Category Archives: Technology

Blog posts about technology and other geeky things (e.g., computers, hardware, software, cell phones, video games, etc).

Crysis Review

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Shortly after beating Portal 2, I started playing Crysis, the classic award-winning first-person shooter (FPS). The game was released back in 2007 but I never played it until now. After beating it on March 31st, I wish I never waited so long to play it!

In Crysis, you assume the role of a soldier named Nomad who is part of an elite group to rescue some archaeologists after they sent out a distress signal. They discovered something that may ‘change the world’ and the North Korean Army took over the island to claim the power for themselves. Your unit is equipped with Nanosuits which augment the occupant’s power, speed, durability, and stealthiness. You fight your way through the island and uncover the mystery of what the archaeologists found.

The first thing you notice about Crysis is it is a beautiful game. Most of the game takes place on a tropical island. The jungle looks rich and lush. The water around and throughout the island looks great. Later in the game you watch a mountain get flash-frozen in ice. You also float around in a very detailed alien ship.

Your squad mates, the opposing North Korean soldiers, aliens, and mini-bosses all look great. The weapons, vehicles such as tanks and VTOLs (aerial vehicles) also are very detailed.

The game simply looks amazing.

Crysis employs “sandbox” game play which means the environments are mostly open-ended and you are free to go wherever you want. You have primary objectives that you can head directly for or take the path ‘less traveled’ and explore a little bit. Often when you do, you find secondary objectives which do not advance the story line but are fun to complete. You often are rewarded with new weapons that you would normally get later in the game.

As I mentioned earlier, you are equipped with an advanced Nanosuit which has several modes that augment your fighting abilities. Armor mode protects against damage and you regenerate health faster. Speed mode helps you run past or away from enemies and avoid being hit. The Power mode gives you extra strength to destroy obstacles and killing enemies by punching them, to jump much higher, and to stabilize your weapons when firing. Cloak mode makes you invisible for a short period so you can sneak around undetected and advance on enemy positions. I personally used the Cloak mode the most because I liked to get headshots on unsuspecting enemies but it’s hard to really remain stealthy like you can in Splinter Cell.

The game has a good variety of weapons which you can customize slightly. You can add or remove your silencer, change the scope, or change the grenade attachments. The silencer made your gun feel very weak but it depends on your play style whether you want to use it. I liked how you could use pistols, sub-machine guns, shotguns, automatic rifles, sniper rifles, or even rocket launchers.

The game’s difficulty felt just about right. You cannot simply run out in the open and expect to survive enemy encounters. You had to use cover and your Nanosuit’s powers to be successful. The enemy’s AI was generally smart. North Korean soldiers would try to flank you and flush you out with grenades. There were pockets of enemies everywhere so you always had to be mindful of your surroundings and remaining ammo.

I really enjoyed that Crysis felt like a complete game. The early levels took considerable effort to beat as you unravel the game’s plot. I did not particularly care for the level inside an alien ship. You float around in a zero gravity environment and it is not particularly obvious where you need to go next. It is easy to get disoriented and it actually made me feel nauseous. However, the good part about the level is that it is pretty spooky navigating through the alien ship.

After you get out of the alien ship, the pace of the game seems to really pick up. Waves of aliens rush out and attack everyone in sight. The game concludes with a pretty epic battle with a mini-boss and final boss on an aircraft carrier.

Even though Crysis was released back in 2007 and it is now 2012, this game can still tax most high-end gaming PCs. Fortunately my crazy buff gaming rig was able to comfortably handle running at a full 1920 x 1080 resolution with Very High presets.

To summarize, Crysis is a great game and I wish I played it sooner. It has great graphics that rival even today’s titles. The sound and music add to the game’s immersion. It has a good story and lots of action that keep you engaged all of the way through. The game is deserving of all its accolades and I highly recommend it to any fans of first-person shooters. Just make sure your computer is buff enough.

Portal 2 Review

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I bought a new monitor in late February, an Acer 23″ (G235HAbd) widescreen LCD monitor as an upgrade over my 19″ monitor. It has a max resolution of 1080p and a fast 5 ms response time. It was a great deal for only $109.99 with free shipping from newegg.com.

In early March (the 8th) I started playing Portal 2 to test out my new monitor. I beat the game a few days later on the 12th. It was a great game played on a great monitor! Here are my thoughts.

