I find it amazing that I can start up a 13 year old game and play through it at 1680×1050 on a modern 64 bit operating system without any trouble at all. Valve have really done a good job maintaining it.

This game really was ahead of its time. From the scripted story telling, to the helpful team-mates you come across. It even has the basics of a physics system for the objects, in that you can move around boxes and position them to solve puzzles. There’s also a climbable rope that you can swing around on. Sure, all this stuff is done pretty crudely, but they did it and it works. How come I haven’t seen another FPS game in the past 13 years that has had ropes you can swing on? They were kind of fun.

Notice: "Gearbox" and "Valve". You open the valve first.

I think the thing I noticed most though was how the game doesn’t treat you like you’re a moron. It expects you to be jumping around and trying to climb stuff. That’s how you solve a lot of the puzzles, after all. Often you’ll be presented with a problem and start thinking about how to solve it, using the same skills you would use to solve a real life problem. You can find the solutions to the puzzles in a way that feels really natural, so that it doesn’t feel so obvious that the puzzles were intentionally placed there for you. Maybe even more so than a lot of modern games.

Through this whole experience you are never once taken away from the action. The only exception being the start and end, where you find yourself in a plane being fed bits of story. I liked this. In a lot of games, during these times when you’re being told parts of the story where you can’t interact at all, you take your hands off the keyboard and mouse and all of a sudden you’re more disconnected from the game more than you should be. Then maybe you pick up your phone and all of a sudden the game is out of your mind. But in both Half-Life and Opposing Force, that never happens. You do have characters that tell you what’s going on but you’re always in control, and these encounters are usually pretty brief. So instead of getting bored and resorting to looking at your phone, you can run around and stay in the game, focusing more on what’s being said. Why is it that after 13 years they still can’t tell a story in a video game any better than how they did it here?

Every part of this game is fun, and I mean that. It has just the right mix of combat, puzzles, and story, and they’re all presented to you in a way that keeps you entertained. As soon as you start to get bored of the combat, you get presented with a bit of story or a simple puzzle, but neither the puzzle or story will be so long that you’ll then get bored of it. To top it all off, the game is short enough that you aren’t bored of any of these elements by the time it’s over.

Before you go, don’t forget: Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist.

Can you guess who this is?

The game takes place in 2027 and augmentation technology is the latest and greatest thing. Everybody’s doing it! That is, they are replacing their natural body parts for mechanical ones which in many ways are superior. It’s an interesting premise for a game and allows for some interesting ethical debates and even some conspiracy theories. I believe the title, “Human Revolution” is a reference to both.

I really enjoyed the story. I enjoyed it enough that I’m going to make a good effort not to reveal too much so that you may enjoy it too. It was fairly well thought out, and they did take advantage of the setting to pose some interesting moral dilemmas. I found myself thinking about it even when I wasn’t playing, and that to me is a pretty good indicator that it was decent story. There was nothing particularly ground-breaking about how the story was told, though. Still making heavy use of pre-rendered cinematics for a lot of the story telling. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that but it seems like there is a lot of potential out there for telling a story without treating the game like it’s a movie. I suppose I could say the same about almost any game, though.

While the story was good, the voice acting was not. Usually I hear people complain about someone’s voice acting being bad and I’m oblivious to it, but in this case it was plainly obvious to me that the voice acting was bad. Even the protagonist’s voice wasn’t done that well. I found his voice annoying more than anything. He speaks a fair bit, so it’s a good thing I got used to it after a while.

Looking at the graphics, it’s obvious that when they announced the game in 2007, they didn’t expect it would take 4 more years to release it. They’re pretty acceptable, though, so I’m not going to complain. What I am going to complain about is: if the game looks like it belongs in 2007, why does it seem to need 2012 hardware? There were times when my framerate dropped down to below 20 fps for no obvious reason. Nothing particularly interesting was happening on the screen. Apart from those mysterious times, the game ran fairly well and doesn’t even suffer from that well-known (among PC gamers) disease known as “consolitis”. OK, no, it’s not perfect, there may be a bit of it, but I was thrilled to see I could adjust things like my FOV right in the menu. It shows that they appreciate that PCs are a completely different platform and have different needs, and I appreciate that they took the time to address those needs.

The game has elements of both the FPS and RPG genres. You’ll be given a mission, and you often have to travel through some hostile territory to complete it. Instead of simply shooting everyone you see, you have many options: you can stun them from a distance; you can sneak up on them and perform a take-down to either knock them out or kill them; or you can simply sneak past them or find an alternate route around them. One mission you may decide to go the “shoot everyone” route and the next you might try to avoid combat altogether, either by sneaking around and stunning enemies or finding safer alternate routes.

Let’s say you choose a more stealthy approach to dealing with enemies and decide to look for an alternate route. You might find your alternate route is blocked by a locked door. In that case you can either shoot the door apart or “hack” the control panel beside it to unlock it. In addition to hacking a door’s control panel, you can break into computers in the game to find passwords, codes for the doors, and messages that are either amusing or reveal some parts of the story. If you decide you’d like to sneak past the enemies you may eventually notice that the enemy AI really isn’t all that sophisticated. They always follow the same paths and are way too predictable. So I can imagine it would get a bit boring if that’s all you did. Fortunately you always have other options so if you get bored of one approach you aren’t stuck being bored.

