Posts by: ny.essien
Evernote for Android
If you like keeping records of everything on notepad or sticky notes or you need to write down things for shopping at the grocery store, Evernote is the best application to assist you with this task. Evernote is available for iPhone, android devices, windows mobile, and blackberry and PCs and MACs unfortunately not in Windows Phone 7 marketplace at the moment. Type up what you want to do in Africa and access your list in Tokyo when connected to a network with data access. Save pictures, files, add tags, etc. The new widgets have gotten a visual make-over for easy access to everything. You can also add location to notes if you want to. Sharing to Facebook and other apps like Gmail or twitter. Evernote is probably the best cloud app that allows you to remember everything.
Fable coin golf on Windows Phone 7 is fun table game that involves you getting rid of evil in the land and conquering each area by getting your hero puck into the pillar of light in as few shots as possible for better scores.
Gameplay Map
The main weapon here is your trusty puck that has 2 firing modes which can be set in the options menu. When it is set to off, you can pull the puck by releasing the arrow. The farther you pull the puck, the farther it will go while the second mode involves you tapping the fire button to shoot the puck. There is a reason why you shoot the puck which clears a lot of dangers in the way and enables you collect lots of coins.
There is evil in the land to smite, shrubs to clear, water to scale across. This is where power-ups come into play. There are 3 power ups: Green Power up (Axe) enables you to be able to cut down trees along your path to enable you reach your goal in as few shots as possible while earning lots of coins. The soldier sword or red power up enables you cut down enemies in your path to victory. The Blue Power up (Carpenter’s Hammer) enables the player build bridges to avoid your puck falling into the water. It all sounds easy enough.
Hell No!!! Level design requires that you put your thinking cap on. Shooting the puck straight ahead into the pillar of light will be too easy but you have to manoeuvre it through various elements in the game like enemies, water, ice, explosive barrels, balloons and rubber bands, teleporting gates called Cullis gates, etc. These elements certainly make the game very lively and can be replayed for a higher score.
In order to progress to the next level, you have to earn at least a bronze in a previous level. Each shot taken deducts -100 points and you need to keep up with the level progression requirements. Also make sure that you hit something except enemies. The maps are varied and tactical and the graphics are beautiful for a mobile game with good enough humour plus a solid audio to boot.
Fable coin golf is a solid package that should not be missed if you own a windows phone 7 smartphone.
Enter Your Pin
Do you feel like checking your bank account and tired of using internet explorer to login and check your transactions every single time?
Mobank for Windows Phone 7 is easy to setup which involves you registering your online banking account details the first time and easy to see all your bank transactions once all your details are validated. During the setup you choose random four pin numbers which will allow you to securely access your account details. This is a quick, secure and easy way to see your transactions or mini statements while on the move. Download it now using windows phone 7 marketplace. There are over 15 banks that support mobank. Enjoy
Plug your windows Phone 7 to your PC and update using Zune software
Windows Phone 7 update 7.0.7390.0
SugarSync Logo
SugarSync online backup is the best backup, file syncing and sharing solution anyone can have around the home or business. I have tried several backups but SugarSync is the best all-around because of the following reasons:
- Free 5 GB storage
- You get a 30 day trial to use sugarsync on 3 computers for 30 GB or more.
- The best syncing between different platforms which can sync data and photos from and to your mobile phones no matter where you are on the planet as long as you have an internet connection. Open a file anywhere in the world and edit it then see your files sync to every platform
SugarSync for Android
- You can sync 3 computers or devices together and also offline syncing
- Backup is done automatically every time you change files or edit a document. It is so good that even when a document is part downloaded, it is backing up.
- Remote access to your files from any browser on personal sugarsync website and also share them
There are other features that sugarsync provides that can be covered by just writing but rather experiencing it for yourself.
Your data is important and backing it up is crucial so you don’t lose those birthday pictures or your final thesis or financial excel files. You can download sugarsync app on various marketplaces on your mobile phone and for PC and Macs on their website. I could not find sugarsync for Windows Phone 7 marketplace but it will be coming soon I hope.
SugarSync folder for PC
Crysis 2 is the kind of game you brag about to friends and family. Crytek announced that they were going to go multiplatform and my heart skipped a beat because I thought PC gamers were not going to get the same quality of gameplay we got from their technological and gameplay marvel that was Crysis.