In the game, you reprise your role as Chell and you awake in a run down version of the Aperture Science facility which was the setting for the first game of the series. An incompetent robot named Wheatley tries to guide you out of the facility but is generally unhelpful. His moronic comments are hilarious to listen to you as you work your way through the game’s puzzles.

As you follow Wheatley’s lead, he accidentally awakens GlaDOS, the antagonist AI from the first Portal. Unsurprisingly she is upset that you killed her in the first game and tries to enact her revenge through a series of rooms that you must solve. She sarcastically insults throughout each puzzle. I found her comments to be even wittier than the first game.

Wheatley devises a plan to replace her core with his own and you help him do so. He gains full control of the facility. Instead of releasing you like he promised, he gets blinded with power and smashes you into the depths of the facility and he turns GlaDOS into a potato battery!

You work through more puzzles and learn about the facility’s origins along the way. You eventually reunite with GlaDOS. She convinces you to work together because Wheatley is destroying the facility due to his poor management.

The final battle was fairly easy to defeat Wheatley and to restore control of the facility to GlaDOS. If I recall correctly, this fight was much easier than GlaDOS was at the end of the first game. After you beat the game, you are released from the facility through an outhouse and out into an open field.

As for the gameplay itself, it is similar to the original Portal. You have a gun which fires two portals which you and other objects can travel through while preserving momentum. You use the portals to solve various puzzles in a series of rooms. Later in the game you are introduced to some experimental goos which make you run faster, jump higher, or be able to create portals on other surfaces. The game does a great job of adding fresh elements while maintaining everything that made the first game such a success.

I really liked this game. I loved the new puzzles. I also enjoyed the hilarious dialogue between the characters. The game also featured more rooms to solve than the first game. I highly recommend Portal 2, especially if you were a fan of the original.

New Phone – Samsung Galaxy S II Review

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As I mentioned in prior posts, a few months ago I was tired of my old phone and was ready for an upgrade. As much as I hate Apple, their fan boys, and iTunes, I was just about resigned to go to the nearest AT&T store and pick up the new iPhone 4S because there wasn’t another Android phone that caught my eye. Unfortunately I was not upgrade eligible until the 1st of December so I had to wait.

While waiting for December 1st, I continued researching phones. I started learning more about the Samsung Galaxy S II which was recently released on AT&T. The phone had tremendous success in Europe and Asia. However it took forever to come over states-side. When it was finally December 1st, I found that Radio Shack had a sale for it for only $100! Great specs. Long feature list. Awesome price. It was a no brainer!

I am so glad I decided to buy this phone instead of the iPhone 4S and here is my review:

Screen – The first thing you would immediately notice when using this phone is its beautiful 4.3” Super AMOLED Plus screen. The picture quality is amazing. I love the color contrast thanks to the deep blacks. Watching movies such as Avatar is a real pleasure.

The screen size (4.3”) is pretty close to what I consider the ideal size for phones. Any larger and it starts to look silly up against your face. The screen makes the iPhone’s 3.5” screen look tiny in comparison. Even though this phone is larger, it still feels great in your hand, and can fit easily in your pocket.

Having a larger screen makes everything from going on Facebook, Twitter, surfing the web, watching videos, or playing games a lot easier on the eyes. I definitely could not go back to a smaller screen size.

Performance – This phone is fast! Navigating through menus, home screens, and the browser is quick and responsive. This is the first Android phone I’ve used that I did not feel sluggishness between my finger and the display. Apps and games load quickly. 3D games look great and run smoothly.

Wireless Radios – The Wi-Fi, HSPA+, Bluetooth, and GPS radios all worked as expected. Data connectivity is very fast on my 802.11n home router. HSPA+ is a nice upgrade over normal 3G speeds. I wish I had 4G LTE but it is not available in my area anyways.

The Bluetooth radio works flawlessly with my wireless headset which I use for hands-free calling. It also works great for transferring files between other Android devices. I also use the Bluetooth radio with my friend’s PS3 controller for playing video games.

I am so happy the GPS actually works unlike its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S. It really sucked not having a working GPS so having a working one makes you appreciate it that much more.

Cameras – The phone’s dual cameras are great. The rear 8MP camera takes high quality photos that some experts say rivals those taken with the iPhone 4S. The auto-focus is a little sensitive but generally works. I also wish the shutter speed was a bit faster. I also like the addition of the LED flash for taking photos in ultra low light.

The rear camera also takes great videos at 1080p at 30 fps. I use it a lot to take videos of my kids just being cute. I should really use this feature more often just to capture them growing up but I digress.