If you choose the more aggressive, “shoot everyone” route, you’ll notice it doesn’t take much before you die. This will change with the difficulty you choose, but you should still take advantage of the system the game provides to make it easy to use the environment around you for cover. To describe it in detail with words would be boring to read, so take a look at the screenshot to the right which should give you some idea of what it does for you. I found myself using it more and more as the game got harder, and as I decided to play the game more stealthily.

Those augmentations I spoke of earlier are the basis for the RPG parts to this game. You see, you are given all kinds of augmentation at the start but your body can only handle so much, so you can only activate new augmentations every once in a while, after earning a “praxis point”. Examples of augmentations you can unlock include the ability to fall from any distance without dying, better armour, better aim, the ability to carry more items, or to “hack” higher level devices. These upgrades generally work well in that it allows you to choose the upgrades which suit your play style best. Unfortunately there’s a point when your character can become too powerful and the game becomes a bit too easy. Near the end of the game I found myself with a bunch of extra praxis points and nothing I felt like upgrading.

These different play styles you can choose from really help to keep the game interesting, and the many alternate routes through the levels would keep the game interesting if you choose to play it through for a second time, which is something I’ve been seriously considering. Where this all kind of falls apart though is the boss battles. The problem is evident if you’ve chosen to play the game stealthily, either killing only when necessary or not killing at all. You’ll get forced into a combat situation you aren’t prepared for, and you might not have any of the right equipment to take out the boss and it won’t matter what difficulty you’ve chosen; you’ll be in a tough spot.

So, did Eidos Montreal screw up? Well, as I’ve said before, I didn’t really play the original Deus Ex, so I can’t exactly answer that. What I do know is that they created a pretty good game, although there are admittedly a few, relatively non-critical, issues. It’s a game which I’m seriously considering playing through a second time, even though the first time took me 25 hours. You should play it too.

8.5/10

I haven’t yet figured out how to get AMD card working at all under Linux, so if that’s what your looking for, sorry. The integrated card has worked surprisingly well for me though, so long as I stick to graphically simpler games. Minecraft even works well enough with it, maybe even better than it ran with the integrated card in Windows.

This article might also apply to other laptops with switchable AMD graphics that are running Ubuntu 11.10 (and anything based on Ubuntu). So if you have a laptop like that which you want to run cooler, keep reading.

What we need to do is disable the AMD card by using something known as vga_switcheroo, this makes the situation much more manageable, but still not perfect. At least I no longer get burnt by my laptop, and the fan runs a bit quieter, although still constantly.

During my searches I came across this page on the Ubuntu wiki. I tried to follow it but found some important steps were omitted, like you already knew what you were doing.

Here’s what you need to do:

Open up /etc/default/grub:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

In this file you need to add the modeset=1 option to the line with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. That line will end up looking something like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet modeset=1 acpi_osi=\"Linux\""

Save that file (in nano, Ctrl+O), then close (nano: Ctrl+X). Now run the command:

update-grub

Now, restart. If everything was successful vga_switcheroo should now be active and you should be able to turn off your AMD card.

Now that all of that is done, to manually turn off your AMD card:

Open up your terminal and run the following sequence of commands:

sudo su
echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo IGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

This turns on both cards, selects the integrated graphics card, then turns off the card that wasn’t selected (your AMD card).

If I’ve correctly written out all the steps, you should no longer have your AMD card turned on, and your laptop should be rapidly cooling down, and another interesting side effect of this is improved battery life. If you’re still having trouble, take a look at that wiki page I linked to earlier. It has more information, but it’s spread out in a way that’s hard to make sense of unless you already have an idea of what needs to be done. If I’ve accidentally missed a step, head to the forums and tell me about it so I can fix the article.

Hope this helped you, and if I find a way to get the AMD card working at all, I’ll write about it.

If you need help figuring out your wireless connection, take a look here.

My parents aren’t at all car savvy, however when I was looking for my first car. This whole “Honda” thing was all they’d talk about. Show me this one, show me that one. Honestly, because of this, I didn’t want one. They were rather shocked when i did end up choosing my first car (1985 Chevy Camaro). I’m sure it wasn’t just my parents that wanted me to get a Honda, I heard they were good, reliable, small, easy, safe cars blablabla. Well, I chose a more risque route with my first car and scored great. My 1985 Camaro was great, after 85,000 km she’s still a tickin. But, what if i had gone the Honda route, What did I miss…

While searching Craigslist I picked myself up a 1989 Honda Accord.

But why not a civic? Everyone gets a civic! Its canada’s best small car for a million years in a row blablabla. First of all, Civic is the base model, its a box with a chair and a motor. All these cars have been literally driven into everything, have Hundreds of thousands of K on them (Literally the lowest K one i found was 350ish), Their slow (most of the cheap ones), and their resale price is ridiculous.

Accord was the much better option for me. Lets face it, I’m 21, my friends are all about 20 as well. The accord is spacious enough that i can cram 5 people in there, and I don’t hear bitching. After owning a camaro this is a big plus! I bet colby could sit back there and ALMOST be satisfied, that’s saying alot. The accord, with the added space has the “much” bigger motor compared to the civic. Its a Big Ol’ 2.0Litre. Producing 120hp and 120ft lb torque, And its fuel injected. The accord comes with alot more options standard then the civic, and I really like toys. My car is the top of the line EX-I model. which means it has everything except the spoiler which the EX-R got.