Prophet
Prophet survived the Lingshan Island according to Crysis 2 story in which he went AWOL during the last scenes in Crysis. Crysis 2 story is about the rise of the Cephs or Cephalopods in New York and one protagonist’s mission to save the city. New York City is under siege and the nanosuit is your only hope of fighting back the deadly virus unleashed by aliens who were here before us buried deep in the earth. They are here and doing some house cleaning. We are the roaches in the fridge. Prophet gives the protagonist the suit and the fight begins with unbelievable carnage seen around this gorgeous rendering of New York City. The story goes deeper and I beg you to complete at least 75% of the single player campaign before casting your stone.
Crysis 2 has some amazing shooting mechanics and they feel heavy and powerful. Level design is one of the best I have seen for a shooter with the landscape changing before your eyes. The game is linear in some places and open in some. With so much devastation in the City, routes will be difficult to find and hence the linearity. In some cases, the game opens up to some very good vistas that give you tactical advantage over your foes. The nanosuit enhances this advantage with stealth mode. Stealth mode enables you to become invisible but not if you are 2 meters away from the enemy. The best way to reduce stealth energy usage is by crouching and I was crouching all the time. In fact you can play the entire game cloaked if you wanted you. The suit also gives you the ability to mark points in the map for tactical advantage like ammo dumps, stealth areas, observations areas and so on.
Map Scale
If you are caught with your pants down, you can activate maximum armor to absorb the bullets directed towards you. Maximum armor can also save you from falling from heights if necessary. Crysis stealth, speed, armor, strength modes were all separate but in Crysis 2, stealth and armor are separate but speed is automatic when you press the SHIFT button. Some will call this dumbing down but I call it efficiency and effectiveness but the speed is slower here. You can still grab enemies and fling them around if they come too close by pressing F.
Customisations return to guns and armor enhancements at your fingertips. Just like in Crysis, you can add silencers on the fly, shotguns and scopes. I prefer it without the silencers because of the sound. Armor enhancements are upgradable only by killing cephs and collecting the crystals dropped. A.I. in this game is not what I expected because they tend to run around in circles. They also take cover and flank you when necessary but we have seen this in so many games except for the excellent A.I in the first FEAR game
Cloaking mode
Multiplayer is decent enough to warrant investment of time levelling up and unlocking new weapons and other combat paraphernalia. The nanosuit brings enough decent gameplay to the playground which conceals and extends your capability in the battlefield. The main draw for me is the map variety and the level-up you get for using armor or stealth when killing your enemy. This is a good multiplayer
Crysis 2 is not DX 11 out of the box. Graphically, Crysis is far more superior to the second with high resolution textures, with huge maps and long draw distances as far as the eye can see. The beauty of the first game was that you were given options to adjust textures, motion blur, physics, shaders, etc. Crysis 2 is bare which is insulting to all PC gamers and the fact that it is DX 9. Although the lack of support for DX 11 is very annoying, the game looks gorgeous with the extreme pre-set adding antialiasing to smooth things up. Sound on the other hand is phenomenal with city echoes and explosions that will blow your speakers away.
Crysis 2 is a gorgeous, meticulously crafted shooter that tells a good story about the fight for survival of the human race. I bought it and you should too no matter the platform
Ceph Carrier
Mafia 2 is an interesting game which any gamer should try when the price is right because it is good.
Made Man - Vito Scaletta
Here is why I liked Mafia 2:
+ Great storyline about crime families, trials and tribulations of protagonist Vito Scaletta and his crime loving friends
+ The cut scenes are great and should not be skipped because they contain information about the gameplay
+ Shooting and cover gameplay mechanics are solid and simple to use. Carrying a lot of guns is permitted
+ The open world of empire bay is gorgeous and does not pop into the screen at any distance that I have noticed
+ Voice acting is superb and very accurate in terms of gangsta talk back in the 50s
+ Overall graphics is spectacular and ragdoll physics is one of the best I have seen in a long time
+ Some characters really stand out from the storyline with the strongest being Leo Galentte, Joe Barbaro and Vito Scaletta
+ The music and soundtrack from the car
Joe and Vito on a killing spree
What I did not like:
- Most of the game is spent driving around empire bay and they expect you to stop in traffic.
- Weird ending to a good but cliché crime story.
- Empire bay could be compared to an Island in Grand Theft Auto 4
Dragon Age Origins was a huge game when it came out in 2009 with enough back stories to every race to fill a 2 hr movie. Dragon Age 2 is leaner, meaner and in few cases better than Origins. The reason for this is that I went back and fired up Origins so I could compare and my verdict is I never want to go back to Origins because it is tedious.
Companions
Storytelling (8.5/10)
Varric Tethras tells your adventures to a Templar interrogator according to how you play starting out with your hero running away from lothering with your family after choosing one of 3 classes of only human race: warrior, rogue and mage. In Origins, I tried playing with Elf or Dwarf but I never got past the backstory because I had completed the game with human warrior because after the backstories, everything else seemed to be the same although conversations might differ slightly if you play different races. Other gamers will be pissed at Bioware for leaving out other races. I am not.
