The Sony PSP 3000 is Sony’s newest advancement in mobile gaming. The 3000 is certainly an upgrade from previous PSP models. Right away you notice that the color looks sharper and brighter. At times in older models, when you went into a dark area in the game it became hard to see and navigate your way around the game. The sony PSP 3000 also features Skype, and built in microphone to further advance the PSP in online gaming. The PSP also has a great game lineup with many of your favorite titles from the original playstation as well as new titles. Many of these titles also offer graphics that are superb to titles available for the Nintendo DS.
While the 3000 is definitely a step in the right direction, that does not mean that the system is perfect. During graphic intense moments while gaming, the system often displays scan lines and even has some lag while it computes what’s going on. The screen also has problems of its own. If you are able to actually remove all of the fingerprints the screen seems to attract, you then have to worry about the glare. I don’t think anyone is sure why Sony isn’t using glare resistant screens with their PSP’s, as it has been one of the biggest complaints throughout their production.
In conclusion, if you own a PSP already, it’s probably not worth the upgrade. If you are considering buying a PSP, the 3000 is the best model currently available. The PSP 3000 is a step in the right direction, but the system is still far from perfect.
One of the absolute hottest gifts on the Christmas wish lists of adults everywhere this year is the new iPod nano 16GB from Apple, available in nine bright, jazzy colours to suit anyone’s tastes or style. Choose from nanos in silver, black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink, or the exclusive Apple red, all of which are accented with a new curved glass and aluminum design. Product Features - Besides the brilliant colours and sleek, ultramodern appearance, the Apple iPod nano offers a host of useful benefits, like the Genius feature, which is like having your own personal DJ as it scans your library of music and creates an entire playlist of like songs that go well together. It’s also now easier to find the songs you’re looking for as this version of the iPod allows you to view album art with the Cover Flow feature, simply press the center button and you can browse through your songs by either artist or album. Another new feature of the nano is the shake and shuffle feature which allows you to shake the nano and it will shuffle through your music and play a random song. Touted by Apple as the “world’s smallest biggest screen,” the iPod nano 16GB offers a two-inch diagonal screen display with a high resolution to make it fun to watch videos, television shows, or even whole movies. The high tech display also makes it easy to view all of your pictures wherever you go with the ability to see them vertically or horizontally by turning the unit on its side. In addition to all of these music and video features, the Apple iPod nano also comes with the Maze game installed with more available for download at the online iTunes Store. What’s Included - New with the purchase of the Apple iPod nano 16GB is free laser engraving which allows buyers to truly personalize the nano whether it’s for themselves or a gift for someone else. Buyers have the option of entering their two line message when buying online at the Apple Store Also included with the purchase of the Apple iPod nano is the Quick Start guide, a dock adapter, USB 2.0 cable, and earphones to plug into the 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack. The built-in battery is a lithium ion rechargeable and provides up to 24 hours of music playback time or up to four hours of video playback time when fully charged. This fourth generation of iPods is compatible with Mac operating systems 10.4.11 or later, and Windows XP Home or Professional or Windows Vista. Technical Specifications of the Apple iPod nano 16GB -Capacity: 16 gigabytes; holds up to 4,000 songs in 128-kbps AAC format, or up to 14,000 iPod-viewable photos, or up to 16 hours of video, Connectivity: 2.0 USB port, Depth: 6.2 mm (0.24 inch), Display: Color LCD with blue-white LED backlight, 2 inch diagonal measurement, 320 by 240 pixel screen resolution at 204 ppi (pixels per inch), Height: 90.7 mm (3.6 inches), Weight: 36.8 grams (1.3 ounces), Width: 38.7 mm (1.5 inches)
Beer pong is a drinking game of hand-eye (un)coordination that usually requires at least four people to play. Two people will also suffice in an abbreviated game, however, and can provide for even more intense play, but more on this later. You will normally run into a beer pong game at a party of younger folk who like to drink beer. The atmosphere will get competitive and often times very noisy after one team has “double-cupped” the other.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To play a pretty standard game of beer pong, you will need: 20 party-sized (16-20 oz) plastic cups, red preferably as that is the color that makes the bulls go running; a long table (regulation calls for 8×2′); a ready supply of ping pong balls, paper napkins (or whatever else you might use to dry and/or clean the balls); and beer, obviously.
