All Points Bulletin (APB) Review
By Jordan Davis

Welcome to a world of violence, chaos, and teabagging. No I don’t mean a political conference. I am talking about APB, the latest MMO by Scottish developer Realtime Worlds of Crackdown fame. The streets are full of rampant criminals and the Charles Bronson like vigilantes who are trying to stop them. An amazing amount of customization and play styles allow you to make up for the lack of unique skills and little variety of weaponry.

First off I will say that I love this game. Unfortunately it has a lot of faults; faults that may kill it if not fixed in the near future. Luckily the story line isn’t part of these faults. You start out as an Enforcer or Crim. Neither have a benefit over the other, which allows you to take part in whatever side of the law you choose without reservation. You follow a slew of contacts to receive missions and rewards and each contact is part of 1 of the two organizations. On the enforcer side you have the Prentiss Tigers and the Praetorians. Each provide unique rewards and unlock new items including guns, vehicles, tools, or clothing. On the crim side you have the Blood Roses or the G-Kings. These are the identical counterparts of the enforcer contacts. I chose to be an enforcer, and do my part to clean up “San Paro.”

The missions come in a few different varieties. You have regular missions that resemble others in the MMO genre. Pick this item up, take it here, defend this area, etc. I found I was given the same mission multiple times under different contacts, which was disappointing to say the least. However, due to having enemy players dispatched against you mid mission, they never really feel the same. Then there are bounties. Bounties are missions that dispatch you against criminals that have committed a crime in front of witnesses. Your goal is to kill them or arrest them multiple times. These are my least favorite missions as most times the criminals will just get in a car and run until the timer is out. These are similar to “dispatch” missions, that send you after an enemy during their mission. The third, and probably the most fun mission type are calls for backup. This means that enforcers or crims are already in a hunt, but require assistance. These tend to result in much larger, organized battles.

Leveling is a tricky concept in APB. Most MMO’s give you a standard for leveling and skill progression; APB is unique in this aspect, for better or worse. Each contact can be leveled up by attempting or completing missions. This unlocks special rewards. Each faction (or Organization) can be leveled up through various missions and killing high priority targets. Higher rank within an organization unlocks new weapons, vehicles, tools, and clothing that you can purchase from the contact. Then there is your rating. Rating is a reflection of your ability, missions completed, and various other circumstances. Certain items can only be used after reaching a certain rating. Last but not least is Prestige (for enforcers) and Notoriety (for crims). This is your rating of how good you are doing in the current play session. Once you reach level 5 you have a hit placed on you and can attack and be attack by any player of the opposite faction. Beware if you are a crim, because your own faction can try to kill you for the bounty as well.

There are 2 locations in which to wreak havoc upon one another, and one to take effect of the copious amounts of customization the game offers. These areas are called districts, and are separated into the financial, waterfront, and social districts. The financial and waterfront locations differ by a small margin, causing me to mistakenly turn into walls, thinking there are paths there that only exist in the other district. The city design is rather similar. The only real change is the different contacts, and a few unattainable ocean based views. This isn’t to say that it’s not beautiful at times, because it certainly can be, but there isn’t much distinction between the two. Imagine a world not as cartoony as Saints Row, but not quite as realistic as GTA.

The social district is much smaller, and has no combat, but is the only place you can make customizations to your character, vehicle, music, and logo. Most games offer a detailed character creator, but very few allow changes in the other parts of the game. You can design and detail your vehicles, making them unique for your character or unique to your clan. The music creator allows you to create your own theme to play when you get a kill or win a mission, mostly with 8-bit noises. There’s nothing like dying to the theme of Beverly Hills Cop or Zelda. You can design your own logo that will be spray painted, and if you are a top player your logo and avatar will be placed on a billboard in the social district.

Driving is an area of concern for me. A lot of the vehicles are incredibly slow, making it impossible to catch up to a bounty in a faster car. And the faster vehicles tend to have horrible handling causing you to crash into anything and everything. Although other players cant shoot your car if they are not involved with your current mission, they can crash into it. Several times I have been followed by someone I beat in a mission earlier that day, and they spend their time trying to crash me. This can become incredibly frustrating.

