Nintendo 3DS

So My Wife is a big DS fan, in fact she's been through every DS that’s been released.

So last night at 11.00pm I was standing inline at Wal-Mart waiting for 12.01 to roll around so I could pick one of these magical items up.

An hour wait 30 mins drive home and she's now the proud owner or the 3DS.

So what's all the hype about, well honestly there hasn’t been much hype in fact there was only one other person in the line with me.

Truth be told there should be a hell of a lot more hype!

I'm a PSP player I have only picked up a DS to play either Final fantasy or Kingdom hearts, that’s about it. So when I picked up the 3DS I wasn’t really hoping for much.

I was wrong.

Now the lay out is pretty much your standard DS add an analog stick and a SD card reader. Weights slightly more and the top screen is larger by about 15%

So physically not amazing, but then I turned it on and checked out the 3D.

Now 3D with out glasses has been done before, but has never been done like this.

Its like looking in to a box with 3D depth. Its honestly quite amazing to be able to play a game in 3D like that. Got two games Lego star wars III and Rayman 3D both are fun little plat formers as you guess playing in 3D really takes the plat former to the next level. the depth to jumping around is amazing.

But that’s not the best part of the 3DS.

In the box you get 7 AR cards.

What's AR? Augmented reality. This has been done many times before too, mostly on phones the app Layer comes to mind, point it at a shop looking through your phones camera and you will see info about the shop pop up layered over the picture in real time. things like the Menu, prices and so on.

The 3DS takes this tech and shoves it in your face in the way of mini games.

the basic AR card you can lay on a table and point the 3DS at it, look through the camera to see a host of mini games you can play. I had an epic battle with a dragon, played a version of some kind of mini golf, all as I watched my Coffee table warp and turn to what the game needed it to be. Seeing the Dragon fly at me from a hole in my coffee table, was frankly Epic.

the other great thing is if you lose these cards you can simply download them online and print them out again, the 3DS look's for the picture not the card itself.

Also found an App on my Droid that also has the cards sweet!

3DS comes with 3 camera's on the system, two front facing and one inside.

Inside cam is for taking pictures of your face and such which you can input in to some games.

The two outside camera’s are where the magic is. the double cameras will let you take full pictures in 3D! Yep you heard me right and they honestly look good, very strange seeing a 3D pic of my self holding my cat, but hey it works.

The camera itself isn't a big deal only a few mega pixels, and under a standard light CF light in my front room, the quality was really bad. this is a common issue though with main console camera. the MS Kinetic, the PS Move all stuffer from this

The system comes with a 2GB SD card but you can upgrade this to 32GB if you like.

The stylus has been upgraded and is now a metal retractable pen that slides in to the back of the system.

I would honest say to you if your thinking about buying a portable unit and can stand the $250 cost, this is a great buy, hours of fun with the 3DS, and if you don’t want to play the games in 3D you can turn it off and play it in 2D style.

3DS is also compatible with old DS and DSi software.

Needless the say the wife is happy, and so am I!

Rakarn

Forsaken Review

So just a little review here on Forsaken World.

http://fw.perfectworld.com/

Now I honestly was about to uninstall this games once I saw one of the player races was vampires.

I hate Vampires. Well truth be told I love them I hate what has been done to them in the last 5 years in movie and book, Twilight comes to mind….

Needless to say I thought I would give it a try, though I have very low hopes this was going to be any good.

Now I love Vampires in things like White Wolfs VtM or VtR and so on, so I thought I might as well drive in to the think of it make a vamp char and see how they are either

1: Uber powerful

2: romantic lameness.

Now Forsaken world is a Asian WoW clone, means its free to play but if you want the hardcore loot you gonna need to wipe out a credit card or a game card to buy it. If like me you want to run around and kill stuff for a bit then that stuff doesn’t really matter.

So as with most Asian MMORPG you get amazing drawings of characters and buildings and land spaces for loading screen.

Looks very nice so far.