Set up 10 cups centered on either end of the table into a triangle, exactly how bowling pins are arranged at the end of an alley: four in the back down to one at the front. Make sure each cups sits flush with the table; otherwise, complaints (otherwise known as “shit-talking”) will arise about your team’s lack of setting a good rack. Evenly pour three ice-cold beers between the ten cups. Don’t worry depending on how many games you play and how fast the games go, three beers between you and your partner is plenty!
The game then begins with the toss. Each partner gets a toss for a total of two throws per side. You can choose to bounce the ball into the cup! However, this could result in general derision of the player practicing this style, unless he/she is deadly good at bouncing the ball for a score. You only get one bounce; after that the players on the other (defending side) are entitled to knock the ball away.
At this point in the game, there are many different ways to proceed. One method involves the option for a defending player to blow a ball out of play if the throw rims into a cup, spinning around like a toilet flush. The spinning motion allows for a chance at blowing the ball out of the cup and to deny the player’s attempt. However, this is adding more dirt (i.e. saliva) to an already dirty game. Some like to stem this sanitary issue by having water and napkins on hand to wipe the ball after it has touched the ground or been inside a cup.
My favorite way to play, in fact I live for this, is the aforementioned “double-cup” whereby you and your partner make it into the same cup, thereby affording yourselves each another turn and the dismay of your opponents. Each cup made results in that cup drunk by the defending team. This can be arranged to the discretion of each team, however usually you and your partner will alternate drinking cups. In an abbreviated game of one-on-one “3-cup” you have to drink solo, obviously.
In the standard game re-racks happen when the cups are reduced to 6 and 3: in other words, reforming the triangle. These are not mandatory, at least until the throwing team requests one. The game ends when one side makes all of their opponent’s cups, and as an additional penalty the losing team must drink the contents of their opponent’s remaining cups. Weird things might happen, like someone will accidentally knock their team’s own cups down in the follow through of their shot: what happens next usually is that you lose that cup, but hose rules generally will prevail. Ask your party host.
People get tossed quite well with this game, they have different styles of throwing the ball and taunting their opponents, and generally it is a fun time, unless people take the winning/losing too seriously. When we are drinking and having a fun time, that’s all you need. Though please do remember to have someone sober around to break up fights and drive everyone home.
A.J. Cabalu is an artist and former journalist living in Pasadena, CA. His work can be found athttp://2manypasswords.blogspot.comin the form of whimsy.
Having a hard time deciding between a Sony Cybershot DSCW80 and a Canon Powershot SD1000? Don’t worry, your not the first. They’re both excellent cameras with some excellent features. Some features that distinguish them are worth serious consideration, and some are just marketing hype. Let’s take a closer look, and sort out the fact from fiction.
Lets start off first with the similarities between these two cameras. These features basically cancel each other out, and are a non issue. First of all price. At the time of writing, both these cameras were in the same price bracket of about 150-200 dollars. While you may find a 10 or 20 dollar savings between one or the other if you shop around, it’s really not worth fretting over. Both have approximately the same number of megapixels. 7.2 for the Sony DSCW80 and 7.1 for the Canon SD1000. That’s a wash. Both the Sony and the Canon fall into the ultra-compact category, with all the inherent pros and cons that go with that design. Optical view finders are common to both cameras. That’s great especially for the Canon which I’ll explain shortly. Face detection technology is one of those new features, that sounds real cool, but still has yet to prove it’s usefullness (at least to this photographer). Useful or not, both the Cybershot and the Powershot have it.
Now on to the serious stuff. What are the features that set these two digital toys apart. First of all, and in my mind the most important from a usability stand point is burst mode. Burst mode is basically the number of pictures you can take per second. I’d rather not think about all the pictures I’ve missed using older point and shoot cameras with slow burst modes. The Canon weighs in here with a respectable 1.6 frames per second. Not bad at all for a camera in this category and price range. The DSCW80 however exceeds all expectations and clocks a remarkable 2.7 frames per second. Score one for Sony.
