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Asus Strix Radeon R9 Fury DC3 4G Review: AMD’s Big Bet Almost Pays Off

April 18, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

AMD's exotic Radeon R9 Fury series was unveiled with much fanfare a short while ago. It's no secret that AMD's entire product portfolio has been pretty stagnant for years now, but this was the company's – if not the entire industry's – most interesting announcement in a long time. While most were expecting one or two launches, AMD showed off four products: the top-end Radeon R9 Fury X with its industry-first integrated liquid cooler, an air-cooled equivalent called Radeon R9 Fury, a compact variant for small-form-factor PCs called the Radeon R9 Fury Nano, and an unnamed dual-GPU monster that will not be available for some time yet.
The Fury X was the first to launch internationally, followed by the less expensive Fury a few weeks later. However, the latter card has arrived first in India. Notably, board partners such as Asus and XFX will not be able to customise their Fury X cards with different coolers, but they can with the Fury. As a cost-sensitive market wi..

Dreadnought Is Team Fortress 2 With Giant Spaceships

April 30, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

With Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft having a gargantuan presence at Gamescom 2015 and grabbing most of the attention, it's easy to forget that the PC can hold its own. One such game that bears testament to this is Dreadnought. It's a space combat flight simulator by Yager, the developer known for Spec Ops: The Line.
The game puts you in the role of a captain of a variety of ships, ranging from nimble corvettes all the way up to the titular dreadnought, which is slow but deathly in the hands of a capable player. We spent some time with Dreadnought's deathmatch mode demo at Gamescom 2015, and came back impressed.
(Also see: Gamescom 2015 Day 5: Super PCs, Dreadnought, Video Games Live, and Retro Fun)
One of the biggest pain points in space games is allowing for vertical movement, and letting the player ascend and descend at will. The first thing that hit us when playing Dreadnought was how easy it is to control the ships. In addition to this, each class of ship is easy t..

Transistor for iOS Review: As Good as It’s on the PC

February 18, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Transistor – made by Bastion creators Supergiant Games – first released in May 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Windows, followed by Linux and OS X versions in October. Following in Bastion's footsteps, the game was released for iOS devices earlier this month.
We'd played the PC version last year and loved it, so purchasing Transistor on day-one was an obvious choice. But how has it fared in the journey to mobile devices, and should you buy this game for your iPhone or iPad, especially if you haven't played the PC or PS4 version?
Before talking about the porting of Transistor, it's important to get a measure of what this game is, in the first place. If you're already familiar with the game, and just want to know about how it handles on mobile devices, you could just skip the next section of this article. On the other hand, if you're a newcomer to the game, the introduction will help you understand what Transistor is all about, and why you might want to pla..

Resident Evil 0 HD 2025 Review

October 9, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

After the success of last year's Resident Evil HD Remaster comes Resident Evil 0 HD. It's a prequel to the game in a series, that for the longest time, codified the horror genre as we know it. And while it might not have the same sense of uneasiness and tension that typified the first game, it's well worth playing all the same.
Resident Evil 0 HD starts off much like a slasher flick. Except a summer vacation home is replaced with a train, a bunch of naive teens is substituted with special operatives, and a serial killer with a slew of zombies. It's has a corny, almost satirical feel to the proceedings not too dissimilar to B-grade horror flicks. The overall tone harkens back to a time when the horror genre didn't take it too seriously.
The low rent vibe extends to the level design as well. It's rare to find yourself squared up against legions of the newly contaminated. Instead, interactions are limited to just a few enemies on screen at best. With ammo b..

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review – Game of Thrones Meets Skyrim

February 18, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

The Witcher 3 is a role-playing adventure game that puts you in the role of well, a witcher – a monster hunter – named Geralt. Once you delve past the initial exposition of The Witcher 3 – which has you searching for your surrogate daughter, Ciri – you'll soon realise that developer CD Projekt RED has gifted you a gorgeous, sprawling world to explore.

As we mentioned earlier, the world of The Witcher 3 is brilliantly realised. It's as if the gritty, dark world of Game of Thrones met the open world sensibilities of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, matched with the abundance of choice from BioWare's Dragon Age series.
(Also see: The Witcher 3 on PC and PS4 – Everything You Need To Know)
From slaying fantastic beasts such as werewolves and griffins, to simply dragging a goat – yes a goat, no, not a demon goat, or a were-goat, or a ghost goat, just a regular goat – back to its owner, to tracking down buried treasure, The Witcher 3's quests are medley of varied scenarios,..

Micromax Canvas Laptab LT666 Review: Super-Affordable Windows 2-in-1 With 3G

February 11, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Computer processors have shrunk to the point that we can stuff them into devices the size of tablets, and have become efficient enough that we don't need fans to keep them cool. We've seen all kinds of slim designs in the past year or two, but what's most exciting is that devices are getting less and less expensive as well. It is now possible to deliver an acceptable, mainstream level of PC performance in a device that costs less than a lot of smartphones.
We've reviewed the Notion Ink Cain (Review), Croma 1177 (Review) and Swipe Ultimate Tab 3G (Review), all of which were clustered around the Rs. 20,000 price point and all of which were tablets with wraparound cloth keyboard attachments. These products' keyboards are fiddly to use, and just propping them up to look like laptops is annoying.
Enter Micromax with its new Canvas Laptab LT666, which can actually be used in a lap! It follows the same formula but has a solid base with a keyboard. In terms of features..