The 2MP front-facing camera is also great for video chat apps such as Skype. The picture quality seems to be pretty good and definitely is much better than the front-facing camera on my wife’s iPad 2.

Other Hardware – Voice and call quality are good. I haven’t had any issues making or receiving calls.

The speaker is sufficiently loud. I like its placement along the bottom of the phone where it is less likely to accidentally muffle the sound with your fingers.

TouchWiz 4.0 – Samsung has updated the phone’s interface to their custom TouchWiz 4.0 UI interface. Overall I think it is really good. The icons and apps look good and work pretty well. The settings menus are large and easy to read. Screen transitions and navigation feel smooth.

The stock apps work pretty well for the most part. I use the email app for work. I use the video player a lot to play video clips for Daniel. I like how the video player uses the power button as a screen lock. The stock browser stinks (e.g., crashes a lot) compared to the iPhone’s Safari browser. Fortunately, there are plenty of free 3rd-party browsers to download and use instead. I personally prefer Dolphin HD.

I really like how the home screens are arranged and managed. You can have up to 7 home screens which is more than most people could realistically use. Similar to the previous version of TouchWiz, unfortunately it is still a pain that you cannot dynamically rearrange apps on a home screen or within a folder. It is now 2012! Why hasn’t this feature been implemented yet?!

The dock icons at the bottom are nice defaults. For the adventurous type, you can swap out these icons with other apps but it takes jumping through some hoops. I replaced the stock browser icon to open Dolphin HD instead.

Apps – This phone has great compatibility with the majority of apps and video games. I don’t know why but the old Samsung Galaxy S had so many compatibility issues. All of the popular apps and games work. I think this phone is so popular worldwide that many app developers were able to physically test their apps on this phone.

Battery Life – The 1650 mAh battery is more than sufficient to last through an average day of moderate use. Android phones aren’t always known for good battery life but the battery life on this phone seemed at least on par with my previous iPhone 3G. I like that the phone also uses a microUSB connector so it was easy (and CHEAP) to buy additional charging cables to leave in my car and at the office.

Bloatware – One of my minor complaints about this phone is it came with lots of bloatware. Thanks AT&T for nothing…jerks. Actually you can blame just about any carrier for this mess. It was relatively easy though to root the phone and to remove all of these apps. I just wish I didn’t have to but c’est la vie.

Conclusion — Overall the Samsung Galaxy S II is a great phone and is easily the best phone that I have ever owned to date. It is very fast and can easily handle 3D graphics in games as well as everyday tasks. The phone has a great screen size while remaining super thin, lightweight, and pocket-able. This phone is exactly what the first Samsung Galaxy S should have been. On top of great features and specs, this phone can be bought on sale. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for their next smart phone is open to something other than an iPhone.

New Phone – What I Love About Android

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Even though I have a lot of complaints about Android phones and the Android ecosystem in general, there are still plenty of things that I love about Android that I would sorely miss if I went back to using an iPhone. They include:

Swype – Swype is a virtual keyboard for Android that lets you slide your finger across the virtual keys (swiping) to enter words instead of tapping individual letters. It takes a little getting used to at first but once you get the hang of it, you never can go back to hunt-and-pecking again. It is incredibly fast and I love being efficient.

App Drawer — I really hate clutter on the workspaces of my computing devices such as my desktop or laptop PCs. My phone is no exception to that. I love trying out new apps and games. Unfortunately this does not scale well on the iPhone because all of the apps you have installed sit on your homescreens. This means that you either have lots of homescreens to scroll through or start putting everything into folders.

I love how Android addressed this with their App Drawer. All of your installed apps can be found in the App Drawer which you can explicitly visit by clicking on the icon for it. You can add just your favorite apps to your homescreens which really just creates a shortcut to it. This is analogous to your Windows Desktop where the icons there are just shortcuts to programs installed in PC’s Programs folder. This way, your homescreens aren’t cluttered with apps that you want to keep but rarely use.

Bigger Screens – In technology bigger isn’t always better but when it comes to screen size, most of it the time it is. All iPhones currently have 3.5″ screens. Android phones come with many different screen sizes upwards of 5.3″ screens while still remaining portable.

My previous phone had a 4″ screen and everyday things like surfing the web and watching YouTube videos were more enjoyable on the bigger screen. Once you get used to a larger screen size, the iPhone starts to look tiny in comparison.