Image stabilization is another one of those new features whose time has come. Not necessarily new to photography in general, but certainly unheard of in ultra-compact cameras at this price range a few years ago. I was a little skeptical as to how good image stabilization (IS) could be in this type of camera. Then as they say, the proof is in the seeing. I took a look at a few side by side comparisons between pictures taken with and without IS at 1/5 seconds from the DSCW80. I was sold. Unfortunately for the SD1000, this feature is not available. Another plus for the Sony. I would however be remiss at this point if I did not mention the Canon A570IS, which is a slightly larger point and shoot for approximately the same price that does have IS. If your willing to go with a slightly bigger camera, it could be a good choice.
Our final important consideration is battery life. Both these cameras come with their own proprietary batter packs, so standard double AA batteries are not an option here. This is pretty common for the ultra-compact category of cameras. What is different here though, is the number of shots each camera can take before their battery pack dies. Again the Canon does a respectable job with 210 shots on one battery pack. And again, the Sony goes the extra mile and is able to shoot a far more respectable 340 pictures. One trick I often use on my point and shoots when batteries start to die, is to turn off the battery sucking LCD screen, and just use the view finder. This is especially useful for the Canon with a shorter battery life.
My one pet peeve with the sony Cybershot DSCW80 (and all things Sony) is the use of their proprietary memory stick for storing pictures. Probably goes back to being stuck with a Betamax video player so many years ago. Don’t even get me started on the whole Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD fiasco. With the Canon, you can use the industry standard SD cards. Score one for Canon.
Well, for me this seems like a pretty simple decision between these two. The Sony DSCW80 seems to be the better machine in this case. Although don’t forget to check out the Canon A570IS. Of course with digital camera technology changing so fast you may want to check on the latest batch of digital cameras coming out of the gate before making your final decision.
The Dell Inspiron 1520 is one of the most popular Notebooks at the moment. When you shop online at Dell there are a few things you need to keep in mind. The first thing to note is that the “Deals of the Week” change in offer and it sometimes is better to wait the next week. Some weeks it maybe an extra 1Gb of RAM free or an upgraded hard disk other times it could be $100 off or a free Bluetooth mouse or Targus bag. Depending on the special it maybe better to hold off for a better deal. For instance a $100 off on a separate monitor may not be as useful as more RAM on the Notebook, unfortunately it’s a bit of a gamble as you don’t know what is coming up. Dell do provide the date of when the deal ends so you may have to act by this date.
Don’t buy RAM or Hard Disks from Dell… unless they are on special. They’re more expensive than buying outside. For the same price for the upgrade of the hard disk you keep the hard disk on the standard Inspiron build and bought a new third party 160Gb 7200RPM hard disk and still have some spare change. Btw Vista eats RAM like no tomorrow so it’s worth getting at least 2Gb’s especially if you are gonna have Aero turned on.
Sometimes they offer the a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy. This is NOT hardware and just an application CD that gives the chipset extra features. Really useful stuff like Bathroom Reverb or something. The chipset still appears as a SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio and NOT a SoundBlaster Audigy.
Oh another thing. The DELLay. It’s all over the Interweb. There have been massive delays in the ordering process of the colored Inspirons. They appear to be coming through now but a few times the order specifically mentions 6-8 week delay for certain colors. Unless you order White or Black (sometimes without the webcam) then you may have to wait. Apparently this is because the spraying process is similar to that of a car and is a very slow procedure. The white ones which seem more available than say blue or green actually has more coats of paint because it’s a gloss sheen. Sadly no other color has this gloss coating. Also the colour only applies to the lid of the Notebook, everything else including the keyboard is silver and the underside is black. These delays obviously don’t deter Dell in still advertising the Inspiron creating more customer backlogs.
Choosing the Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo processor? If you can afford it go for the Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0Ghz and above. Obviously they are a faster clock speed with a 800mhz Front Side Bus (FSB) as opposed to the 667mhz of the T5450 1.66 Ghz. They also have 4mb of cache instead of 2mb which makes a difference.