So its bigger, faster than the civic. Its got more features standard, its almost the same car, same design, but its A HELL OF ALOT CHEAPER FOR SOME REASON? Accord has almost no resale value… And i can’t quite figure out why…

I picked up my beast for $650, You cant pick up alot for that cheap, there has to be a list of things wrong. There is, rust everywhere, paint is crap, rear power windows take about 5 minutes to go up and down, passenger side door handle doesn’t wanna stay working. But any car can have these issues. On the whole of things, it feels like a car. Nothing to wrong with it, just old and worn.

So how does it look?  (4/10) It looks like an old White 4 door Honda. We’ve all seen millions, it looks blah. At least it has pop up headlights! It doesn’t disgust me. I’m not embarrassed to drive it around, its just another car on the road.

Performance? (5/10) I rate this in 2 sections, I think every car should be.

-Speed  (6/10), It’s not a fast car, but its not a slow one either. It has 120hp, which isn’t a lot now a days but back when this car was being made it was quite a bit. But were not living in 1989. So this car gets a lower rating, its not FAST. But it can keep up and pass whoever and whenever you like (as long as their not super fast) I haven’t measured this car’s 0-60 yet, because i really don’t care. When i go on the highway i can do 120 before the end of the on ramp, This car will do 180 without much trouble, and it will keep going. But due to losing my license. I don’t want to try. It’s not slow, it’s not fast. Its proper.

-Handling (4/10) This is a hard one to rate, Its front wheel drive, and tet will back me up. Its very different from everything we are used to with our rear wheel drive cars. This car is not light and nimble through tight turns. You can feel how heavy the front is, those tires just don’t wanna take it so tight. However, when conditions are bad. I feel alot more comfortable driving this thing more aggressively and faster than my camaro. The front wheel drive sure feels a lot safer and reassuring. The car is long and wide, front wheel drive. It would be rubbish at anything motorsport. I give it a 4/10 because its safe, again all you need in a car really. Its not a race car.

Interior (7/10) Well what i have is a dry 5 seats, Power windows, power locks, power mirrors, power antenna, power sunroof, cruise control, air conditioning. Its big, and I actually really like how everything is laid out. The dash has a shelf on it to put things on, where stuff actually stays and doesn’t fall. And it has a surface that’s actually really good for writing (hard enough to write on, yet you wont split your head open in case of collision) and its at the perfect angle, not sure if that was thought out or not. Taylor complains about the seats, but honestly if you lean them back like every other stupid kid in a Honda, it feels ALOT better. I now understand why they do that. Its to save their backs from torture. I give it a 7/10, because i like being in the car, The materials aren’t all plastic. You can tell there was some thought involved.

As a first car? (__/10) I cant give this a rating.

Everyone is different.

Cheese, would hate it because he dosen’t like people, so the thought of a spacious car is like hell to Colby.

Tet, would have liked it for its A/C and sunroof, but he would have hated to have me in it, because i would constantly stick my head out the sunroof (however only driver can control sunroof)

Caleb, bought a 93 civic, similar. I think he liked it.

Me, I like it now. I liked the memories i had in my other car more. I loved the looks people gave me in my camaro, I liked the character it had, people loved it, i loved it, it was family to me more then a car. This is just a car, It’s a great car for me. I love loading it full of my friends, blasting around town with my stereo cranked to hell with all windows and sunroof open. being idiots. I love that. Its a form of transportation. I don’t know about you but i made sure my first car was a lot more then just that.

Final Rating (4/10) It’s not bad. But get something that you will Love.

Maybe i’ll add pictures one day, But i don’t see the point. No character. We’ve all seen 1 before. Walk to the store. I’m sure one will pass you.

One of the focal points of Trine’s gameplay is the ability to switch your character instantaneously. You can choose between a wizard, thief, or knight. The wizard is strictly for solving puzzles and navigating the world by spawning objects such as boxes and planks. The thief is the most mobile of the bunch with a grappling hook that allows her to swing over gaps and reach high up platforms, and a bow to kill far away enemies. The knight is simply used for killing things. Instead of sharing health and magic, each character has their own. Likewise, when one character dies, the others will still be alive and usable. As you may expect, when one of your character dies it can really stall your progress but fortunately there are strategically placed checkpoints throughout the level which will restore some health and magic for you as well as resurrecting any slain characters.

The thief using her grappling hook.

Throughout each level you’ll come across green potions hidden in clever locations and see green mists coming out of some enemies when you kill them. Collecting these gives you experience and once you’ve collected enough you will level up. Levelling up means you get points which you can put towards upgrades for your characters. Upgrades such as more powerful weapons for the thief or knight, or being able to create more items at a time for the wizard.

I found the puzzles in Trine to be the funnest part. These aren’t always puzzles in the traditional sense, really, but rather just trying to figure out the best way to navigate a level or how to reach that very tempting green potion way up by the ceiling. Since these are physics-based puzzles, Newton’s laws and the limitations of your characters are the only things which limit how you can solve them. Two players may come up with two completely different solutions to a problem. Speaking of which, I wish I had had the opportunity to try the co-op mode. It seems like there would be some good potential there for puzzles which can only be solved by two people, I just don’t know if Frozenbyte actually explored doing anything like that.

The wizard creates a box.

Unfortunately, the combat isn’t as nearly as pleasant as the puzzles and almost feels tedious at times. There were times when I felt the game might even be better without combat at all, since the environment itself is engaging enough as is (Portal did it successfully). The fact that the combat seems to be the weakest parts is a bit interesting to me, considering that for so many games, combat is all you get. Of course there are games such as Amnesia: The Dark Decent which eliminated combat altogether, and that game certainty turned out all right. I just wish I could pinpoint exactly what made it feel tedious, I think it was because the puzzles were always on my mind that it never occurred to me that some skeleton would be shooting arrows at me. And it doesn’t even take that much work to take them down, so a sense of accomplishment isn’t there, as it is when you solve a puzzle finally.