This kind of action does fall under the category of harassment, however good luck submitting a report. The few times I tried to report spammers or what I have dubbed “crash dummies” the APB support page in game will not load. Same goes for the knowledge base. So if you have trouble figuring something or a bugged mission, don’t plan on having any support from Realtime Worlds staff. Luckily most players in the district chat are willing to help out with any questions you may have about gameplay, leveling, or how the hell that guy took a whole magazine from an assault rifle and lived.

This leads me to combat, the most fun and frustrating part of APB. There are times you walk away feeling like a god, and others that make you start writing an angry letter to Scotland asking for $50.00. The guns lack precision, unless of course you have reached a high enough level to purchase guns with upgrade slots. These slots can be filled with anything from accuracy upgrades to extra ammo. Unfortunately the players who have these upgrades are at a huge advantage, making the missions against them incredibly frustrating. On multiple occasions I would have the drop on an enemy, shooting him from behind. Before it would kill him, he would have time to turn around either shoot me on the run or drop a grenade, killing me either way. When you are dispatched against a player this is forgivable, however when you are just trying to complete a mission and you die every time you come close to your objective, well, that might be enough to make you quit altogether.  However when you have a great round and demolish your opponents, the game suddenly feels more balanced. Interesting how that works, isn’t it?

One of the biggest problems with combat is communication. The few groups I have been in that used the in-game VIOP have succeeded with flying colors. If you don’t communicate, you will fail. It’s really that simple. The in-game VIOP has decent sound but beware, the game has it set to voice activation by default. That means if you have a mic plugged in and don’t change it, anyone on your team, group, or in your immediate vicinity can hear what you are saying.

So lets say you’re sold and want this game; how does the payment work? This is one thing I really like about Realtimes Worlds setup. First and foremost, a month of unlimited play is only $10, $5 cheaper that the normal MMO monthly charge. Also they allow you to purchase 20 hours of action district play that never will expire. So if you want to play but aren’t sure if you will have time this month, next month, buy 20 hours that you can use at your leisure for only $7.00. The last option is a neat addition allowing you to sell items at the auction for RTW points, in which you can spend on game time, therefore paying for your game with in-game actions. However that’s the one issue I have with the payment. You don’t pay directly for hours or unlimited monthly. You have to purchase RTW points, then apply the code to your account, then purchase the hours. Much like the Microsoft points setup. The first time I did it there was very little direction, and I had to guess where to go next.

Personally I love the feeling of being the cop. You rarely get to play the run of the mill good guy in games, and I am willing to deal with the problems to have that moment. So if you love the setting, and loved the online multiplayer of GTA IV then you will probably enjoy this game. If you are strictly a shooter fan, this might provide more disappointment than fun. My recommendation is to wait for them to release a 2 week trial (can’t imagine it will take them too long to do so) and test it first.

Minimum
 OS: Windows XP
 Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz or equivalent
 Memory: 2GB RAM
 Video: NVidia GeForce 7800 256MB
 Hard Drive: 15GB
 Sound: DirectX 9
 Internet: Broadband connection required to install and play
Recommended
 OS: Windows 7 (recommend a 64-bit operating system)
 Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad or equivalent
 Memory: 4GB RAM
 Video: NVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 512MB or equivalent
 Hard Drive: 15GB
 Sound: DirectX 9
 Internet: Broadband connection required to install and play

Logitech MX5500 Wireless Bundle Review
By Jordan Davis

I recently acquired a Logitech MX5500 Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for work and it has been a pleasure to use. I have used many “gaming” keyboards and mice, from Microsoft to Razor, and this is by far the best one. Not to say the others are bad, but this complete package is worth the heavy price tag.

What I like about it:

I love the quiet and soft keys on the keyboard. It feels smooth like a laptop, yet enough pressure to know that you pressed the keys, which is an issue I have had with other keyboards of this type. The LCD screen built in is a nice touch, but I rarely find myself using it. However I do like that the calculator hot key goes to the LCD on the keyboard to do your calculations, so it doesn’t mess with anything on your screen.