The 15.4″ WXGA+ 1440×900 Widescreen with Truelife is worth going for. The resolution is crisp and not too small. The 1680×1050 option maybe overkill as the monitor is too small for that resolution (a lot of 20.1″ monitors are that res). Also LCD’s look the best at its native resolution so playing games and having to turn the res down ain’t gonna look pretty. The LCD is the glossy type which seems to be easier to wipe off fingerprints than the matt ones but are more prone to reflection. Think carefully before buying a 17” version. They are heavy and sometimes you can get and 15.4” and a separate Dell 17” monitor for about the same price.
The Dell Inspiron 1520 as a Gaming Notebook.
We’ll it’s actually quite good (for a Notebook). The Nvidia 8600m GT works well enough it has 256mb GDDR2. You cannot use shared RAM to increase the graphics RAM either. There are some online debates saying some do come with GDDR3 but to be certain the Asus G1 and G2 do have GDDR3 but are much more expensive. If you’ve got money to burn there’s also the Toshiba X205 with the 8700M GT. Strangely the so called Dell Gaming Notebook the XPS series don’t currently have the Geforce 8 series and go up only to the Geforce Go 7950 GTX which is really baffling. There is less wait time on a XPS though. The 7950 GTX is actually more powerful than the 8600 GT but only has the DX9 code path compared to the 8 series DX10. As mentioned before the 8600M GT would struggle with more recent games at the 1680×1050 resolution and DX10 games would choke. The Inspiron gets reasonably warm when playing games hard you can feel a warm air pushed out through the side vent. Good in winter as a fan heater.
Replacing Vista with XP
This is a real world of hurt. Until Vista SP1 arrives I want to get every bit of performance out of the Inspiron and Vista just doesn’t cut the mustard. At the time I bought mine they weren’t offering XP but now they recently have started. It was either Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. The Forceware Nvidia drivers for the 8 series off the Nvidia website DO NOT work. There is only now an 8 series drivers for XP on the Dell website previous to this there was a nice hacked version here: http://www.tweakforce.com
The Creative/SigmaTel audio driver is worse. Real hard to find and SigmaTel don’t support the public so it’s up to Dell. So after trying a few that were supposed to work I finally found one on the Dell website http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R153908&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=205136 from the Dell Community site. This ain’t listed under XP drivers on the Dell Inspiron driver downloads.
When booting an XP CD up it immediately crashed with a PCI.SYS error. I then had to Slipstream a XP build with SP2. After that I had to add Dell SATA drivers to the image. Then download pretty much all the other drivers from the Dell site. Maybe they have rectified that now with the inclusion of XP.
The Good
A really cheap laptop for the components you get and one of the best gaming laptops available.
The build quality is pretty good.
Nice looking.
You get what you ordered online pretty much delivered with Dell. For me nothing was missing or the wrong hardware.
The tracking of delivery is reasonably accurate and I manage to get it a day before the expected arrival date.
The Dell Service Tag is a good feature and allows you to enter your Notebooks Service Tag into their website which will bring up the details of your hardware.
There is a fair bit of documentation, driver CD’s and DVD’s.
You get the actual DVD for the OS.
The BIOS isn’t too bad (for Dell) there are a fair bit of options. But you can’t seem to tweak the CPU or RAM in anyway. So no OCing.
The WiFi seems pretty good, it’s got three aerials built in. There’s also a slider that turns off WiFi if not needed. You also get Bluetooth.
There are some speaker and play buttons on the front panel that are pretty convenient. The Notebook sound itself is quite good.
The keyboard is pretty good though a little cramped considering the size of the laptop. Not too spongey and they look like they are clipped on pretty well compared to some of the Lenovo ThinkPads which have fiddlely little clips if the keys accidentally fall off.
The Targus bag for cheap.
The Bad
The DELLay on certain colors.
The delivery wait when ordering online on a normal day.
The initial build on the Inspiron 1520 which was Vista Home Basic is full of bloatware. Like the Google Desktop search and Norton’s Anti-Virus with a limited subscription.
Dell’s XP driver support is all over the place. Maybe they’ve fixed this now by selling it with XP, dunno.
Your 120Gb or 160Gb hard disk is divided into three partitions at the factory. A hidden recovery one and a C: and D:. The D: has some drivers and a recovery for Windows to reinstall to factory defaults. Yuck.
If you want a Track Point you will need to go to the Lattitude series (under the Business option) or shell out some serious money for a ThinkPad. With the Inspirons your stuck with a Thermal Pad. I personally don’t like em but some do.
