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  • iPhone 5 Officially Announced

    Releasing on September 21st for $199.

    As expected, today Apple announced the iPhone 5. And in today’s age of leaked content and footage there really is no surprise on the look of it. It it a two toned back and 4″ elongated screen like the leaked photos over the past few days. The phone will come loaded with iOS 6 straight out of box and the new, smaller A6 chip which is twice as fast as the A5 and allow for 2X better graphics.

    The camera will be the same as the 4S with a few improvements including 40% faster shutter speed and a built in panoramic mode as well as having facial detection for up to ten people. The back camera will be able to shoot 1080p video and the front will get to shoot our ugly mugs in 720p.

    Battery life has been improved with 225 hours of standby time and can even run 8 hours on 4G LTE.

    Size Matters

    Like I said before the phone is getting a bump in screen size to 4″ but it will be longer and not wider. Also the iPhone 5 will be 20% lighter and 18% thinner than the 4S. Apple said that they did this because they believe you should be able to handle everything on your phone with one hand (maybe a dig at such phones as the Galaxy Note).

    The new power connector is also going smaller and is called Lightning. It is 80% smaller and digital. Apple has an adapter ready to sell if you want to use your stockpile of old iPhone or iPod cords with the new phones as well.

    Siri update my status…wait wait!

    Don’t worry Siri users, the digital chick is getting a few upgrades to. First off you will now be able to update your Facebook using the service which I can already tell is going to be so much fun to watch certain people’s drunken Siri talks accidentally go up for all to see. For the sports fan you can now ask Siri about your favorite team and get live score updates on the screen.

    Apple said that the iPhone 5 will be available for pre-order on September 14th and released on September 21st. The prices are the same as when the 4S released last year so $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB. The 4S will drop to $99 and the 4 will become free with a two year contract.

    What say all of you? Is it a big enough jump to get rid of your 4 or even your 4S?

     

  • Nintendo Gives You A Heads Up On Their Wii U Event

    Reggie Fils-Aime Is Ready. Are You?

    We are only a day away from Nintendo’s big Wii U preview event and today Nintendo has sent out a video letting everyone know how to catch the live stream of the show. I’ll just let Reggie explain it in true Nintendo style.

    The show begins tomorrow morning at 9AM CST and presumably will be where Nintendo will announce the release date and pricing for the Wii U. I hope they also give us an idea of what their launch day titles will be. Keep checking with us here tomorrow and we will keep you updated as fast as we can.

    http://youtu.be/WyGo4Tbd7O0

     

  • 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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  • An electric vehicle cheaper than the Leaf, more stable than the Batpod.

    Introducing the world’s first gyroscopically stabilized, two-wheeled all-electric vehicle: The C1 from Lit Motors. Or as I like to call it, My Next Car. 

    Notice the clip of the C1 getting jerked around by a Jeep while keeping its balance and staying upright. The idea is that even in an actual crash it would bounce off, screech a bit, and keep going.

     Sliding by a theater near you

    If it sounds like something you’ve seen in movies, you’re right. There are actually several features of the C1 that have ties to the big screen.

    • Super-stable 2-wheeled vehicle = The Dark Knight’s Batpod
    • Remote controlled by smartphone = Batman’s Batmobile and The Dark Knight’s Batpod
    • HUD display built in to the windshield… you heard me. = Remember the car Tom Cruise sported in MI4 with the touch screen windshield… that, but without the “touch” capability.

    Other great features:

    • top speeds around 100mph,
    • 0-60 in 6 seconds
    • a range of about 200 miles/charge

    All packaged into a sleek design that will launch in 2o14 for about $24,000, but will drop to $12,500 by 2018.

    lit-motors-C1-electric-vehicle-car-motorcycle-gyroscopic

    In summary, its awesome and I want one.

    You can reserve yours here. Find more details about the C1 and its creators over at TechCrunch…

    Would you buy one?

  • 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.