Choices — Choices, choices, choices. With Android you have tons of choices. As I mentioned above, you can buy a phone with different screen sizes. You can get an Android phone from Samsung, HTC, Motorola, or whoever else tickles your fancy.

Each manufacturer tries to differentiate themselves by implementing their own overlays on top of the core Android OS to provide a richer user experience. As a power user I don’t particular care for these changes but most casual users seem to like them. If you don’t like Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, you can get a HTC phone and use their HTC Sense interface or Motorola’s Blur. The bottom line is the choice is up to you.

No iTunes – I hate iTunes with a passion. It’s a crappy program that has gotten so bloated and slow over the years. It sucks using it to create backups, sync apps and contacts, and transferring files to/from the iPhone. It always took hours and I could never understand why it was so slow. Syncing was dangerous and confusing and there was always that nagging feeling that I could possibly lose my contacts or files because iTunes decided to be stupid.

With Android phones you are free from iTunes jail. I love being able to connect my Android phone to any computer, mount the SD card, and copy whatever files I wanted back and forth on the device. It is quick and most importantly, very easy.

I’m also glad that all of my contacts on my Android phone are automatically stored on my Google account. I can completely erase everything on my phone and then instantly restore all of my previous contacts in a few minutes.

Customization — One of the best features about Android is just about everything is customizable. Don’t like the homescreens? Install a new launcher. Don’t like the manufacturer overlays? Just install one of the many ROMs created by other Android users. I happen to think that most ROMs are utter garbage but at least you have the freedom to try them all out and see what features you like and which ones you don’t. Then you can combine the ones you like and create your own ROM.

Removable Battery — Unlike iPhones, many Android phones come with a removable battery. While this may not sound like much of a feature, it gives the user a few options. First off you can replace the stock battery with an extended version to get extra battery life. Some newer Android phones are so thin and light that some users prefer the added bulk that an extended battery can provide.

Also if your stock battery ever gives you any problems, you can easily buy a new one on eBay or Amazon and replace it yourself. If this happened to your iPhone, you better hope you have the protection plan or be prepared to buy a new phone.

Expandable Memory — iPhones come with a fixed amount of internal storage. You could choose to buy an iPhone with more storage space but each additional upgrade costs $100! If you happen to use it all up with apps, mp3s, photos, and videos, you’ll have to do some digital housekeeping to free up more space if you want to copy or install anything else on your phone.

However with many Android phones, you have the option to install expandable memory cards. Some 32 GB microSD cards cost as little as $30. Just pop it into the back of your phone and you’re all set. If you plug your phone into your computer using a USB cable, then you can easily copy files back and forth onto the new card as well.

Open Ecosystem – I love that Android has a much more open ecosystem than Apple’s walled-garden approach. You can find apps that do all kinds of things such as creating automatic backups of your apps, give you the ability to tether a mobile device to your phone, or play some classic games using a PlayStation emulator. Most of these kinds of apps are banned from the Apple app store for various reasons which aren’t always obvious. Android app developers have more freedom to write apps and users have more choices as to which apps to install and where to get them from.

Notification Bar — The notification bar is a hidden menu which appears when you slide your finger down from the top of the screen. When revealed, it shows all of your recent notifications and provides quick access to enable/disable common features such as the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios. This is such a great feature that Apple shamelessly stole implemented it in their latest iOS version.

Widgets – Android phones support widgets which are little windows that can display real-time data or provide a quick interface to different apps. You can add a widget to your homescreen which always displays the weather of your current location. You could add another widget which lets you see your favorite friend’s Facebook and Twitter messages. App developers can implement whatever widgets they want and as a user, you can choose which ones are most convenient for you.

Share Everything — On Android phones just about every app can exchange data with every other app on the phone. This is very useful if have a link that you found on one app and wanted to pass that data to your Facebook and Twitter apps so you could share it with your friends. You could take a photograph with one app, open it and edit it in another app, and then add it as an attachment and send it in an email in yet another app. The usefulness of this flexibility has no bounds.

It’s Not Apple — Last but not least, my favorite thing about Android phones is that it is not an Apple product. Apple is a smart company. They have brainwashed millions of users into being mindless iSheep. People will blindly buy the next iProduct because Apple tells them it is the best and not verify the validity of any of their statements. For those who have been paying attention, Android has released some pretty great phones as well.