Making a char

Well I picked Vampire lets head in to it, Now mostly all of my chars are male, but I wanted to see what female would look like here. My Alt is always normally female, why you ask? Well in the old days of UO it was easy to scram guys out of gold if you were a girl. there I said, I know makes me a horrible person, but a very rich one on UO =)

So char time. Well you can chose between a set about of faces, hairstyles, colours, nothing amazing here, nice looking graphic's on the ladies faces. customizing really ends there. As with most AMMORPG, which are aimed at westerner's, your lady char will have a ridiculous sized chest.

Not much you can do about it, so if you offended by such things, avoid.

There are a whole bunch of races you can pick from, Human, elf, so on.

They pretty much follow the size archetypes as you always know from many RPGs before, likewise with the jobs, paladin, assassin, etc.

Well here she is old Ryonna, also note the crazy stripper armor you get forced to wear, yep that’s right its time to lay the smack down in underwear and some sort of jacket that 8 sizes too small!

So in this game Vampires are pretty much mages, your ‘weapon’ is a massive crucifix you wear on your back, something about controlling blood magic. either way I find it kinda fun.

So I wake up in a castle, have a standard walk around get used to the control system which is very much WoW.

After a few get to know the game quests I’m off in to the big bad world.

Namely Freedom harbor which seems to be a big old hub of the game (think Ironforge or Stormwind)

As you can see from the Screen shot, its very WoW UI. But I will say this graphics are pretty nice.

So ran around grab some quests, buy some stuff, kill bad guys, ran and get X to take back to X and your pretty much in to the game.

Once you get to level 20 you can start spending skill points to buff up your skill trees.

You can also take on different jobs, for potion making, cooking and so on

Now there are some good and some really bad things about the game.

The Good.

I plays really nice on crappy hardware, and there is a nice “lite graphics mode” you can simply click on if your finding yourself hit a lag wall in a big city, you can also do things like make other plays on the screen go away to get some more speed out of your game.

The game plays real nice, I have played a lot of Free MMOs and I just like the feel of this one.

Spell graphics look damn nice the vampire set of skills are very nice to watch.

So far haven't meet an nasty person in the game (though I’m sure that will change)

the praying system, 4 times a day you can pray to the gods and get free stuff and XP, pretty cool!

The Bad

Insanely too easy. Hit lvl 22 in 4 hours spread out across two days, died once when in battle and my 6 year old was screaming about a spider in her room 6year > online game. you also get magic potions that you can use as many times as you want in combat and out to heal yourself and mana up (hopefully they go away at later levels)

A lot of the quests are go here, get that, go here, gets very boring very quickly.

Auto Ran: I can not say how much I hate this. don’t know where someone is? Don’t look for them or find out info, just open the quest and click on their name, you will auto ran to them! yay! So lame. What happened to the days where you had to go find people or items yourself?

As an added bonus, when you use the port to town spell your char will dance like a stripper!

Hardware

So I playing the game on a simply Dell Vostro laptop, 4 GB of RAM, Windows 7. T7500 Duo core, and a Intel onboard graphics card.

The game runs pretty smooth at the default settings, I can bump texture up to about 3/4 of the way up to highest level and still not lag too much.

Putting up anything else though kills the system. So lite graphics on this laptop for me.

Even with a lot of people in the main hub, lag isn't to big of an issue.

I do sometimes get some graphics corruption when opening the quest menu, but closing it and opening it again sorts that out.

I will be putting this on my Core i7 later on and see what the graphics look like on that.

So the short of it

Nice game if you just want to have a very light MMORPG, very easy to play, too easy really.

In the End

All in all I like the game, So I will be giving in a few more days or playing, hopefully it will get harder but until then I’m gonna give it a 7/10

Once other thing I will say is I like that the instances are timed, you can only get in to them at set points of the day, which is nice as it means you don’t get people sitting online doing the same instance over again for farming.

Look for me on the Storm PvE server as Ryonna if you fancy running around

Well that’s my quick review of Forsaken World.

Till next time, here’s a shot of some very nice face graphics!