Hawke
DA 2 has a great story behind it which involves the war between Templars, The Qun and Mages and Hawke is smack in the middle trying to choose sides. After fleeing lothering and encountering Flameth, you travel safely to Kirkwall, a city that is helping refugees because of the war with darkspawn. Kirkwall and its surroundings is where Dragon Age 2 is based and you might wonder about the scale because Origins scope and scale was enormous. This is a leaner game and I am all for it. 40 hours of first gameplay through to the end is still huge but shorter than Origin’s 60 plus hours.
There are various quests for you to undertake in the game which will involve you finding a missing wife, helping companions complete missions, looking for ingredients and fighting deadly monsters. Dragon Age 2 is about the journey and at the end of the day you will have to choose which side you will defend. I stuck with the mages because the Knight Commander was a lunatic who simply hated mages because of their power of magic. That did not fly with me because not every mage was bad. The experience and end story could be different for you depending on how you choose.
Gameplay (8/10)
Combat is the main saving grace for this package because after playing Origins again, DA2 has the fastest RPG combat ever made and is less tactical. The PC version has been stripped of its tactical view which I used once in a while in Origins. Controlling your companions is still fun but I do not know why Bioware decided to stop the user from changing companions armor. OMG BIOWARE what have you done. Changing companion armor was crucial in Origins or even other RPG games. Instead they opted for a more mundane armor enhancement which you can buy at a store. Changing weapons and effects still stay the same for all companions with a very weird rating system. If you level to 40, most or all of these star ratings are empty except that you have to look hard for a better weapon or armor or whatever.
Combat
Combat is fast, furious and sleek no matter what character or class you decide to play with. Rogues are swift and fast, mages spew out magic with great finesse; warriors pound the living daylights out of foes all while looking good. I went back and played Dragon Age Origins just to check out the combat and DA 2 is five times better in every single way except for the tactical view that was removed.
I am all for recycling products to reduce waste but I do not know what Bioware was thinking recycling dungeons, landscapes and house interiors. If you have seen a particular scene, there is a high chance you will see it again and again and again but instead of entering from the way you came in the last time, it forces you to use a back door and some spaces are closed off so you can proceed straight to your mission. Whatever happened to adventuring and getting lost in a game world and coming back to the mission? This is very odd and why the score is lower for this section.
There are lots of enemies and some spectacular battles with strange looking bosses using new and old spells and skills add-ons that make the whole experience worthwhile. Attributes, abilities, tactics interfaces have been made simpler. Abilities have been done using tree-like structure. In Origins, as you move up the levels and encounter new places, you get several levels of healing potions, simple healing potions, medium healing potions and high healing potions. DA2 has stripped this nuisance to just quick healing and lyrium consumption and so on.
Dragons
Bioware has brought the Mass Effect type dialogue to Dragon Age 2 with dialogue dials at the lower center of the screen and the protagonist talks this time around. Every dialogue has a friendly, joking, mean; loving or I have no clue response.
Dragon Age is nothing without companions to spice it up with funny, outrageous, racist or naïve dialogues. In fact, the dialogues are best when you switch up companions while on a mission. In origins, I left some companions while on a mission for a long time but in DA2, I seem to be enjoying everybody’s company and their problems which I liked solving. Every problem solved for a companion brings you closer to being friendly with them and this also improves your skills because they are loyal to you which will be helpful during the game endings.
Some things that were annoying in Origins have been shifted to the sides of the screen like saving notification, quest notification and the quick spell bar has been merged together left to right and so on. Does anybody remember the fade mission in Origins?
Graphics and Sound (8.5/10)
Dragon Age 2 looks very good once you download the 1 GB texture mod Bioware released on day of launch. This is the another DX 11 game apart from Metro 2033 since last year that has stressed my PC using new technology like Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO), tessellation on the rocks but missing from characters and so on. The lighting is very good and the overall look and feel of the game is brighter than Origins. The best part is watching as sparks fly all over the screen when mages do their thing or specifically when they drop fireballs.
The music in my opinion was rushed and sometimes does not blend in with that particular moment when something is happening on screen but every blow, every magic and every disappearance can heard if you listen closely and DA2 has a spectacular voice cast and dialogue just like the Mass Effect games which is the best in the business.
Verdict (8.3)
Despite its various flaws, Dragon Age 2 is still the best choice driven storytelling, spectacular combat oriented RPG you will ever play. I bought it and I played it twice.
Outskirts of Kirkwall