Acer Liquid Z630s 2025

February 24, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

After a long hiatus, Acer is taking another shot at the Indian smartphone market with two new budget offerings. The Taiwanese company recently announced the Liquid Z530 and Liquid Z630s Android smartphones, which we first saw at IFA 2015. The new offerings will be sold exclusively through Flipkart and will also be manufactured in India, come December. Acer is testing the waters now and if things pick up, we can expect other models to follow suit.
Today, we'll be reviewing the Liquid Z630s, a lower-mid-range smartphone priced at Rs. 10,999. We've already taken a quick look at it and its smaller sibling in our unboxing video and it's now time to see how this phone stacks up against the competition. In this space, we have plenty of tried and tested options from the likes of Lenovo, Motorola and Asus so let's see if Acer's offering has that special sauce to help it stand out.
Look and feel
The Acer Liquid Z630s features a pebble-like design with rounded edges and ..

Strontium Nitro Plus On-The-Go USB 3.0 and Micro SDHC UHS-1 With OTG Card Reader Review

February 11, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Strontium seems to have jumped into mobile storage in a big way. After our encounter with the Nitro iDrive for iOS, the company brought our attention to a couple of products aimed at Android devices which support USB On-The-Go. We've seen flash drives with Micro-USB connectors before, but we haven't seen an external card reader.
An increasing number of Android smartphones do not allow storage expansion, and some older ones don't support high-capacity microSD cards. Putting new data onto a card and sharing large files with others is sometimes a pain, requiring you to take your phone apart and pull out its battery or plug your phone into a PC.
USB-OTG can come in handy in some of those situations. While a flash drive sticking out of your phone is no substitute for a tiny microSD card, it can be really handy. You can store large files such as movies that you don't need immediate access to all the time, without filling up your phone's limited storage space. You ca..

Mortal Kombat X 2025

February 17, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Mortal Kombat is a series that needs no introduction. It's been around since the early 90s as a competitor to the incredibly popular Street Fighter games, except gorier and much more bizarre. Quirkily designed characters, over the top storytelling, and gruesome finishing moves known as fatalities – all of the franchise's trademark pillars – make a return in Mortal Kombat X. It's the tenth instalment of the series and it's on PlayStation 4 (PS4), PC, and Xbox One.
The game is running on a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 – the same technology that powered many last-generation console and PC games – but despite the old engine, Mortal Kombat X looks fantastic. Developer NetherRealm Studios appears to have eked out every last bit possible from Unreal Engine 3 to realise its vision of a strange world teeming with possibilities. From the many withering corpses to small details like spikes of ice, Mortal Kombat X is gorgeous game, especially in motion.
Speaking of ..

SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Review: Useful but Expensive

May 11, 2018 Richard Gomez 0

The lack of expandable storage has always been a thorn in the side of iPhone and iPad users, while microSD cards and even USB-OTG drives are standard features of the Android landscape. Buyers balk at the massive margins Apple charges to step up from the lowest storage option on each of its devices, but often wind up feeling remorse a year or so down the line when they have to start deleting photos, cutting back on apps and carrying less music.
SanDisk is one few companies trying to help users get around this problem. The iXpand Flash Drive does two major things: it helps you carry more data around than your iOS device(s) can store, and it helps you copy files to and from PCs and iOS devices without going through iTunes. Note that it does not magically add more storage to an iPhone or iPad itself – so you can't think of it as an iOS equivalent of a USB pen drive. More on how that works below.
Look and feel
The SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive is fairly bulky; much larger than the simila..

Evolve Review 2025

February 14, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Evolve – recently launched for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC – puts you in the claws of a giant bloodthirsty alien monster, or the boots of four hunters that are trying to take it down. The multiplayer game makes you kill or be killed, whether you're playing as one of the four hunters or the monster. Each of these five roles can be filled by either a human player or the computer AI (works offline), and the asymmetrical multiplayer of Evolve is one of its most interesting aspects.
Usually most multiplayer games have you in teams of equal numbers squaring off against each other in a duel to the death, or employ an each man for himself philosophy. Evolve, on the other hand focuses on teamwork for the four human players, and lets the monster player act like a lone wolf. The greater emphasis on cooperative play over individual glory can be seen evolving as franchises such as Pay Day and Left 4 Dead (which was incidentally made by Turtle Rock, the studio behind Evolve) gain promi..

Acer One 2025 Review

April 29, 2019 Richard Gomez 0

The budget PC market has always been highly competitive, and pretty much every manufacturer is in a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. Surprisingly, though, that hasn't stopped them from trying out all kinds of designs and throwing in popular features to tempt users. Touchscreens and 2-in-1 tablet designs have trickled down from the high-end to the budget segment, giving customers more choices than ever.
However there has to be some give and take. You can't expect to have every possible feature at this price level. Most of what we've seen are basically tablets with flimsy keyboard stands, such as the Notion Ink Cain, Swipe Ultimate and Croma 1177. While these are portable and affordable, they use slow processors and aren't easy to use in many situations.
Acer has a slightly different take on the idea. The new Acer One, which the company says was designed especially for Indian buyers, costs around the same as the aforementioned products but looks a lot more like..