December 2017 |

Nvidia’s New GeForce Experience Makes It Dead Simple to Share and Record PC Games

December 4, 2017 PTdrivers 0

Far from the chaos of the public at Gamescom 2015 was Nvidia's business booth, cordoned off for members of the press and its partners. The firm's publicly accessible demo zone played host to the European debut of its Shield Android TV console, which offers 4K capabilities, streaming of PC games, and the latest Android games, but the business booth was a little more interesting.
(Also see: Nvidia Unveils Shield Android TV Console With Tegra X1 SoC at GDC 2015)
Behind closed doors, we checked out the new GeForce Experience, Nvidia's companion app for its GPUs, which allows you to keep your drivers up to date, optimise game settings easily, and capture game footage.
Although it's a handy program to have, previous versions were known to have their fair share of quirks. Most notably, there's a perceptible input lag between when the time you invoke GeForce Experience using its keyboard shortcuts, and when it actually starts up. Furthermore, recording gameplay has..

Lenovo Vibe Shot Review

December 5, 2017 PTdrivers 0

Lenovo isn't known to shy away from experimenting with its phones. We've had the 'layered' Vibe X2 (Review | Pictures) in the past and, more recently, the overgrown Phab Plus (Review | Pictures).
Today, we'll be reviewing its camera-centric Lenovo Vibe Shot. We first saw this phone at its announcement at MWC 2015, and it then launched in India in September. The Vibe Shot is an upper-mid-range offering that aims to capture the hearts of photography lovers with its compact-camera-like design and features. Let's see if it's worthy of its Rs. 25,000 price tag.
Look and feel
Lenovo has done an excellent job with the design and build of the phone. The monolithic look with an aluminium frame and glass on the rear oozes style. It's quite slim at 7.6mm and doesn't weigh your pockets down too much. The 5-inch form factor also makes it easy to grip and use with one hand most of the time.
The 5-inch, full-HD IPS display produces sharp images with pun..

The Crew: Wild Run Review

December 6, 2017 PTdrivers 0

Last year, Ubisoft, the purveyor of fine historical murder simulators, quirky strategy games, and oft-delayed tactical shooters, also released The Crew. It's a racing game that promised you'll never drive alone what with a sprawling open-world, mammoth missions that had you playing with friends, and deep customisation options as well as role-playing game-like levelling systems.
On paper, it sounded like the dream racer. The reality was a damp squib. Being an always online game, connecting to its servers was a chore, most of the missions amounted to busywork, and the driving was anything but enjoyable.
(Also see: The Crew Review: Definitely Not In Top Gear)
However, none of this seems to have fazed developer Ivory Tower. Over the last 11 months it's been pushing updates to The Crew from tweaking its wonky net code to adding new missions. And now, it's released The Crew: Wild Run, an expansion pack to the game.
The first thing we noticed was how much better it loo..

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Review – Familiarity Breeds Contempt

December 16, 2017 PTdrivers 0

For many people, the Uncharted series was the deciding factor that led to their purchase of a PlayStation 3 (PS3), and who could blame them? Out of Sony's entire roster of exclusives – ranging from shooters like Resistance and Killzone to more artistic fare like LittleBigPlanet – the Indiana Jones-like exploits of Nathan Drake resonated most with a generation of gamers who wanted more than the brutal action of God of War, or the super heroic trappings of Infamous.
Even after three increasingly bombastic games on the PS3, and a solid portable outing (Uncharted: Golden Abyss) on the PS Vita, it's hard not to think of Nathan Drake as video games' everyman – a relatable average guy with no superpowers, who finds himself in a host of unlikely situations involving the occult, abominable snowmen, and at times, hanging from the end of a train bogey that's about to fall off a cliff.
(Also see: God of War III Remastered Review: Great for Newcomers, but Not Worth Revisiting)..

Wickedleak Wammy Titan 5 Review

December 25, 2017 PTdrivers 0

Wickedleak is an Indian smartphone company that we'd like to imagine was inspired by Julian Assange's popular whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Of course, the two have nothing to do with each other, but we still find the name amusing. Formed in 2009, the company has grown to becoming quite a talking point in the Indian smartphone arena.
The Wickedleak Wammy Titan 5 is our review product of the day. This behemoth of a smartphone is large, heavy and undeniably phablet-esque. Does it have what it takes to justify the Rs. 13,990 price tag? We find out in our review.
Look and feel
With its 5.5-inch screen, the Wammy Titan 5 can rightfully be classified as a phablet. It's also incredibly heavy and thick. Although the Wickedleak website specifies the thickness of the phone at 8mm, it feels thicker. The back has a removable textured plastic panel, while the frame and edges are metallic. After a closer look at the phone, we found the build quality and finishing a bit crude. From..

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 First Impressions

December 26, 2017 PTdrivers 0

Xiaomi last month caught some eyeballs when it launched its third-generation Redmi Note smartphone in China, its first device to feature a fingerprint sensor. The Redmi Note 3 is priced at CNY 899 (approximately Rs. 9,500) for 2GB of RAM and 16GB of inbuilt storage, and CNY 1099 (approximately Rs. 11,500) for 3GB of RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage. We recently got our hands on a unit and these are our first impressions.
The metal-clad, dual-SIM Redmi Note 3 is Xiaomi's latest flagship model, and it certainly lives up to that standard in most areas. The smartphone has a sturdy build, offering just enough grip to prevent it from slipping from your hands. Measuring 150x76x8.65mm, the device has its power button placed in the middle of the right side, making it easy to reach. The volume buttons sit above the power button, while the SIM tray is on the upper left. Of the three colour variants, gold, silver and dark grey, we found the gold version the most eye-catching.
The Xiaomi Redm..

Sky Sutra Is Part Shooter, Part Platformer, All Awesome – and Made in India

December 26, 2017 PTdrivers 0

A corner table of a local bar is hardly where you would expect to check out a brand new, unreleased video game, but that's exactly what happened as we huddled around a laptop and played Sky Sutra. Created by Mumbai-based Yellow Monkey Studios, Sky Sutra has a heavy focus on couch co-op, and is coming to the PC and possibly, the PlayStation 4.
Yellow Monkey has already made a name for itself with high quality premium mobile games such as It's Just a Thought, Huebrix, and most recently, Socioball. Sky Sutra is meant for a new audience, but the developers have made a polished game that makes good use of the controller.
(Also see: Playing It Risky: Meet Socioball, a Premium Puzzle Game From India)
At first, we were skeptical, because Sky Sutra can easily be mistaken for many of the side-scrolling, endless runners we're subject to on Android and iOS. There's a cute looking art-style with colourful backdrops, two boxy characters, and a never-ending carpet suspended in..

MSI Z170A Xpower Gaming Titanium Edition Review

December 27, 2017 PTdrivers 0

There are some motherboards that will be installed inside desktop PCs and then pretty much never see the light of day again. These bare-basic boards will be touched only by factory workers and then sealed off inside their boxes; rarely seen even for cleaning. Then there's the enthusiast breed of motherboards, which are designed to be showed off at every opportunity. They have flashy lights, colourful accents, and of course elaborate heatsinks. They need to stand out in a very commoditised but intensely competitive market.
MSI has done all of that and developed a few new bells and whistles with its Z170A Xpower Gaming Titanium Edition model. This is the company's new statement piece, and it's very effective. It's also packed to the gills with high-end features in pretty much every subsystem: audio, memory, storage, expansion, and overclocking. Let's dive in.
Design, layout and features
The Xpower Z170A looks phenomenal. If you're building inside a high-end ..