Apple does a good job of releasing innovative products. However they are also quick to flex their patent-hoarding muscles to sue any competitors who also release innovative products. It makes perfect business sense to limit competitors from selling their products but it hurts competition and ultimately limits choices for consumers. What Apple is doing is limiting innovation, not driving it.

I cannot stand supporting a company like Apple that engages in such anti-competitive practices. There’s plenty of room in the marketplace for Apple and Android and anyone else who wants to release good products. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t feel that way so a vote for Android is a vote against Apple.

 

New Phone – What I Hate About Android

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My old smartphone, the Samsung Captivate (AT&T’s version of the Samsung Galaxy S) was driving me nuts. The GPS never worked even after Samsung provide an update. And that was only after months of ignoring user complaints. Scrolling through the UI and web browser was laggy and felt sluggish. The speaker would occasionally stop working and its output sounded muffled until you hit the back of the phone. I often let Daniel watch videos on my phone while I changed his diaper but he would get upset when the sound would cut out. It was cute though when he figured out that he could restore it by smacking the phone.

I was absolutely ready for an upgrade. The question was, “Which phone should I get next?” I really hate Apple so I dreaded feeding the Evil Empire. At least I knew what to expect if I got another iPhone. And my latest experience with Android phones was less than exemplary. In particular, I disliked the following about Android:

2nd-rate Apps – As an Android user I always hated feeling like a 2nd-rate citizen. The Android version of apps (e.g., Facebook, Bejeweled 2) usually came much later (e.g., Instagram) than their iPhone counterparts and often weren’t as good. It felt like these apps were created as an afterthought just to say, “Hey, we have an Android version too!” I can imagine the following conversation at some mobile development companies:

Fred: Hey Bob. You took a Java programming class in college, right? Why don’t you take a crack at porting this iPhone app over to Android?
Bob: Okay, sure.

Limited games — As a gamer, this really bugs me. Most of the great games are only released on the iPhone/iPad. I get jealous when I see some of the games that are only available for my wife’s iPad 2. Higher quality games are starting to get ported over to Android but they often have problems with various devices and run slower than their iOS counterparts.

Slow updates – I can’t stand how slow it takes for Android phones to get updated to the latest OS version. Android is now at version 4.0 known as Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) but only about 1% of all Android users are using it. Some phones have barely been upgraded to the previous version, 2.3.x known as Gingerbread. Many are still stuck at Froyo (2.2.x) or lower!

I upgraded old phone to Gingerbread but I had to jump through so many hoops just to do it. Most people aren’t as technically inclined or motivated to do the same so they are unfortunately left behind. What is the point of Google releasing new Android versions when most of the users are never able to get it and ultimately enjoy what it brings?

Phone manufacturers like to modify the Android source code to add their own custom “skins” to differentiate themselves from other manufacturers. Then phone carriers like to add their own bloatware on top of that. There are many conflicting reports as to whom or what is holding up the update process. Regardless, Google should have figured out by now how to push their latest Android OS updates despite the individual changes made by manufacturers and carriers.

Bloatware – Bloatware is software that companies add to products to make more money but are generally useless. I can’t stand it when laptop/PC manufacturers add bloatware to their devices and it equally sucks when carriers do the same with Android phones.

The worst part is that you often cannot uninstall most of these bloatware apps (without jumping through hoops). You should not have to do all of this extra computer hackery just to get rid of this crap from your phones. I understand that carriers are in the business of making money but at least give users the option to uninstall apps they do not want to keep.

Poor battery life — Battery life sucks on a lot of Android phones. It really stinks having to carry an extra charger cable with you just to get through an entire day. A lot of apps sync with servers periodically throughout the day and it is confusing for users to determine which apps are actually running in the background. Sometimes these apps run even after you stopped using them or launch unexpectedly on their own.

To muddy the waters a bit, many Android users fixate on apps called “task killers” to automatically terminate apps loaded into memory. However being loaded into memory does not equate to running and draining battery life. Due to how Android handles memory management, these “task killers” are not actually needed. However the Google/Android community has done a poor job of educating users and killing these things off.

Price — It’s a disturbing trend seeing some carriers (I’m looking at you, Verizon) starting to charge $300 for new Android smartphones on a 2-year contract. If this continues $300 will be the new $200. I hope consumers are smart enough to vote with their wallets and not buy smartphones at this price.

UI inconsistencies — I am OCD so I cannot stand the little inconsistencies throughout the OS. I can’t help but notice these inconsistencies.