The Dell Inspiron is pretty heavy and coupled with the large-ish power supply it’s borderline for lugging around in a backpack all day as a student.
The Ugly
The black one looks too plain. When you buy an Inspiron you gotta get a colored one (if you can endure the wait)!
Xbox 360 Elite is all set to meet your concept of technological perfection with its package consisting of black Xbox headbox, HDMI cable, HDMI port and cableless controller. Full ambience sound, anti-analising for ensuring smooth performance, 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, are the three quality boosters that facilitates the functioning of the Xbox 360 Elite. DVD playback with upscaling abilities is yet another unique feature of the gadget. The hard drive that has a capacity of 120 GB is designed in a detachable manner. This vast storage capacity helps game enthusiasts to save their favourite game versions for later use. That the system itself offers two free games deserves mention in this context.
Apart from games, Xbox 360 Elite also has facilities for storing television shows, music, pictures, demos, trailers and even movies. All sorts of content available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace can be effectively stored in its extremely sophisticated system. The slender black finish of the wireless controller adds elegance to its efficient performance. What more can you ask for from a device that provides clear range even at 30 feet. Thanks to its two AA batteries, Xbox 360 Elite enjoys a battery life span of 40 hours. When they start running short of power these batteries provide warning so that you can think of alternatives. Xbox Live ensure smooth and fast sending of voice messages as well.
Xbox 360 Elite is fine-tuned efficiently so as to capture multi-channel ambience sound and HD video (up to 1080p) from a single cable. With the charge kit that is enclosed in the Xbox 360 Elite package, additional wireless controllers can be rejuvenated when in need. Vibration feedback that can be modified is another feature of Xbox 360 Elite. This helps in enhancing the life period of its batteries. The new right and left shoulder buttons of the appliance are fashioned in such a way as to make it user-friendlier.
Video games have gotten a bad reputation lately, often being blamed for the rising levels of obesity among both children and adults. In these days of bad food and little exercise, people are ready to make a scapegoat out of anything. One way in which the gaming industry is fighting back is with titles that aim to provide a workout at home. Without a doubt, the very best of these is Wii Fit.
Wii Fit provides a huge selection of 40 fitness activities to engage in ranging over four categories: Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics and Balance. The game comes with a controller known as the Balance Board, which is used not only to play the game but is also used by the Wii to keep track of your weight. After setting up your profile the game will calculate your body mass index (BMI) and will then keep track of your fitness by using a “Fitness Age”, which it uses to customise your training experience.
The range of activities spans yoga poses and stretching exercises, push-ups and lunges, and even hula hoops and ski jumping, making sure that the game has something that everyone can enjoy. Integrating Wii Fit into your daily routine can help if you don’t have the time or money to visit a gym on a regular basis, and will ensure that you are meeting the requirements for a healthy body, heart and lungs. There is no longer any excuse for not getting the exercise your body needs to stay healthy when it is so much fun to keep fit! For everything Nintendo visit http://4nintendowii.blogspot.com
The best deer hunting tips are the ones that you figure out for yourself and can offer to others. After all, few things feel better than finding the way that works for you. Of course, until you reach that point, here are some deer hunting tips to help you get there.
Deer Hunting Tips:
· Deer are generally crepuscular: they are often active at dawn and dusk and sleep during the middle of the day and night.
· This does not, however, mean that you will not see them feeding during the middle of the day.
· Bucks are more often during hunting seas
· Go scouting. Do this during early to late summer. When you scout, be as careful as if you are actually hunting. Stay quite and do not leave much scent.
· Find the food source that the deer will be eating during the hunting season.
· Look for trees that will have the most acorns.
· Look for areas with greens like clover or rye covering the ground.
· Look for deer trail routes. The ones with the freshest tracks are the best.
· If you are going to set up any sort of hunting stand, be sure to set it up pre-season, before the deer start feeding in that area. Otherwise, you can scare them off.
· Mark your “hot spots” on a GPS.
· Also be sure to take lots of notes. Do not expect to simply remember everything. You want to write down everything that you find.
