Nerd Rating

Author: Scott Simmons

  • Next Xbox Could Pave Way For Your Own Personal Holodeck.

    New Kinect may allow for full 3D, 360 degree gaming.

    So here is a bit of next gen gaming news that may truly be “the future of gaming”.

    Microsoft has a patent filed that, if they can get the tech working of course, would tranform your living room into a fully immersive interactive gaming experience. It appears that the new Xbox and the new model of Kinect would combine to project game images onto the walls allowing players to basically turn their living room into whatever world they happen to be in at the moment.

    Now as a game geek this is too exciting to really put into words but when I look at the example shots the more and more I begin to see how truly expensive this might be for me. I still don’t have enough room to jump and look like a fool with a Kinect right now and if you pay attention to the shot above you may recognize that the living room must not be decorated with any type of pictures or wall hangings and I am assuming painted white. It would also appear to need three times the room of the Kinect now. Now I begin to sadden where once excitement existed.

    So I need to start saving now since I will need the following:

    • A house or apartment with at least 12-15 feet of free space.
    • 11 cans of eggshell white paint for the walls.
    • An Xbox 720
    • A new Kinect (assuming it’s not packed in with the system, gotta save somewhere)
    • A game
    • A great job to pay for all of this.

    No one ever said turning your room into the Enterpise holodeck was cheap. Now if I could just play as Sherlock Homes with Data and the guy that played the butler on The Nanny, Microsoft has me sold.

     

     

     

  • Review: Mass Effect 3: Leviathan

    Does Commander Shepard’s New Mission Deliver?

    Leviathan is an interesting piece of DLC. If you are like me then you finished Mass Effect 3 months ago and have the ending to your Commander Shepard story firmly entrenched in your head. Now whether you liked the ending or not is up for grabs considering all the fan outcry when the game released but you have an ending nevertheless. So now Bioware has given us this add on mission which, while it would appear to not have a huge impact on a game finished for months on end, does manage to give some vital information into the Reaper’s history. Even if it is a little slow getting there.

    The mission starts as every piece of Mass Effect DLC does, by checking your email. There you receive a message asking Commander Shepard to go speak to a Dr. Bryson on the Citadel about the possibility of a creature powerful enough to kill a Reaper. After you arrive at the doctor’s lab he is killed by his assistant who seems to be under control by some outside force and now it is up to you to piece together the doctor’s research and find the being called Leviathan. And this is where the mission slows to a halt.

    The great office search is on.

    Yeah that title sums up a good portion of the mission. I love Mass Effect. Every one of them but this part of the DLC just seemed stuck into the game to give the content more of a playtime. You will run around Dr. Bryson’s office and bedroom a lot. And the searching isn’t even skillful. Just run around and click on everything you see and go to the galaxy map and get told where to go. Now if it had just been a one time trip before getting back to the action then it could be more forgivable but you will do this multiple times. Search the doctor’s things, head out for a bit of space flight, scanning planets, a bit of shooting and then head back to Bryson’s. I am not meaning this to sound as harsh as it does but this is over half the mission.

    Once you have located the whereabouts of Leviathan is where, to me anyway, this began feeling more like Mass Effect. Taking the drop ship down to the water based planet you are hit with a pulse of energy that crashes you and your team on a rig surrounded by nothing but ocean and what looks like thousands of years worth of decimated ships. As Reaper forces drop down the battle gets hot and heavy and you get to really get back into the combat. It had been a few months since I played Mass Effect 3 so by the time this section of the DLC came I was just getting used to the controls again. But like an old pro I was popping off biotics and melees no problem.

    Mech Effect 3

    After you get through the first waves of husks, brutes and banshees, Cortez tells you that there is a mech suit that you can use to dive down into the ocean to check out what your probe has found. You must first charge the battery pack while more enemies assault your position then you get to take your new mechanical friend out for a walk. There is a short burst of combat inside the mech but once you are in the ocean it is strictly exploration. While the mech section doesn’t last long it is a fun change of course and the underwater walk around has a slight (very slight, but still cool) Bioshock feel to it.

    Without getting too spoiler happy, once you find Leviathan is where the real meat of the story is. You find out the beginnings of the Reapers and why they look as they do. Leviathan reveals a good deal of important back story that should be known by all Mass Effect fans and adds more depth to the universe that you have been trying to save since 2007.

    While a good chunk of the DLC left me a bit numb mentally, the end battle and subsequent revelations about the Reapers history makes this a must download for Mass Effect lovers.

    Nerd Rating- 7.5/10

     

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  • New Game Releases. Week Of September 9, 2012

    The Long Summer Is Almost Over. Winter Is Coming.

     Heihachi returns, Kirby turns 20 and the frozen sport reports for duty.