In some apps, the “Menu” button would do one thing; in another app, it may do nothing. Sometimes the “Back” button would make you go back to the last screen that you were on; other times it would exit you out of the app.

I think Android’s original design was flawed when they picked out which buttons were mandatory. The meaning of these buttons are too ambiguous and as a result, app developers were equally confused in how to implement them. It was a mistake to have this many hardware buttons and it was a bigger mistake to keep them around for this long.

Lack of polish — I really disliked that nothing felt polished in Android. The default email, video player, and music player apps were serviceable but generally lacked features or were somewhat clunky to use. Every phone manufacturer likes to make their own variants of these stock apps but none of them felt complete. Google should have created clean, simple, elegant, full featured versions of each of these apps from the start and made it part of Android. Then the end-user could ultimately decide to install different apps if they wanted something beyond what the defaults apps could provide.

Flash — My last complaint about Android is the hype surrounding Flash support. Playing Flash videos on the phone is often very slow and unresponsive, playback is choppy, and it is a battery hog. I am not surprised that Adobe has finally announced that they are killing off active development for mobile Flash. I hate to admit that Steve Jobs was absolutely right about this. Flash was just a bullet point used to pump up Android over Apple but in reality, it is just a gimmick.

Despite having many flaws and annoyances, there are still many things that I love about Android that I would sorely miss if I went back to an Apple product. I’ll share that list in my next post…

Mass Effect 2 Review

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At around 2:15 AM on November 27th, I finally beat Mass Effect 2 (ME2) for the PC after about 28 hours of game playtime. ME2 was pretty good but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed after I finished it. It came with a lot of hype and received very high marks from critics but I felt ME1 had a better story.

So what happens in ME2? Honestly, not much. We find out that an ancient race thought to have been destroyed by the machine race known as the Reapers were re-purposed by the Reapers. In the final battle you get to destroy another Reaper similar to the ending of ME1. Then it shows a cut scene with a fleet of Reaper ships gathering for an attack. However we already knew they were coming after ME1 so it felt like the events in ME2 did little to advance the plot.

I played as an Engineer class for obvious reasons. The perks of this class were kind of lame though. My guy could summon automated combat drones but they were very weak and could barely kill anything by themselves. I ended up using them to flush out targets that were hiding behind cover.

The AI Hacking perk was also quite useless. A hacked target would turn and start firing on nearby targets. However you had to break through the enemy’s shield first before you could hack it but by this point, the enemy is severely weakened so it gets easily destroyed when the other enemies turn their attention to the hacked robot.

Overall the game had many good things about it. The first thing that should be noted was how good the graphics were. The details of the characters, planets, and landscapes were amazing. However it did appear that the computer animators spent a disproportionate amount of time rendering the Miranda Lawson character.

The combat was polished and felt deeper than in ME1. There were more types of weapons and powers to use. It was fun ordering your squad mates to use their powers in addition to your own to perform some impressive combos.

ME2 did away with individual weapon and armor perks and basically simplified the inventory system. The game played more like an action game than an RPG. It sped up the game play but I think I’m in the minority when I say I missed some of the RPG elements.

I really liked that ME2 did not feel like a straight up console port. The elevators used as loading screens in ME1 are gone. Load times were drastically improved in ME2 so I deeply appreciated that. I no longer dreaded visiting places like the Citadel which had several elevators in ME1.

Many new characters were added to ME2 that could join your squad. They each had their own distinct personalities and rich back stories. You had the option to complete each of their respective loyalty missions where they had some personal dilemma or unfinished business that needed your help to resolve. Upon completing these side missions, the person would remain loyal to you and raise their likelihood of survival in the final mission. Being so OCD, I completed each of the loyalty missions.

ME2 also introduced a new concept called interrupts where you could click a button in the middle of a conversation and do something either heroic or bold (i.e., evil). This feature added a dynamic to the game’s storytelling and it felt good to take a stand on certain issues instead of remaining neutral at various parts of the game.

As I mentioned in my previous review for ME1, the decisions made in ME1 were imported into ME2. As a result I noticed a few conversations were altered accordingly but none of my decisions from the first game drastically affected the events of ME2. Hopefully the decisions from ME1 and ME2 have a bigger effect in the upcoming ME3.