· You can find where the bucks are if you scout during the pre-season, right after the bucks have rubbed the velvet from their antlers. During this time, the rut (mating season) a buck is going to leave more markings on trees than he will afterward.
· Look for areas with thick and dense brush. It is in areas like this that deer like to sleep. You can set up on the outskirts of such an area… somewhere where you will be able to see better.
· Remain still! Do not move unless absolutely necessary!
· Do not fall asleep! This can be tricky when you remain so still, but falling asleep not only will lose you your deer, but it can also be quite dangerous if you are up in a tree stand.
· Use special products to mask your scent. Deer have an excellent sense of smell.
· Keep the wind direction in mind. Stay downwind of whatever feeding or sleeping spot, etc. you are “staking out.” Constantly check for changes in the wind.
· Wear a harness if using a tree stand.
· Move the site of your tree stand around. You do not want your deer to start associating deer stands with humans!
· Try to avoid walking a long a deer trail or even walk parallel to one. Take the back route… walk up streams, etc.
· Be sure to always be ready. Make sure that you have checked your equipment right when you get to the stand, not once a deer is already out!
· The majority of deer are shot downwind from a food source.
These are only a few deer hunting tips. There are actually many deer hunting tips available on many different websites from many different, experienced hunters. Before hunting in a certain spot, is a good idea to ask locals hunters for their own, personal tips. Different areas can vary, and everyone has his or her own tricks of the trade.
Anne Clarke writes numerous articles for websites on gardening, parenting, the environment, recreation, fashion, and home decor. Her background includes teaching and gardening. For more of her articles on hunting, please visit Deer Blinds.
Sony has always left their mark in gaming industry with their gaming consoles. After the success of PS2 which was launched in 2000, Sony decided to take one more step in the gaming industry with the introduction of Sony Playstation 3. It’s basically the third home video game console produced by Sony computer entertainment. It is in direct competition with Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii, as part of seventh generation of video game consoles.
Playstation 3 offers a unified online gaming service through playstation network. This feature of Sony PS3 works as an USP for them and distinguishes it from its competitors (Xbox and Nintendo). Its also give its gamers, robust multimedia capabilities which enables you to connect your console to PSP. The game was first released on November 11, 2006 in Japan and on March 23, 2007 in Europe. As we all know that Sony gaming console come with backward compatibility with them. You can play the games of PS1 on PS2 or games of PS2 on PS3. But Sony made their savings by cutting the feature of backward compatibility from Sony PS3, reducing the size of hard drive and cutting some media connections. In this way Sony introduced their cheaper model of PS3 in Europe as the cost of PS3 is much higher as compared to in US.
But the real competition comes with the introduction of Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii. All comes under the category of HD (high definition) consoles. High definition in the sense of high graphics for better graphic output specifically made for high definition televisions. Sony PS3 comes up with Blu-ray technology which allows the developers to stuff 50 gigs of high quality sound and gaming features. Sony PS3 comes up with a multithreaded processor of 3.2 GHz, NVIDIA “RSX” custom made graphic processor.
Sony PS3 comes with numerous accessories such as wireless Sixaxis and Dual shock 3 controllers. As discussed earlier about the Sony Playstation network, using which user can download thousand of free Playstation games. Sony PS3 also introduced the concept of creating avatar character for their playstation 3 system.
Total of 12 Titles were introduced along with PS3 on November 12, 2006 in North America that introduced Fall of Man, a first person shooter game which was rated top selling game. A total of 24 titles were introduced in Europe, including games which were not offered in North America. In the initial stages of the introduction of PS3, many websites and reviewers criticize it on the basis of high price and small number of launch games. However after number of price revisions it started to receive better reviews.
If you want to experience a high quality gaming experience and feel the ecstasy of gaming coupled with eye popping graphics then go for Sony PS3. Though it’s a little on higher side when it comes to cost but for a gamer it’s a value for money. So I strongly recommend you to go for Sony PS3 over Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii.
