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Elite: Dangerous 2024 – Lost in Space

October 13, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

Space simulation games have been in the news of late, and not for good reasons either. Be it Star Citizen's long drawn and very public development controversy, or the underlying sigh that punctuates every display of No Man's Sky, the fact is that these are games of grand ambition and scale, that want to put you inside a vast galaxy to explore and immerse yourself in. The sheer scope and size is quite frankly why they have no firm release date.
And then there's Elite: Dangerous for the Xbox One. Much like the aforementioned games, it too, is a space simulator. There isn't much of an underlying narrative or sweeping story. You're thrown into a vast open galaxy with a small ship and very little money with the objective of surviving and perhaps even thriving in space. You can resort to piracy, assassinations, trading, and bounty hunting among other means to get by. And you won't be alone: depending on how you decide to play, you'll occupy the same space ..

The Deer God Review: Frustrating, Yet Fun

August 7, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

A hunter waits for his prey in the jungle on a rainy night. At long last he spots a deer and lines up a shot. Just as he pulls the trigger, he's attacked by a wolf. The baby deer and hunter have both collapsed. The hunter's spirit wakes up. As punishment for his violence, the hunter's spirit is placed in a deer's body and that is where you start playing The Deer God, one of the more interesting looking new games to release on iOS (it's also available on Android, PC, and Xbox).
The hunter becomes the hunted and thus begins your adventure as a deer that doesn't know what tasks it has to complete. As a deer you can't do much more than run and jump, but you do get certain powerups along the way that can extend your abilities. Instead of large levels that you can clear through, The Deer God just repeats the same few puzzles, until you find and complete certain tasks. For example, an old man will ask you to find his monocle and until you do that, you will ..

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review – Almost Great

August 1, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain starts with a long, confusing, and clunky prologue. Once that is finally over, you find yourself wrapped in a world of possibilities and intrigue.
The game puts you in the boots of the series' super solider and mercenary, Big Boss. In the game, Big Boss has been in a coma for nine years and now you're back to claim revenge on those responsible for it. You'll infiltrate enemy bases, build up an army of your own, and uncover a twisted plot that has you playing till the very end. It's everything a grizzled warrior who has been in a coma for nine years can ask for when he finally regains consciousness.
(Also see: Metal Gear Solid Noob? Here's Everything That Came Before The Phantom Pain)
Progressing through Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, you will spend a lot of time skulking around enemy bases. You'll capture resources, manpower, and of course indulge in a rather intriguing story. In terms of core gameplay, every..

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

December 4, 2017 Richard Gomez 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..

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 2024 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 2024

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..