Did this game have a story? I’m really not sure. All I remember is that some guy would talk before each level and sometimes the characters would say something in an attempt to be funny. Come on Frozenbyte! There are way better ways to tell a story than having someone sputter out some nonsense during a loading screen (see Bastion or Dragon Age: Origins for good ways to tell a story), forcing me to wait for the guy to stop talking minutes after the level is done loading. It may have been a great story but I won’t know because I didn’t pay enough attention, I was just too eager to start playing. And yes, I feel this is the game’s fault.

Weak storytelling and boring combat detract from this otherwise good game. So much so that I think the game would have turned out better if they had forgotten the knight and removed all those darn skeletons. Fortunately the great environment and relatively interesting puzzles make the game worth playing. Hopefully the weak points of this game have been corrected in Trine 2, I have yet to try it.

7/10

On the surface, Quake Live is a simple game. Run around, pick up guns, shoot at your opponent. Of course, the same could be said of most FPS games. I’ve played a lot of them, and I feel Quake is actually one of the more complicated ones, with the most amount of strategy. Though at the same time it can also be the simplest one. It all depends on how you choose to play it.

The rocket launcher, in action.

From the point of view of a newbie, they may see Quake as a game with little depth. They may see a game that appears to simply be an elaborate way to measure one’s dexterity with a mouse. They would be wrong, though. In reality, your ability to aim is only a small portion of what determines your success. Everything you see or do in Quake determines the outcome of a match: how you move, how you look, how you think, how you shoot, and even how you’ve configured your game. At this point, you may be eager to mention how every shooter is like this, and you’d be right. The difference comes from the depth of each of these elements.

I reviewed VVVVVV recently, and one of the things I really appreciated was how it took a simple idea and explored it a fully as possible, without ever becoming dull. Quake Live explores the FPS genre much the same way, unlike many of today’s modern shooters which seem to be becoming more like RPGs or strategy games. Quake Live does have strategy to it as well, but the strategy comes about naturally as a result of the genre, whereas, in a game like Counter-Strike: Source the strategy was quite deliberately added to game. I should clarify that I don’t mean to say that one is better than the other, just that Quake’s more natural strategy is less obvious, and so it takes more effort to appreciate it.

The red armour. One of the many items you will be fighting to control.

It’s also a bit harder to describe the strategy involved with a game of Quake, and it varies from game-type to game-type. In Duel, for example, maintaining control over the more powerful items in a map becomes a priority. Without those items to provide you with an advantage over your opponent, you will have a tough time fragging them, even if you have far superior aim. To maintain control, you must make note of when each item is picked up and be sure that you’re around to grab it or defend it when it responds 25, 35, or 120 seconds later. On top of that, if you’ve positioned yourself in a less favourable position, you’re more likely to take damage when the item finally respawns, assuming that both players are around to fight for it. You would never be expected to do this in a game like Call of Duty, and I can’t imagine that the typical Call of Duty player would want to be doing math in their head as they play.

So that’s duel. You still have deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, clan area, and freeze tag. Deathmatch is like duel but with many players, it’s harder to maintain control with the increased players so aim and your ability to move around the map become bigger factors. I think the same can be said about team deathmatch and capture the flag, but I haven’t really played enough of them to be sure. Freeze tag is the least traditional game type of the bunch. Instead of dieing, you get “frozen” and if a teammate is nearby, they can stand beside you and unfreeze you, hence the name “freeze tag”. Clan arena is the most aim and movement dependent of the bunch, simply because there is no item collection. You spawn with all of them to begin with and with your team simply need to annihilate the opposing team. The one special part of clan arena is that you can’t inflict damage to yourself. This means you can propel yourself around the map with your rocket launcher without taking damage, further emphasizing the importance of movement.

Movement is far more important in this FPS game than many others (one possible exception being Warsow). To start, you move far faster than most other games, so you are given far more opportunity to use that to position yourself, or to gather items or weapons quickly. If you happen to come across a video of someone playing Quake, you’ll see the player jumping around a lot. Despite what you may think, they are not goofing off. You can use jumping to gain speed and move around the map more effectively. There are techniques you can learn to gain speed incredibly quick and jump over large gaps like they aren’t even there. On one of the more popular maps, there is a gun visible from a bridge. You can try to jump normally but you’ll never make it, instead you have to do what is described in the video below. If you can’t complete this jump but your enemy can, that’s yet another disadvantage you need to deal with.

The shotgun is great for close-ranged combat.

Yes, that’s right, the starting machine gun can be the best weapon for the job in certain circumstances. Mastery of your weapon choices is very important, even just knowing which one to have out as you’re wandering around is important. For example, if you’re running around with your rail gun or lighting gun out during a duel, your opponent is going to be able to hear you more easily due to the hum or buzz that your weapon makes. On top of this, your weapons can aid in movement. You can perform a rocket jump by shooting the ground with your rocket launcher and jumping. This allows you to reach higher up levels or platforms more quickly, at the cost of losing some health and armour. You can also climb walls with the plasma gun by pushing yourself up against the wall and shooting at it at the correct angle. Plasma climbing is harder to perform than rocket jumping, but if you master it you can propel yourself up to certain spots on the map while taking less damage than you would have from a rocket jump.