This was a great article on the PS3, but since I am a PS3 owner I am going to say a few things that I personally like. Yes it is true that PS3, Xbox, and Wii are very high competitors, and allot of people have to think about that they want. I go with PS3 all the way, the best features on the PS3 that Xbox and Wii cant even touch, not to mention with one special feature on the PS3 you can save an extra $ 500-1k, and that is a blue ray player, as the PS3 has an integrated blue ray player, which allows you to play blue ray movies. Another great feature on the PS3 is that you don’t have to pay to play online like you do with Xbox, and you can use the PS3 web browser just like a computer, now its not high-end computer quality, but it allows you to visit pretty much any site with in limits, not to mention that it works great with YouTube, and other video sharing sites. Graphic wise is about equal with Xbox 360 right now, but the other features that the PS3 holds blows every other consol away, the Price right now for a PS3 is about $ 400 for an 80GB a great deal for your buck and what your getting.
(click Image to purchase PS3)
This video is a over 2 years old, alot of stuff has changed with the PS3, but this is a basic outline of the PS3 two years ago, now it is 10Xs the deal of the Xbox 360
The Call of Duty franchise has been notorious for paving the war for other first person shooters. This marks Call of Duty’s first foray into the next generation console with the release of Call of Duty 4. The game is available for the PC, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Call of Duty 4 has a storyline that revolves around the antagonists Al-Asad and Zakhaev. They are attempting to have complete control over the middle east and bolster communism in Russia. There are many protagonists in the game, so gamers are playing though the game from different perspectives. I thought the plot was about as cliché any prototypical movie or video game. The “Muslims being portrayed as terrorists” premise has been done before in a myriad of other video games and movies. Call of Duty 4 is taking a dissimilar approach to the previous Call of Duty games. One thing that stuck out in my mind was the much more modern view of warfare (hence the name Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare).
This game is no longer transpiring in the world war 2 setting. The gameplay in the game is definitely one of the finest I have seen in any first person shooter. Players will experience the game from British, Russian, and Unites States perspectives (ala Call of Duty 2). All three nations are working cohesively to rectify one common goal. There are rescue operations, assault missions, sniping levels, stealth infiltrations, and various other objectives. The game does an amazing job at adding variety to the combat and mixing things up. Every single thing you are doing in the game has a tactile and receptive feel to it. The weapons in the game can range from something as rudimentary as a handgun to something as intricate as an rocket propelled grenades. Machine guns, sniper rifles, assault rifles, and hand grenades are just a few of the plethora of weapons that are available in the game.The firefights are engrossing and intense. Keeping your finger in the trigger button is definitely the best course of action in this game. The graphics in the game are brilliant. Everything from air strikes to explosions look stunning. Even the locations themselves have their own unique distinctions.
For example, there will be debris scattered everywhere as more and more explosions start escalating. The sound is just as exemplary as the visuals. There was really no stone unturned in the audio department. The voice acting, gunfights, and music provided an excellent ambiance to the game. Even the sounds of fighter planes soaring through the air was believable. The frame rate runs as smooth as a baby’s bottom. The only significant drawback in the game is the length. This game has a single player campaign that can easily be completed in approximately seven hours. The artificial intelligence was somewhat inconsistent. Enemies will act like a lunatics by running at you with a commando rush. Other times, opponents will strive to flank you from every possible angle. Ally artificial intelligence was grandiose across the board.
For instance, they will kick down doors and clear a room for you. They will pick up a grenade thrown by a foe and throw it back at them for you. For all intents and purposes, your teammates have the ability to prevent you from being demolished. As fantastic as the single player mode may be, the multiplayer mode is the real core of the game. There are a grand total of sixteen maps that support up to eighteen players online. The multiplayer has something that is known as perks that plays like a class system. Each perk has a certain attribute. For instance, the stopping power perk enables you to take more damage. Deep impact allows anyone to shoot bullets through walls without any resistance. There is a 55 level player progression in the multiplayer, and the best way to gain experience is to eradicate as many adversaries as you possibly can.
Regrettably, there is punishing arduous learning curve that is associated with the multiplayer. I was getting pulverized relentlessly from everyone at the start. However, the multiplayer gets manageable as increases their progression. Overall, Call of Duty 4 has a succinct single player mode that anyone can finish without any trouble. Nonetheless, the game is appealing for anyone who enjoys a great shooter.
Final Verdict: Call of Duty 4 is a great game. - 9 out of 10
Chris Kamens is the owner and author of Xtreme Variety.
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