My only major complaint was that the main quest was very short. There weren’t many missions that advanced the main storyline. The missions basically were: you get resurrected by a very pro-human organization known as Cerberus, you try to defend a colony from being abducted by the Collectors, you build a new team to fight the Reapers, get a device known as the IFF which allows you to pass through to the Collector‘s home world, and then you fight the Collectors and defeat a final Reaper boss.

Part of the game required scanning and shooting mining probes at planets throughout the galaxy to collect resources used to upgrade your ship prior to the final battle. However this process was tedious. I suppose this is still an improvement over the landing cut scene (ab)used in ME1. Once you start scanning a planet the screen would indicate roughly how much more resources remained on the planet. Because of my OCD, I had to scan every planet that I started scanning until it reached the Depleted status. I’m glad I gathered enough resources to fully upgrade my ship because I survived the final mission without losing any of my squad mates.

It was a little disappointing that there were only two mini-games and they both were very repetitive. One of them was mind numbingly easy. The hacking mini-game was a little challenging at times but it was not very well explained so I accidentally failed at my first attempt until I figured out what you’re supposed to do.

ME2 had so many different quests so I was never lacking of things to do in the game. However I think I spent about 90% of the time doing non-critical missions like the loyalty missions for each crew member. You could almost make the case that there were too many new characters added in ME2 because it seemed to take forever to complete them all. A few times I did so many different side missions that I forgot what was driving the actual plot.

Overall I was fairly happy playing through ME2. The main quest was a little shorter than I would have liked but the final battles more than made up for it. ME2 was still a very good game and I would not hesitate to recommend it to others. As flawed as the first game was though, I still have a soft spot for it.

Mass Effect Review

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One of my favorite pastimes has always been playing video games. Up until now, the realities of a growing family made it difficult to find time for gaming. However since I moved my computer into our bedroom and turned our 2nd bedroom/office into Daniel’s new room, I finally was able to play a little bit late at nights while Tary could at least be close by.

The first game I played was the award-winning action-RPG (role-playing game) Mass Effect (ME1). I had read so many great reviews about the series and the third game in the series was coming out in March of 2012. One really interesting aspect of the series is that once you complete one of the games, you can import the saved game data into the next game in the series. All of the decisions that you made in the first game are carried over into subsequent games in the series. For example, if one of your choices caused a character to die in the first game, that character would not be alive in subsequent games in the series. I wanted to start at the beginning with ME1. A few weeks later, I finally beat the game on October 23rd.

There are so many great things to say about ME1. The first thing that should be noted is the excellent storyline and storytelling of the game. ME1 follows the actions of protagonist Commander Shepard who tries to stop a rogue operative named Saren from bringing back an ancient machine race known as the Reapers who exterminate all intelligent life forms across the galaxy every 50,000 years. Along the way you gain several allies and encounter many different alien races with their own personalities and back stories. The game’s scale and attention to detail is remarkable.

The combat system in the game was very fun and bordered on being a full-out action game. Though this style doesn’t agree with some RPG-purists, I rather enjoyed blindly charging into rooms and caves blasting everyone and anything in sight. The automatic cover system (i.e., automatically controls how you hide behind cover) was a little buggy so I never really bothered hiding behind objects and opted to just keep fighting.

The allies in your squad each possess different skills and abilities which work really well when you work as a team. For example, one of your allies can use their powers to take down an enemy’s shields long enough for you to inflict some real damage with your weapons. As you level up, you can customize which abilities you want to learn and use to suit your play style.

The game maintained a cool morality system a paragon and renegade meter. If you tried to be good, your paragon meter would go up. If you were bad, your renegade meter would climb. You could also try to be good but if you did it in an evil way, you could get points toward both meters. I tried to be good throughout the game but I accidentally let a few individuals die along the way so I ended up a few with renegade points.

On top of great storytelling, I was really impressed with the quality and breadth of the voice acting in the game. There is an added sense of immersion when you hear the characters speak rather than simply reading these conversations in subtitles. After I beat the game, I was pleasantly surprised to see some recognizable names in the voice credits. Seth Green, known for his roles in movies such as Austin Powers, voiced Joker, the hot-shot pilot of the Normandy space ship. Mirina Sirtis, best known as Counselor Deanna Troi from Star Trek, voiced an evil lady named Matriarch Benezia.

The game allowed you to pursue a romance with one of your squadmates. I chose the Alliance soldier Ashley Williams instead of an alien named Liara. Um yeah, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Despite all of the great things about the game, it did have some minor flaws and annoyances. For starters, the game was clearly a console port. The UI was not really optimized for the PC and it had a very clunky inventory system. After fighting several enemies, your inventory would get cluttered with new weapons and gear and needed to be routinely purged.