Almost everything I’ve said so far is true about both Quake 3 and Quake Live. The key difference between the two is how the game is launched and your interactions with the community. Instead of installing the game to your hard drive and then clicking the icon to launch the game, you head on over to QuakeLive.com and enter your username and password. After that you are presented with a list of servers to join as well as links to view your profile (and stats), manage your friends, join a clan, change your in-game settings, view news, or view the discussion forums. You may also be presented with the option to upgrade your account. This gives you access to more maps and the freeze tag gametype. You can pay even more for the ability to start a clan and request that a private server get started for you.

One other component of all this web stuff is that the game tries it’s best to match you up with similarly skilled opponents. In my experience it works fairly well, though there’s the occasional game where I feel like my enemies are way too weak. Often it depends on what time of day you log on, as the community isn’t necessary large enough for there to always be the perfect game for you.

That’s Quake Live. Hopefully I’ve done a good enough job of explaining why I like it so much. It’s completely different from most other FPS games released these games in that it fully embraces the FPS genre and does it’s best to explore it fully, instead of tacking on needless RPG elements or feeling like it would rather be considered a strategy game. Movement is very important, as is item and weapon collection and using your weapons strategically, at the right time. The web interface provides you with stats as well as greater community interaction, as well as the ability to find evenly matched opponents. Overall the presentation is quite good, and the game doesn’t feel nearly as dated as Quake 3 does. I’d recommend this game to anyone who is getting fed up with the direction FPS games are heading today.

9/10

A little over a year and a half now I was at work. Well, I still often am at work, but this day was special. A friend there told me that he had recently finished a game called Metro 2033, that he was impressed with it and thought it was pretty cool, and I should check it out.

Normally I’m kind of in my own little world when it comes to games, and I only really trust a few people’s opinions. Usually when some one says “hey, check out this game!” and I respond “yeah, man! Sure!” I’m actually thinking “oh my God you pompous moron that game looks like another terrible piece of crap put out by a useless publisher who only cares about making money rather than producing a good game.” And most of the time I’m right. How do I know I’m right, if I don’t play the games? Don’t ask stupid questions.

Anyways, I did decide to buy the game. At the time it was fairly new and still about $40 (or $50?) on Steam, and I waited a while and picked it up for $25 (which is a bit of a sting considering I’ve seen it around $10 on sale on Steam. Right now, without a sale on, it’s $20). I immediately proceeded to install it, and then eagerly wait over a year to actually start it up for the first time.

Why’d I wait a year? I actually have no idea why. I guess I was falling out of love with FPS games at the time, my heart recently crushed by the mutation of my beloved Call of Duty series into some casual teenage and middle-aged beer-drinking good-for-nothing couch-potato icon by people who can’t appreciate a mouse. And, as much as I hate to use the excuse “I was busy,” which is overused nowadays, I suppose that was a little true as well. I guess in reality though I was really too lazy to start up another game. But last month I finally mustered up the courage to enter the Russian Metro, 21 years in the future (or 22 at the time since I started in December)!

The story is one of this game's strong points.

This game, much like The Witcher (my favourite game I played last year), is based off of a Russian novel. The game advertises this by placing copies of the novel around the Metro for you to find (I have no idea why but I took screenshots of them as I found them). The story, at least so much as the game tells you, in that a nuclear holocaust had occurred sometime before (it doesn’t really give a specific time, but within the last 30-50 years or so of the game’s setting, I believe). So, yeah, we have another post apocalyptic title here. A little bit of an overdone genre, like World War 2, but bear with me. Basically, because the surface is now inhabitable the people of Russia (and I can only assume other areas of the world) have been forced to live underground in the Metro. And things were going swimmingly, too, until the arrival of the homo novus, as a good buddy of mine in the game described them.

These homo novus are some creepy looking creatures and the main antagonists of the game. They’re threatening human existence (homo novus vs. homo sapien!) by infiltrating the various stations that people have colonized and, well, killing them. What else were you expecting? It is a first person shooter. Your friend/step father/something to that effect coins the term, theorizing they have mutated from humans in order to live on the now inhospitable surface. An interesting theory, but that’s not exactly going to stop you, Artyom, from killing them, is it? Anyways, without giving too much of the story away, you are forced to leave your home station in order to reach the station Polis for help protecting your home station. Homo novus are not the only enemies in this game, however. Another neat story element I think should be noted is that the whole ideology war has also been resurrected as well, with the Communists and the Nazis waging an underground war at the same time all this homo novus stuff is happening. I thought this was another really interesting inclusion into the story, and it helps to spice things up!

Killing some homo novus on the surface.

You are allowed to carry with you several weapons. You are allowed a pistol, an assault rifle, and a shotgun/pneumatic weapon. In addition to these three, you have, of course, a knife and some grenades. You also have a flashlight (a very important tool in the Metro) which can be charged to increase its effectiveness, and a journal which basically consists of a large box with a little green arrow on it that points in the direction you need to go (very handy if you get lost or need some guidance. It’s amazing that it knows where to go, let alone where the exit is in a room!). There are several different types of each of the 3 gun categories that can be purchased at the different stations you visit or picked up after killing human enemies. I guess I don’t really need to explain what pistols, assault rifles, or shotguns are, but you may be unfamiliar with pneumatic weapons. Basically, these are like rifles (often with scopes) that shoot out little pellets. The catch is, they’re not terribly common in the first half of the game (meaning it’s difficult to find ammo between stations), and, more importantly, you actually need to manually pump them up to increase their power. The good news is they’re extremely powerful when fully pumped up. The bad news is that after 5-10 shots they really need to be pumped again. You can still shoot them, but they deal considerably less damage. I thought this was cool and I routinely carried one with me unless I was experiencing an ammo drought and resorted to a shotgun just to stay alive.