The mouse is welcome addition to the bundle. The blue tooth signal is strong as long as it is within 10-20 feet of the receiver. The charge on the mouse last for about 3 days of heavy use, and weeks idle. I can’t say how long the keyboard lasts with the four AA batteries (included with the bundle), but I have had it for a month and haven’t had to replace them. Also I just realized that this keyboard and mouse is compatible with the PlayStation 3, an added bonus.

The scroll wheel one the mouse has a few different settings. It can be permanently set to either click to click or to free spin. Its default setting is that if you click the mouse wheel, it switches between click to click and free spin. It can also be set to change to free spin as you increase speed. Click to click is needed in gaming to allow weapon switching to be precise, where free spin serves a better purpose in web browsing and office like work, such as scrolling through spreadsheets.

What I dislike about it:

Drivers are a pain. Now on XP there shouldn’t be a problem, but on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit I had some issues. First of all, there is no 64-bit client of “set-point” the Logitech software. Now this shouldn’t be an issue, since many 32-bit programs run fine on 64-bit, however the initial install did have issues. I believe the windows drivers that installed on their own messed up the Logitech drivers causing the items to be unresponsive. I found just installing the windows drivers, rebooting, then installing the Logitech drivers would allow the install without disabling the devices.

The keyboard has a PC power button. I have always hated these, and they have caused more unexpected shutdowns for me than power outages. Luckily there is a way to turn this off in the Set-Point program. The mouse has a search button that take you to a search page of your choice, which is fine and dandy, except when you accidently click it during a game and it minimizes you, screwing up that awesome kill streak.

Overall it is a great combo, and worth the purchase, even with a hefty price of $144.00 on Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/a8VRpe).

Get Yourself “Kinect-ed”

Formerly known as “Project Natal,” Kinect is a peripheral  attachment to the Xbox 360 that uses cameras to detect the movements of the player and translates the movement to the screen.  The device integrates voice recognition so that players need only speak there selections for the Xbox dashboard and with friends online. The philosophy behind Kinect is for hand-held controllers to be a thing of the past and that the body will serve as the controller.

“By making you the controller, we will transform how you and your friends experience games and entertainment,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.

On-stage demos of launch titles promoted this characteristic, including Harmonix’s Dance Central, Kinect Sports, and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Although the latter two titles may try riding the coat tails of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, third-party companies are poised to bring out the originality of this device, including Ubisoft’s Child of Eden.

Questions do arise from functionality issues. While the on-stage demos seemed suspiciously staged (no pun intended), they did not address other issues beyond body movement and controlling menus with the hands. For example, the Forza demo may let you enter the car and steer, but gas and brake pedals, looking behind you while driving and pulling the e-brake would be needed to make an accurate driving simulation. There was no description of how button-related commands which do not require movement, like squeezing a trigger, would be interpreted by Kinect. This is Microsoft’s first attempt at a unique accessory for their console, which means technical problems need to be minimum if Kinect is to succeed.

Kinect is scheduled to release on November 4, 2010 at a retail price of $149.99.

Xbox 360′s Video Game Line-up

While Microsoft’s video game previews weren’t as prominent as the Kinect demos, they were certainly needed to appeal to their hardcore gamer crowd. Microsoft announced an exclusive deal through Activision to give first-release rights to all downloadable content on Xbox 360 for the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops. After the major success of Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft chose to bank on exclusivity with the next game in the popular franchise.

Other major titles included Halo: Reach and Gears of War 3, both of which may be the final titles to each series (or at least by their original developers). Both demos showed promise, but didn’t sway to far from their original formulas. Previews (non-playable) included Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Fable 3, which both creators claimed will reinvent their franchises. Outside of Kinect, most of Microsoft’s original titles are playing it rather safe, so the results could please or upset each game’s fan-base.