     

    Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (PS3, 360) $59.99

    The first Tekken Tag Tournament was released back in 1999 so it has been a good long wait for the Tekken fans who like their Tekken with a little Marvel vs. Capcom thrown in. Play as over 40 fighters of the Iron Fist Tournament in 2-on-2 tag matches and try to forget about the horrible, horrible movie that was made about the franchise.

    Kirby’s Dream Collection (Wii) $39.99

    Nintendo’s little puffball is turning the big 20 this year and to celebrate Wii owners get this collection of six classic Kirby titles including: Kirby’s Dream Land 1&2 from the original Game Boy, Kirby’s Adventure on the NES, Kirby’s Super Star and Kirby’s Dream Land 3 on the SNES and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards from the Nintendo 64. Completing the collection is a soundtrack CD and an artbook. Happy Birthday Kirby.

    NHL 13 (PS3, 360) $59.99

    It’s almost hockey time again. You know right off the bat if you are going to buy this year’s version or not and that you know that the physics engine has been reworked and that you can switch to back skating with just a button press or the new chop option to take a shot at the man with the puck to try and gain possession. Good times, eh?

    Double Dragon Neon (PSN, XBLA) $10

    That’s right, Billy and Jimmy Lee are back!! Developer WayForward is bringing back the fighting brothers once again in a classic 2-D beat em up to save Billy’s girlfriend while Jimmy risks his life for absolutely no nookie at all. Punch, kick, grapple and throw around hundreds of gang members while buying songs that unlock new abilities that can be combined into a mixtape of special moves.

     

    Happy gaming!!!

     

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  • Star Trek Sequel Gets A Title

    In celebration of Star Trek’s 46th anniversary, JJ Abrams followup to his 2009 reboot of the franchise has officially been given a title. The movie will be titled Star Trek Into Darkness and no I did not forget to place a colon in the middle. While initially it seems a little weird for a movie title I see it as how they used to name episodes for the original series (Where No Man Has Gone Before, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, etc.) so it’s got a good vibe with me right off the bat.

    Star Trek Into Darkness opens May 17, 2013.

  • Get Ready To Say So Long To G4.

    Looks like Adam Sessler and Kevin Pereira were the smart rats and jumped off a sinking ship early.

    Rumors abound that G4, which has been on since 2002, will be “re-branded” early next year and morph into a GQ-style men’s channel and that may include a name change. This may come as a shock to some people but it really shouldn’t when you think about the channel only produced two real video game/tech based shows (Attack of the Show and X-Play). Now whether these show will survive the changeover is not clear. If one was to make it I would guess it would be Attack of the Show since it is more of a pop culture show than strictly video games like X-Play.

    No word has been given on if the channel would still give special coverage to shows like E3, PAX or Comic Con.

    But what about my need for Morgan Webb and Ninja Warrior?

  • Amazon Reveals Kindle Fire HD In 7 And 8.9 Inch Models. Kindle Fire Receives Price Drop.

    Today’s press conference by Amazon showed off the future of the Kindle family in a big way. The Kindle Fire HD is the company’s next big entry into the crowded tablet world looking to build on the massive sales of the original Kindle Fire which was released almost a year ago.

    The Kindle Fire HD will come in 7 and 8.9 inch versions. Both will have redesigned display to lessen the glare and both can be bought in Wi-Fi and 4G LTE versions. The 7 inch tablet will come with 16GB of storage and run $199 and 32GB for $249 while the 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HD will be available in both 16 and 32GB versions. The 16GB will cost $299 and the 32GB variety will be $499.

    For those of you who decide to spend the big bucks and grab one in the 8.9 inch 32GB version you will be able to purchase a data plan through Amazon that gives you 20GB of cloud storage, 250 MB a month and a $10 Amazon app store store credit for only $49.99 a year. When compared side by side at the press conference, the difference in price per year for purchasing and running an 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HD was almost a whopping 400 dollars below that of a 32GB IPad.

    The original Kindle Fire will be dropping in price to $159 and has been given double the RAM and a longer lasting battery.

    The Kindle Fire HD will be shipping out on November 20 and can be pre-ordered in the link below.

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  • Rick Plays “Mine’s Bigger” In The New Walking Dead Poster.

    Here is the final poster for the upcoming third season of AMC’s The Walking Dead. While last year’s poster got fans excited to see Rick running towards Herschel’s farm, this offering is giving fans a shot of Rick in front of the prison which many people (me included) have been waiting on since the series started. And if you are not caught up on The Walking Dead comics or just watch the show exclusively then you really have no idea how appropriate the tagline for this season is.

    Season 3 of The Walking Dead premieres October 14. Just in case you didn’t read the poster.

     

  • Game Of Thrones POP! Figures Are Coming. Tyrion Actual Size.