A really neat idea in the game is found in the currency it uses: bullets! But not just any bullets: shiny military-grade bullets produced before humans lived below the surface. I thought this was a cool idea. The bullets you can buy (at the bullet exchanges in stations) are produced after the fact and are weaker and therefore less valuable to the people of the Metro. I have doubts about how sustainable this economy would be in real life, but I thought it was interesting. In addition, you can use these currency bullets in your assault rifle (hold down the reload button) if you’re desperate. They deal more damage, but it means you won’t be able to buy stuff later on. I often just traded them for weaker bullets that I completely stocked up on at each station.

There's a few instances of vehicular combat in the game.

The gameplay element of the game isn’t anything special, to be honest. It’s a normal FPS game. You shoot things, you reload. You shoot things, you reload. Sometimes you have partners to help you out, sometimes you don’t. However, it’s not all action – stealth is also an option in many circumstances as well. I wish there was a little less action and a little more stealth in this game if I had my way. In many situations, you’re allowed to choose between sneaking past your foes or simply opening fire. The amazing technology of 2033 also helps you out here – your watch has a great three-light indicator corresponding to how well hidden you are. I’m a little unsure of how realistic it is, but it’s pretty useful in the game. Your watch also has a handy timer for the few occurrences you’re on the surface and are forced to wear a gas mask to survive. I’m not going to lead you on though; these are the only “different” gameplay elements it has to offer, although to be fair the FPS game genre doesn’t exactly have a reputation for innovation nowadays, does it? The gameplay isn’t amazing, and the game itself probably won’t win my game of the year award (but it might have a chance at the top 5), but if any aspect of it has a chance to win over your money, it’s going to be the story.

Warning: the children in this game may break your heart.

I know not every one agrees with me here, but I love a good story. I love good gameplay, but a good story can compensate for it in my books. If you play Metro 2033, you will not be blown away by the combat, but I hope you will be impressed with the story and the ideas that the author of the novel, Dmitry Glukhovsky, had about the future. I really don’t want to give away too much here, so I’ll just mention some general things that I thought were really cool.

I really appreciate that the developer, 4A Games, put in a lot of effort into the details, small and large. Like the shadows of killed people haunting the Metro in the screen shot to the right, and the occasional flashes to some other unknown place which will hopefully be eluded to in the sequel coming out later this year. They accomplished in making the Metro look creepy and unwelcoming, yet interesting enough to explore. I like that they incorporated things like children and teddy bears, and people talking and conversing about

The shadows of fallen soldiers in the tunnels of the Metro.

day-to-day issues and problems to help bring the game and the environment alive. I also thought that the partners they give you throughout the game have interesting personalities (well, most of them). Little remarks like when you walk by a tunnel heading up towards the sky and a child with you says something along the lines of “the sun! It’s so beautiful! Wow! All my friends will be so jealous I saw the sun!” The poor kid nearly broke my heart! He just seemed so excited over something you and I take for granted every day!

Like Frictional Games with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, 4A Games have really succeeded with their efforts in designing the environment and atmosphere of this game, and that’s what really sells it for me. (In fact, there’s a small terrifying section of Metro 2033 that reminds me a lot of Amnesia where you are unable to fight back). An interesting environment with an interesting story is what makes this game worth the time and puts it ahead of other single player FPS games currently on sale. Perhaps the reason the single player is so good is because you know that from day one the single player was their main focus, not like Call of Duty where the multiplayer is what really sells the game for the majority of buyers. How do I know this? There is no multiplayer.

The most stressful part of the game. Don't look directly at them, don't turn your back on them, and you can't kill them.

Another intense cinematical moment!

If you want to get down to the real facts, scroll down to the bottom of the article where I list my Mac Myths and my Pros and Cons list. This might come in handy if you’re on your phone in the middle of Best Buy seriously considering buying that Macbook right in front of you.

It occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t written a Lagview in a while, but I quickly ran into a problem. What with school (especially near finals) and just life in general, I haven’t really been able to muster up the time to play any games. So what could I possibly review? Then it occurred to me. I promised to review my Macbook when I bought it a loooong time ago. So, here we go!

What can I say about my laptop/notebook/Macbook? To be honest, it’s a little primitive by today’s standards, but that shouldn’t be surprising. Let’s take a look at the specs here… Apple menu… About this Mac… here we go! I have an astounding 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and a whopping 2 gb of DDR2 ram. Fantastic. Thankfully, Fobies bought me a 500 gb 7200 rpm hard drive for Christmas last year which I used to replace the stock 120 gb 5400 rpm one (Seriously, apple? 5400 rpm? Pathetic). What else do I have? Ah! An NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 mb. As you can see, this notebook is one hell of a machine. Well, at least it was decent in 2009.

So now that you know the specs, what about the rest of the hardware? Well, I have one of them fancy iSight camera/webcam thingies. That’s pretty cool, although in Skype my picture always looks terrible compared to whoever I’m talking to’s (they can verify this on their end as well, but since this notebook is an older model we can safely blame this problem on outdated hardware). I have a 13.3” screen which works just fine, although you’ll often spot me jabbing at the F2 key (which increases brightness) from time to time trying to make it brighter. Everything always seems so dull. So colourless. I have no idea why, and it doesn’t help that nearly everything is OS X is gray. It seems to have a decent enough contrast ratio (iCal is surprisingly picky – I hooked up a second monitor once and I couldn’t tell the difference between a selected day and an unselected day until I upgraded my secondary monitor) but nothing ever looks as colourful as you, or, rather, I, want it to be. Oh well.