Another annoyance was the long load times inside of elevators. Anytime you had to go somewhere, you almost always had to go through an elevator and then wait inside as the rest of the level loaded. This may have been a carryover of originally being designed to run on a console system. Certain areas such as the Citadel were especially annoying because when you landed, you had to ride an elevator down to another area, and then ride the elevator back up whenever you had to leave for another planet.

The last thing that bugged me was the excessive copy/pasting of various landscapes. Most of the side missions were on remote planets and once there, you had to fight your way through the exact same underground warehouses and caves. It quickly felt repetitive. Again, this was probably due to this being a console port and trying to minimize having to load many different areas and terrain.

To wrap up, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through and beating ME1. It had plenty of RPG elements to appease my inner geek and enough action to appease my inner caveman. I can’t wait to find out how my responses and decisions from this game affect the events of the remaining games in the series. I’ll let you know when I finish ME2!

Dear Readers…

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I am such a lazy blogger. Well maybe not lazy; busy is a better word. I don’t write that often so I apologize for not posting a consistent amount of time-wasting material.

But…for those who find me somewhat interesting, I refer you to my Twitter feed. If you’re already on Twitter you can follow me directly at @paultrinh or you can simply bookmark this link if you’d rather not sign up for Twitter.

Whenever I think of something mildly interesting (e.g., sports commentary, funny quotes, inside jokes, nerd/geek news, etc) that doesn’t quite warrant a full post about it, I’ll usually tweet about it instead. I consider my Twitter feed as an extension of this blog, a microblog of sorts.

So spread the word and feel free to add this to the growing list of ways to cyberstalk me. Now I only need about 4.3 million more followers to catch up to Ryan Seacrest.

Cognition 3.04 and Fix for Contacts Icon

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I got tired of waiting for AT&T/Samsung to release an official update for my phone (Samsung Captivate) to the Android 2.2 OS. It kills me knowing my phone is still running an OS that is 3 releases behind.

So I did what many other disgruntled users have done; I upgraded my phone by flashing with the Cognition 3.04 custom rom.

I’m pretty happy with the experience so far. My phone is much more responsive and doesn’t feel like it is running through molasses. Text messaging, phone calls, and GPS still appear to work. The browser is improved. I will continue to make sure everything works but so far so good.

The only problem that I had so far was that when I pressed the Back button from within the Contacts, it would not return to the Home Screen. Well it drove me crazy so I figured out how to fix it. If you have the same problem, here’s how to fix it:

1. Long-press the Contacts icon in the dock.
2. Select Change shortcut.
3. Select Applications.
4. Wait for the list of applications to be displayed. Scroll down and select the Contacts app.
5. Select LauncherPro icons.
6. Select the Contacts icon.

Now you should be able to click the Contacts icon in the dock and click the Back button to return to the Home Screen.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

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…especially anything started on Facebook.

Recently an Internet meme was making the rounds on Facebook where people would change their profile picture to a cartoon character from their childhood to raise awareness against child abuse. Like most Internet memes, I balked at the idea and didn’t participate because I don’t believe they raise awareness for anything. In fact, all it seemed to do was raise awareness for how cool these old cartoons were.

This reminded me of meme started last year where ladies would post status updates with the words “I like it on” followed by where they placed their purses to raise awareness for breast cancer.

“I like it on the couch.”

“I like it on the floor.”

“I like it on the table.”

It just sounds like sexual innuendo. I fail to see how it raises awareness to breast cancer. Sure it gets people curious at first when they inquire what these status updates mean but the original point is missed.

Instead of thinking, “Let’s raise some money to discover a cure.”, most of the people were thinking, “Meow. She’s pretty kinky.”
A few days after the cartoon-picture-meme was making the rounds, news outlets were reporting that the meme was actually a hoax started by a group of pedophiles because young children were more likely to accept friend requests from strangers with profile pictures of cartoon characters. So en masse, people rushed to change their profile pictures back to normal.

Then a few days later, the reports about the meme being started by a group of pedophiles were actually false. It just proves that you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

So let’s stop hiding behind these memes and actually make a difference. If you want to raise awareness for a cause, be an adult about it and post a real Facebook status like, “I’m raising awareness for .” Blog about it. Go volunteer somewhere. Donate some money or your time. Invite others to join.