    Chances are if you have walked into any Barnes & Noble then you have seen the sections upon sections of Funko’s POP! figures. Ranging anywhere from Batman to the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz these figures bring the cute to any pop culture item.

    Now it’s time for these little toys to try their hand at blood, betrayal and incest. November will see the release of the first wave of Game of Thrones figures including Khal Drogo, Daenerys, Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, The Hound and a White Walker.

    For me, the Khal Drogo, Ned and Tyrion are instabuys but who am I kidding I will eventually be getting them all. Now if I could request that the Jaime figure come with his shaven head, beard and gold hand. Sorry for the spoiler. Read the books if you don’t want to be angry.

  • Review: New Super Mario Bros. 2

    It really is quite amazing to think that in Mario’s long and illustrious history that a game like New Super Mario Bros. 2 has never been released. Making coin collecting the focal point of the game has taken the old premise and added a good turn of OCD coin looting to the mix and rewards players that want to go out of their way to find secret levels, find every star coin and spend every last second they have on a level trying to attain all the little gold pieces possible.

    Ok here is the obligatory Mario plot synopsis. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The Princess is chilling in her castle when the Koopalings come along and kidnap her and take her to Bowser’s big bad castle. So first off, Bowser has become too lazy to kidnap her himself and also has anyone ever thought about who the Koopalings mom was? I mean Bowser has kidnapped the Princess a lot. Now that I have taken Mario to a deep, dark place that you will never forget let’s move on!

    One thing that the Mario franchise has never been lazy on is level design and that does not change here. You will be platforming your way through nine levels which include the normal environments of desert, water, snow and fire as well as three special worlds of the mushroom, flower and star variety. Now while the environments may not change the actual level design is all sorts of Mario goodness. As a lifelong Mario player I still found myself cursing at certain ghost houses or castles filled with rotating buzzsaws….those effing buzzsaws. But that is part of what makes the game endearing. You may want to throw your 3DS occasionally but you keep going onward because as weird as it sounds, the frustration is part of the fun.

    The new twist with New Super Mario Bros. 2 is that for the first time ever the game keeps up with your cumulative coin totals. Now that may seem like a simple change but you are given new powers and new game types to ensure that you will be collecting long after you have beaten the game. Special golden fireballs allow you to destroy any enemy you hit with them on screen and add extra coins for doing it. Special gold rings turn enemies gold and assign coin totals to each one killed. Stomp on a Koopa and hit his shell into enemies and watch your coin total balloon. Not to mention all the P blocks to find for blue coinage and each level truly has it’s own chance to be a banking bonanza.

    Another new addition to the game is coin rush mode. These are three randomly selected levels from different parts of the game which have you speed running through them to see how many coins you can collect. You start off with 99 seconds and have to take off and try and use all your skills and memorization of the past levels to keep the money coming. Now it’s not quite as rushed as you may think because there are random clocks to find to add to your timer but if you don’t pay attention fully to what’s going on you will quickly be staring at zeroes on the clock. This mode is where a majority of my coinage has come from because you can really get on a roll and get a great count for the three levels and for every flag you hit the top of at the end, your coin total doubles. And when you have your Streetpass on it will automatically send out your high scores and receive them from other players so there will always be a challenge out there for you.

    One thing that I could pick out to complain about would be the lack of any kind of 3D look to the game. It is colorful and very vibrant but it had no use at all in 3D mode. When I would set it on any kind of 3D the background would move back but become so smudged looking that it was almost ugly. This is definitely one to play with the 3D turned off unless you like beautiful levels marred by background that appear through dirty film.

    Nitpicking aside this game is a good, not great addition to the Mario family. Completely replayable and while it doesn’t break much new ground with enemies or environments it should be applauded for attempting something new that works for this as a handheld title.

    42,000 coins and counting. What is your total so far?

     

    NERD RATING- 8/10

     

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  • IPhone 5 Announcement To Be Held On September 12.

    Are you just getting used to not using Siri as much as you thought you would? Well it’s time to get excited again. Apple has released this image above for their September 12 event and you would have to assume it will be the IPhone 5 announcement that everyone has been anticipating. Keep looking at the picture. It’s like a magic eye trick. Notice it? See that’s why the PR guys at Apple make the big bucks and I type on a keyboard about it…for free.

    Rumors have been bouncing around about the next version of the IPhone since the day the 4S was announced. The one rumor that is almost assured is that it will have a redesigned charging port so all the IPhone cords you and your friends have won’t be so universal anymore. Also it should almost be a guarantee that the screen will be getting a bump up in size. Nothing so ridiculous as the Galaxy Note or even some of the other Samsung or Nokia models but more around the 4-4.2 inch range.

    Anyone looking to pick up the IPhone 5 when it releases in a few weeks, sticking with what you have now or waiting to see the official unveiling before deciding?