The shape of the notebook is, well, boring. But it’s a notebook, so you can’t really knock it for that. I have the sort that still retains the single mouse button below the trackpad. I know the button is integrated into the trackpad in newer models, but for the love of god, Apple, include a right-mouse button. What the hell are you doing? Alienating potential turncoat PC users, that’s what! If an old-school Apple fan wants that single mouse button feel, they still have it. It’s just a bit smaller and to the left a tad. This seems a good point to point out and correct a bit of a Mac myth. Yes, there is a right-click. No, it’s not built into the laptops because the company is run by a bunch of what I expect are naïve designers who put sleek looks above all else. However, Apple’s Bluetooth mice can all be right-click enabled (via system preferences under the apple menu), and you can hook up any old USB wireless or Bluetooth mouse to your Mac and right-click without doing a thing. That’s what I did. For the longest time I was using an old wired USB Microsoft mouse with my Mac. That earned me a couple of chuckles at school.

The keyboard is fine to me. Cheese will complain about the lack of a home or PC-style delete key, but I don’t mind. I use the keyboard every day and there’s nothing that I personally miss so much it would be a deal-breaker. Those two buttons in particular wouldn’t hurt though, I suppose, but it can be argued they are for a particular audience and not the average person. It’s a tad bit smaller than a standard size keyboard, but I have gigantic hands and I can type all day long with as much accuracy as I can on my Logitech keyboard connected to my PC upstairs.

Since we’re on the topic of hardware here, I should probably mention the battery. My battery still lasts me, 3 years later, at least a couple hours on a full charge. My mother’s Dell laptop of a similar age lasted about 15 minutes on a full charge. Of course, read the information about maintaining your battery that comes with your notebook, Mac or PC. Manufacturer knows best, and I’m sure you can squeeze out a lot more life out of a PC notebook battery if you treat it right!

The magnetic plug thingy might seem like a bit of a lame feature that you’ll never use. Sounds great in theory, but is it really all that great? I’ll tell you right now, from experience, it’s absolutely invaluable in a university classroom. People are always tripping over laptop charging wires, so it seems. Walking into a university lecture can be like trying to navigate through those security lasers you see on T.V. and in the movies… it can be pretty perilous at times. More than once has that magnetic charger feature come in handy for me. Seriously! Classrooms where being proficient in limbo is a necessary skill for reaching your seat may spell the end of your laptop otherwise. I’ve seen it happen!

Now we come down to the weakest aspects of the Macbook’s game. First of all, covering your wrists in raw meat and placing them in a tank of piranhas would be a more comfortable experience than resting them on the sharp edges of the laptop. I’m already regretting starting to write this review because I have these long red lines going across both of my wrists. And the sad part is I’m not kidding! I actually have a spare USB keyboard handy for the odd time I just can’t take it anymore! Macbooks are simply not the most comfortable notebooks in the world to use. However, to add insult to injury (literally) Apple has also decided it would be a brilliant idea to add not 4, not 3, but 2 USB ports. Two. That’s it. I’ve tried looking for more, but they’re nowhere to be found. To make it worse, they’re spaced very close together, so if you have to plug in, say, an SD card reader (because they were too cheap to build one in and my SD card reader is quite wide), you have to unplug your USB mouse and deal with the crappy command-click with one mouse button (on the trackpad) in order to right-click something. Do yourself a favour: buy a USB hub the same time you buy a Macbook. And buy an external mouse too. I’m not kidding, you’ll kick yourself if you don’t. Me, I have a Bluetooth mouse so no USB useage there, but I do have a printer, a scanner, my phone/Kindle charger (oooh I should review my kindle next!) and an audio interface, at minimum. And because this is 2011/12 and I, in my Americanized ways, desire nothing but convenience, they all must be connected at one time so I don’t have to unplug and plug stuff back in. Especially if I want to get some pictures of my camera via my SD card adapter. Imagine if you had an iPhone and an iPad 2 to go along with your mac. Let’s say you use both regularly, so they both need to be charged daily. Oops! Both of your USB ports are now in use! Now you can’t print, use a USB mouse, use a USB keyboard to save your wrists from being eaten by a bunch of crazy fish, record or listen to some music via a USB interface, charge your kindle or other eReader (because reading on a backlit screen hurts my eyes, personally), charge your backup Android phone in case your iPhone needs to be replaced a third time in a month (long story), etc. I think I’ve made my point – we need some more USB ports. In fact, this problem is the reason why my current audio interface, to replace my old two-input USB one, is Firewire. And what did Apple do to reward me for my ingenuity and transfer to Firewire, which they invented? They took away Firewire on the next generation of white Macbooks, so now I’m forced to buy either an iMac or a Macbook Pro. Apple… why? Why must you do this to me? I gave you my money and you continually kick me down! I’d slit my wrists in agony but your notebook has already done that for me! Whyyy… … …

Now, this Lagview so far is oozing with negativity. But I’ll tell you this… when the time comes to upgrade my Macbook (which I think may happen some time next year) I will probably replace it with a Macbook. Or an iMac. So what gives? Why is this hypocritical moron telling you what he’s buying is a piece of crap? I’ll tell you – it’s the glowing Apple logo on the back on my Macbook. Oh, and the software’s alright.

