graphics look great, with pretty cool specular lighting, though widescreen resolutions are unavailable (EA got lazy and ended up saying that widescreen monitors give players an unfair advantage. That is completely bogus, as many other things such as frames per second, better CPU speed, etc. give players advantages. EA was just lazy, pure and simple). The gameplay is great, with pods being a cool addition. You can literally blast into the air out of some ground vehicles, using a pod, and land on the enemy titan! Also, the upgrades are pretty cool. My only complaints would be Vista crashing, lack of widescreen support, and how for some reason most servers are slightly laggy, regardless of number of players/internet speed. I’d recommend Battlefield 2142, or at least Battlefield 2.

Now, I’m going to cut the reviews more. I realise this is becoming a long post. For Supreme Commander (or SupCom), I would only recommend it if you like RTS games, as this is not for people new to the genre. Gas Powered Games did their best to make the game accessible, but you need to be a real gamer to avoid being owned online. Basically, SupCom is far better to its predecessor, Total Annihilation (TA), which was better than StarCraft but the nobody heard of it and Cavedog studios shut down. SupCom has great features, such as units all arriving at the same time (fast units will slow down when grouped with slower units unless you tell otherwise), ability to scroll in and out from a tactical map, queuing orders, etc. It’s a great RTS for RTS fans, I’d recommend it over StarCraft even.

I’ve had Day of Defeat for a while. It came with Counter Strike. I never played it cause I thought I wouldn’t like an old-style war game, but I was wrong. DoD is a great game, as good as Counter Strike in my opinion (yes I’m prepared to be flamed). It’s got great graphics because it uses the Source engine, has semi-accurate weapons, has VERY annoying snipers, and is, most importantly, fun! I’d recommend it, as you can get it bundled with CS:S.

Cellfactor Revolution is a free game. Mostly because it’s being used to try to make people buy PhysX cards. You see, the single-player campaign and 3-out-of-5 multiplayer levels are unavailable if you don’t have a PhysX card, due to “High Physics Requirements”. Now, some people are currently working on an emulator to trick it into thinking you have the card, but in the main time I was only able to test those 2 levels, as I have a laptop and can’t install a PhysX card. Cellfactor, even on those 2 levels, uses a LOT of physics. You see, 2 of 3 of the characters have psychic powers. Bishop is completely psychic and can fly, pick-up-and-throw objects, gather hundreds of objects into a ball and throw them, pick up people/bombs/other objects and crush them, throw masses of objects out of the way, etc. Black Ops has basic psychic powers (can pick-up-and-throw-objects-one-at-a-time) but also has a gun. And Guardian has two guns but no psychic abilities. Overall, I’m still not sure if Cellfactor is worth the hard drive space, but it looks really cool and the campaign will probably rock when that PhysX emulator’s done.

Black Shades, just as an advance warning, is not meant to look good. The characters are, literally, made up of boxes and spheres. Unlike other first-person-shooters, Black Shades has you protecting one person (in a white shirt) from hordes of assassins and, in some levels, zombies. Despite the graphics, Black Shades has some pretty cool gameplay. You can tackle people as a non-lethal way to take them out, shoot them, snipe them (crouch to use the scope), and use some pretty cool strategies. For example, I had 3 people targeting the white-shirt-person. There was no way I could shoot them all, so I tackled the white-shirt-person right before they shot. They all missed. Overall, Black Shades is a really fun game and is a small download. I’d recommend you to give it a shot!

Ichor is a simplistic-liquid-based game. I must warn you, even with a fast computer it will run slow. Anyway, you move around to slosh liquid of your colour, avoid the enemy and his-coloured liquid. Very simple concept, quite some fun. However, the graphics are low quality, the menus seizure-inducing, and overall it does not have a great presentation. Try it for something new, but I doubt you’ll play it longer than an hour. If that.

KartRider (currently BETA) is a game made by the people behind Maple Story. No, it’s not an MMORPG. No, it doesn’t suck like Maple Story. Anyway, KartRider is a Mario-Kart style game where you race up to 7 other people online. You earn coins from placing high in the race and use that money to buy stuff like new karts and bumper-stickers. In the races, there are all kinds of cool items, like missiles, magnets, shields, a flying-orb-thing which attacks people and envelopes them in water, and a lot of other cool effects. Overall, KartRider is fun to play but I’m not sure if it’s worth 200 mb.

Toblo has a kid-style-presentation. However, the gameplay is well thought out and unique. It’s a student project from DigiPen, so it’s naturally a little unpolished, but the game concept and most of the gameplay is pretty good. It’s got full physics too. The goal is basic capture-the-flag. However, instead of guns or bullets, you throw blocks at each other. Everything in the game is constructed of blocks, which you can grab and store-somehow-in-your-pocket, just to throw at enemies and knock them out for a few seconds. It’s pretty fun, though the computer chatter is stupid. However, it’s a great in-between-game for LAN parties.

Ah, the final game on the list. Tremulous. Tremulous is an alien-vs-humans type game. The humans have guns, the aliens have natural (and cool abilities). Basically, the aliens evolve every so often (or after making enough kills), allowing them to become better alien forms. This gives abilities like melee, poisonous gases, clinging-to-walls, etc. Overall, it’s a unique gameplay style. The graphics, unfortunately, aren’t that great though. I would suggest Tremulous for download, however I would not buy it if it was commercial.
Well, that’s the end of that. A lot of games just reviewed. A very long post. Hope you learned something about them, they’ll be added to the main database within a few weeks now that I’m done exams and some other work. Also, now that fraps is finally working, I’ll be able to upload videos more frequently. And make sure you check out my deviant art favourites, I’m constantly updating it!

-Dravailo

Hey, I recently did another search for interesting pieces on a popular art site, DeviantART. This site allows people to keep journals, submit pictures, favourite other pictures, message each other, and even sell prints of their larger pictures. My account there is “Metroid48″.

If you want to see all of my currently favourited pictures, by all means check out my account. In the mean time, here are links to some of my most favourite favourites:

Escape by BenTheFobbix

Aries by BenTheFobbix

Sea Glow by vivadawolf

:Whimper: by CunningFox

Bermuda Taowls by GunnerRomantic

:l i g h t: by AzulDragon

Whoa from explosm.net (a short little one-liner comic, this is one of their better ones)

Also, just for fun, here’s something from Flickr: Squirrels with Lightsabers!!!

Anyway, check my favourites for all of my favourite pictures/stories from DeviantART. I would suggest the pictures by Lance-Foxx, transryu, tamen, CunningFox, Inaliak, kiraxlee, BenTheFobbix, and Lyanti. Until next post,

-Dravailo

PS- By the way, I have exams for the next week so I’m unlikely to make many posts during that time.