Rakarn

Game info

Game

Forsaken World (MMORPG)

Main Page

http://fw.perfectworld.com/

Trailer

http://www.perfectworld.com/media/play?id=631&type=official

Download (3.42GB)

http://fw.perfectworld.com/download

System Requirements

System Requirements	Windows® XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
CPU	Intel® Pentium® 4 at 1GHz, (Mid to High Range Dual-Core 2.5GHz CPU or better recommended.)
RAM	1GB of RAM (2GB or more recommended for XP, 3GB or more for Windows Vista and Windows 7)
Hard Disk	8GB of Hard Drive Space or more (16GB or more preferred)
Graphic Display	3D video chipset with support for Shader Model 2.0 or better. nVIDIA GeForce 6200 with 256MB RAM (nVIDIA GeForce 9800GT with 1GB RAM or better recommended) or AMD/ATI Radeon 9550 with 256MB RAM (AMD/ATI RADEON HD 3850 with 1GB RAM or better recommended)
Sound Drivers	DirectX 9.0c compatible sound chip or onboard audio capability with the latest sound drivers
Network	Broadband Internet connection required

Forsaken World

So after sufering for a bit I came across this games forsaken world. I had played Perfect world a few years ago for a review on another site, I thought 'whats the harm'

4GB download later and I was off.

So whats its all about, here's your back story.

In the beginning two gods existed - Dyos and Nyos, they were the rulers of the universe and could create and destroy as they saw fit.

Dyos Creates a World

Dyos discovered a world in the universe, and named it "Eyrda." It was a bleak place, with only a giant tree connecting the sky and land. Dyos discovered a giant star-wheel at the top of that tree. Within it were countless sparking stars, and Dyos saw that these were portraits of gods! Dyos not only found his own image, but that of Nyos too.

Encountering this unknown thing wheel and seeing the other figures filled him with an unknown weakness. After his discovery of the wheel, Dyos continued to live in Eyrda for another ten million years, all the while he tried to see through the wheel, but he was unable to uncover its secrets. During those ten million years, he called on other gods to build Eyrda into a wonderful, booming world. At last, Dyos left his three children- Tytan, Illyfue and Vyda, and gave them the gift of Eyrda. His parting wish was that they managed and cared for this world as he had. Dyos then departed Eyrda, to continue his trip throughout the universe.

 

The Children

During the following tens of millions of years, Dwarves, Humans, Elves and Stonemen were created. Each race had a unique beginning: Tytan needed a short but industrious race to mine for him so he created the Dwarves. Humans were created by Illyfue who imitated Vyda's appearance, who were settled in western Ousta. Though Vyda pretended not to care for the Humans, he secretly loved the race that bore his resemblance, and taught them many ancient secrets. Illyfue created the Elves in his own image and he put them in the forest to become his servants. Stonemen were carved from Giant sacred stones by Tytan. A strange race that contains only men, they generate descendants with the Stone of Birth ceremony.

The Advent of Nyos

The first time Nyos visited the great world of Eyrda, he was bent on destroying it. But he too discovered the great wheel. Dyos fearing the wheel had great power, had previously left behind clues to its false meaning to confuse Nyos and directing him to follow the path of Dyos. Before leaving however, Dyos bestowed upon Eyrda his own child, Mylvada. Mylvada yields the power to destroy and has the appetite of destruction.

 

The First Great War

Mylvada was not welcomed into the world. He was shunned by the other three gods, and this strife caused first war among the gods to break out. The war took place in the northern land of Norta. It lasted for one hundred years and in the end Mylvada failed to achieve his goal of destruction and retreated from the world. Eyrda's northern land Norta was greatly damaged during the war and eventually sunk into the sea.

As time passed Mylvada saw another opportunity to bring war, and invaded Eyrda a second time. This act triggered the second great war among the gods. Tytan relied on a newly discovered weapon, the Ancient Relic's. These relics contained great power and whoever had them in hand was surely to win any battle. Armed with the relics and with the help of Vyda and Illyfue, Tytan defeated Mylvada once again. But the central land called Shyntola was giving birth to a black hole due to the harsh war, so the three gods had to open the Ancient Fissure and take the cursed land into the Fissure in order to save Eyrda from doom. Only the western Ousta was left untouched.