It pays to be slim (maybe)

The final announcement came as somewhat of a surprise to everyone when a new model of the Xbox 360 was revealed. Aesthetically, the system is smaller than the original, having ditched the concave design and white color for a black finish and much needed side air vents. Internally, the system supports a 250GB hard drive, internal wi-fi, and quieter hardware. These new features are long overdue, but Microsoft did not address the dreaded red-ring-of-death problem that plagued the previous model. Critics of the disc tray from the previous model won’t see any changes, though Microsoft should have reconsidered the idea.

The new model has been shipped out last week and retails for $299.99, while retailers already began marking down previous remaining arcade and pro SKU’s of the original model 360.

Check out the E3 2010 trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution!!

D-Box Motion Seats Review

By Heather Kellerhals

I recently went to see the remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and sat in the new D-box motion seats.  I really didn’t know what to expect and was looking forward to something new for my movie watching experience.  Once I was armed with popcorn and a coke, I went to hunt down my seat.  They weren’t hard to find, they stood out smack dab in the middle of the theater like the KING and QUEEN seats of Theaterdom.  It was like finding your seat at a baseball game though, looking for your row and seat number.  That was a little hard to do in the dark.  The thing I didn’t like about this is you will just have to deal with it if you get stuck next to someone who likes to smack there food or talk through the movie.  I did like that I had my own arm rest and didn’t feel my “space” was being violated. You can also adjust the amount of movement you want to experience.  You can choose High, Medium and Low.  I kept mine on high to get the full effect.  During the movie if a loud noise or (as my son would call it) a “pop out” scene occurred the seat would react with a pretty good jolt or vibration to make you jump.  I loved the extra jolt of being scared more than I would have in a normal seat.  It was like having someone grab you when you are on the edge of your seat.   It made the scary scenes scarier and jumpy scenes jumpier.  If the scene was through the eyes of a character the seat would move like you were the one walking.  Now this could make you a little nauseated if you are prone to motion sickness.    The seats are very comfortable and cushy and you have plenty of leg room.   The tickets are pricy at $18.00 per ticket for an evening seat and $15.25 for a matinee.  This is an extra $8.00 per ticket so hopefully it’s a movie you REALLY want to see and is worth the extra money.

Star Trek Review

By Jordan Davis

Let’s set the record straight so there is no confusion. I am a Star Wars fan, and always will be. I’ve expressed my love for science fiction in my past reviews, and Star Wars does it better than any other. Now that I have expressed my inner fanboy, let me tell you how delightfully surprised I was by Star Trek. Directed by J. J. Abrams, the man behind Mission Impossible III and producer of Cloverfield, this 2009 release is a totally revamped version of the movies and television series. If Star Trek needed anything, it was a little change.

Now before I have fanboys tearing me to pieces, let me say that I haven’t really given the original movies or series a chance, and that’s something I regret. With only a little exposure to “Next Gen” and virtually no screen time with Kirk I went into this movie blind. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed it so much. It was different than I remember, even if I only remember random episodes and the youtube video of Picard’s song. If nothing else I can say my first real experience with Star Trek was a good one.

With fantastic CG and some beautiful shots of space battles I was completely absorbed. Chris Pine playing Kirk and Zachary Quinto starring as Spock was a wonderful casting choice. They did a fantastic job, playing off of each other very well and creating a relatable experience for any viewer. Simon Peg was fantastic comic relief, unfortunately doesn’t join the crew until late in the film. The music is moving, bringing tears during the emotional sections, and putting you on the edge of your seat when the action picks up. The dialogue is witty, and each character drops one of the signature lines that even a rare viewer like me noticed. Overall a great cast, merging very well with the original group.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard is probably the same reason why I enjoyed this movie so much. It felt like a Star Wars movie. Emotional losses, hero fathers they never met, epic action scenes, etc. I would give more detail but can’t without giving up the plot to the few people who took longer than me to see this movie. But hey, if it works what’s the problem? It isn’t anything special that you couldn’t find in an array of other science fiction films, but it is a fun action movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it…even if it originally came out in 1977.
::Spoiler Warning::

All in all, with beautiful visuals teamed up with an epic musical score and some chuckle inducing one liners, this movie is a welcome addition to my collection. I looks like a second movie will be made in 2012, and I might actually take the time and money to go see it in the theatre.  So for you Star Wars fanboys out there, don’t pass this one up due an old rivalry. I think there is room in this world for both Star Wars and Star Trek to be at the top of our sci-fi lists.

Pandorum Review

By: Kindra Martinez

Imagine waking up one day in the cold, steel interior of a ship, having no recollection of whom or where you are and no clue as to what you’re supposed to be doing. Then realizing your friends, family and co-workers are nowhere to be found.  It’s dark. You hear distant noises. You are alone. The only things you can see are pods with names on them, shown only by a flickering of light. And there, you have Pandorum.

This is the second American film for German Director Christian Alvart. I believe he has the potential to make a decent movie. But let’s hope none come about for quite some time. The storyline is somewhat predictable as you get further into the film. I personally don’t like sitting through a movie once I’ve become aware of the plot. It would have been easy to get up and walk away had any other form of entertainment presented itself.

Ben Foster did an amazing job in this. It seemed as though I could feel the same emotions he was. His character had a way of forcing empathy on you. Dennis Quaid’s character was easily forgettable. Any actor could have played this role considering there was nothing unique about it. Cam Gigandet, who played a mysterious crewman later in the film, was decent as well. I preferred him in some of his other roles; normally cast as a remarkable villain. He outshined Dennis Quaid by a long shot; unfortunately this film didn’t make that hard to do.

The CG had some pretty cool elements. For example, the futuristic razor that removed hair without touching the skin was a neat addition to the setting. The real scare of the film is the mutated beings, in particular the child hunter. Small, evil looking children generally are scary on their own, without the help of a dark backdrop and spine tingling screams. I was not a big fan of the quick cuts during the action scenes. It was all a bit too frantic looking, almost as if the cameras didn’t know where to point. The movie constantly changed to a blue tone that was annoying for a short time, but you get used to it.

Some good computer graphics bottle necked by a poor storyline turned a potentially horrifying movie into a mediocre night. I would not recommend this film to any horror buffs out there considering the only thing(s) that were remotely scary were the mutated humans.

For the longest time I was playing Steam games on my Mac prior to the Steam release using Crossover. This App worked really well, with the occasional bugs here and there. None of these games were native to OS X. When I heard Steam was coming to the Mac, I immediately dropped Crossover and deleted all my PC Steam apps in anticipation of the Release. Rumor was it would have TF2 at launch. No dice. Portal and CivIV were the only games available at launch. Civ IV did take a day or two to finally make it to the store.

The interface is much the same as it is on the PC. Friends are listed on it’s own window and has voice chat along with the normal text chat. Being that there is a lack of multi-player games I have not been able to test the in-game voice chat like what’s available in CS:S and TF2.

Overall installation was a snap, drag the steam app to the apps folder and run the app. It then proceded to download and install the rest of the application. For the first week it seemed like everytime I opened steam it would redownload the app. That’s 22-30 megabytes depending on the sice of the update. Anyone with dial-up(if there are still people with dial-up) would be pretty upset. They were most likely fixing bugs.

Steam is still a must for any Mac owner. Finally there is a decent gaming platform for us Mac owners.

Imagine a dark and gritty world inhabited only by robots. Two evil characters, who do as they please, take advantage of the young and the weak. They successfully kidnap your lover and force her into manual labor. You find yourself outcast and without hope, the only way to get her back and avenge her misfortune is to use your cunning and the environment around you. You will encounter hardships, puzzles, riddles, and a variation of Galaga. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will see a side of humanity that you’ve never seen before, in a robot. You will not give up, you cannot give up. Love is stronger than you, only the foolish will doubt. You meet few friends along your journey, but when you do, there is music and dancing.

Developer: Amanita Design
Genre: Point-and-Click-Adventure
Platforms: Mac/PC
Price: $9.99
Released: October 2009