The Birth of the Kindred

Before the second war broke out, Shylia moved to Ousta in order to shake the memory of Mylvada's terror. In Ousta, Shylia fell in love with a common human named Herghevid. In order to live with her lover forever, and free him from the grasp of death, Shylia used the Mythic Embrace, and infused his blood with her godly essence. This made Herghevid both immortal and very powerful. Herghevid became the first of the race called Kindred and through his offspring the Kindred race grew.

 

The Fall of the Gods

Mylvada might have been pushed back, but vowing to never fail, another attack was set upon Eyrda. With Tytan, Illyfue and Vyda still inside the Ancient Fissure. Shylia stood up and led all the races of Eyrda to resist Mylvada's attack. Shylia also called upon the other god's of the universe to aide her cause. In the end Shylia was victorious and Mylvada was driven away yet again, but Shylia and the Ancient Relics were lost during the war. Other gods who assisted in battle also fell in the war, and their Godly Essences were scattered throughout Eyrda. With Tytan, Illyfue and Vyda absent, the Humans reigned supreme over the lands.

A Hidden Storm

Mylvada barely survived the battle and prior to departing Eyrda, he revived Dysil, the giant creature who descended from the Giant Tree of Eyrda. The body of an evil giant dragon was given to Dysil who renamed himself Strom Lord. He ruled Shyntola and waited for to be united with Mylvada. He led the so called Strom Legion and through his impatience on the return of Mylvada, began a war intent on destroying Ousta. In the end he was defeated by the races of the world that united as a single army, led by the heroic Humans. But Dysil is planning a second invasion...

This time the fate of the land will be in your hands. You must choose which race you represent in the battle against Dysil, and also look for the powerful relics that were lost in the previous wars and you must seek out the Godly Essences which can make you become godly. Drive back the forces of evil and defeat them once and for all!

Online vs Real Life

Well as some of you know I was a big player of UO in its day, and also WoW. But the tolls of online gaming honestly almost killed me. 15 odd hours a day some college and about 2 hours sleep is not a good idea in the long run.

Why did I do it? Fun! thats right as simple as it sounds fun is the answer, but is there such a thing as too much fun? yes there is.

Later there has been alot of take about VGA (not a VGA on a computer) but Video Gaming Addiction.

Seems some people want to pass it as a medical condition, in a sence I agree in a sence I dont.

Hear me out here, humans love to do what they can to make themselfs feel better, weather this is done, say by helping at your local soup kitchen or doing drug, everyone wants to feel good, but as with the drug part i can be hateful and dangous.

I dont think Online gaming is so much the problem as it is, people wanting to replace or fill in something in their lives. Hate your job? Boss shouts at you everyday? Feel like there is nothing you can do> Well log on to WoW and take command of your guild, go kill some orks, feel the respect you are given for having the best gear!

Sounds good doesnt it? for most people it is, who wouldnt want to be respected? loved? even feared.

I think before we try to make vido gaming in to a medical problem we should really look at whats going on with the gamer outside of the game.

Why is he or she wanting to spend so much time in the online world and away form RL?

I think by address those problems first and foremost we will get rid of alot of this addiction problem.

So the next time you think about logging on to WoW, or GW or one of the many other online games, take a sec to think about why you are logging on, and what you could be doing instead. Take it from me, an ex so call gaming addict, once you have set yourself right in RL you wont need to spend days on end in the online world.

Rakarn.

P.S If you or someone you know is spending way to much time on an online game, talk to them about it, maybe talk to their familes, there are many support groups out there to help you out. but please dont waste your life on another life that isnt real.

Iron Storm

Well as some of you might have known, Iron storm went on a few weeks back. I was there for the event, had a blast.

The big topic of the event wasnt so much the gaming or the rigs, but the amount of woman that where playing.

I was told this event had the most woman in it than ever. almost 10% of the final total.

The event was great, fun games good sportsmanship all around, some kick ass music playing too.

Alas I got my behind handed to me in Marvel vs Capcom 3 and some other games.

Check out the pictures of the event to see alot of lovely lady gamers and some nice pictures of some rigs.