I’m running the latest version of OS X here, Lion. And it’s pretty snazzy and all that. Of course, it has a few gaping flaws I’ll mention in a bit (and I know Colby is already angrily jumping up and down in his penguin shirt for at least a few of the reasons I’ll get to). I like OS X though. I like it more than Windows 7, anyways (Windows XP will always have a soft spot with me – it never did me any wrong).  Let’s imagine that you’ve just unboxed your Macbook and you’ve just fired it up… A common complaint I’ve heard is that is feels a bit sluggish and slow. It’s too busy trying to graphically show off its tail feathers in an attempt to impress you, and that’s true. That’s why the first thing you do should be to venture into the ever handy (yeah I said it, Alex!) system preferences under the Apple menu and disable as much as that bullshit as you can. When you get back to your inevitably space-themed desktop, you’ll find everything is a little quicker, a little more responsive. This is much better. The second thing you’ll want to do is open up Safari to unleash its full potential: as a medium for downloading Firefox. Then, pull Safari off of your dock because you’ll never want to touch that piece of unstable rubbish again. This may take several repeated attempts.

Now that you’ve remedied the web browser issue, you can download your Apple fan-boy essentials, such as iTunes. I will say that I’ve found iTunes much better (more stable, more intuitive) on a Mac over the PC version (and weirdly, I found Safari better on PC over Mac, although the only positive thing I can say about it even then is that it’s better than Internet Explorer). So what can you do with this beast of an operating system? Well, there’s a few new features in Lion. First off all, there’s mission control. Which is just expose, as far as I

Expose/Mission Control in action. You can see all the windows I currently have open and I can simply click the one I was to focus on. Great if you have a bunch of stuff open at once. Does not display minimized windows, though.

can tell (which was available in Leopard and Snow Leopard). Expose is possibly the best feature of any operating system I have ever used. What is does is show you every window you have open so that you can quickly navigate between them (just click the one you want to focus on it). I thought it was useless at first, but then I realized it’s potential thanks to a friend at school. He showed me than he had, through that mighty system preferences thing I mentioned earlier, bound expose to run/start/toggle when he moved his mouse into the bottom right corner of the screen. He then said something revolutionary to me: “with expose, you never need to minimize.” He was absolutely right! I have not minimized something on my Mac, at least as far as I can remember, in months. There’s just no reason to, unless I want to access my desktop. But I never need to, because all the files I regularly access are in the folders on my dock! Brilliant. Colby showed me that this feature is available on (some?) distributions of Linux, making Linux officially better than Windows 7. You might think moving your mouse to the bottom-right corner sounds inconvenient, but it’s really not. The mouse is in your hand often enough anyways, /and if this isn’t good enough pressing F3 will do the same thing so the feature is always right there for you to use. This feature is a massive reason of why I love this operating system. Yeah, I’m easy to please.

The App Store is a new addition to OS X, too. No, not the App Store for iPhone or iPad, but the MAC App Store! Yeah, that’s right. Found underneath that amazing Apple menu, you can buy all sorts of bits of software under there. Including Apple’s competing products to Microsoft’s office, and Final Cut X, which, as I gather, is a perfect example of Apple shoving its foot down its mouth yet again (ie. Ruining something and alienating its users in the process of “improving” it). You can also upgrade OS X in the app store as well, so it just downloads and installs. Pretty convenient, but the larger downloads, as you might expect, do take a while. You can also buy games and stuff. I like the idea in theory, it’s sort of like Steam if you want to think of it that way, but I still like the option of buying software in packaging and stuff. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, though.

Opening a folder in launchpad. You see can see the iPhone-ness. To the left of the folder icon, you can also faintly see another icon that represents an app that is currently being downloaded.

There’s also Launchpad, which is basically a list of all your installed applications. I’ve never used it, but I can understand how it might be helpful to newcomers who can’t for the life of them figure out how to find the Applications folder. It also adds some iPhone-ness to OS X as well. For example, let’s say you’re downloading some software from the Mac App Store. This program will appear in Launchpad (think of Launchpad as your iPhone’s home screen with the icons and such), and there will be a little loading bar underneath it, visually appearing very similar to an iPhone screen when downloading an App. To make matters a little more worrying, the folders in Launchpad are also opened in a similar manner to folders on the iPhone. The graphical aspect mirrors that of the iPhone’s. It’s weird. I’m not a big fan of this, but I guess it’s not really a big deal. A lot of users will at least be familiar with it.

There’s spaces, too, which isn’t new to Lion but still an interesting idea I know is (basically) in some Linux distributions. Basically, you can shuffle between different (as many as 4) desktops, and in each you can open particular windows. For example, I might have my browser open in space 1 for researching for a paper, iTunes and Word open in space 2 for actually writing the paper, and Skype open in space 3 for talking to some one at the same time (perhaps through chat, since I’ve never really been able to pull off the whole talking-to-some-one-at-the-same-time-as-listening-to-Pink-Floyd-thing. Frankly, Pink Floyd will always win out). Then you can shift between each space to access the applications open in that particular space. You can’t have a single application open in more than once space, though. For example, I can’t have my Lagview in Word on space 1 and my essay on Cytochrome C in Word on space 2, they need to be in the same space. So that sort of sucks. I used spaces a lot when I first got my notebook, but to be honest I haven’t used it in probably over a year. I just use expose/mission control to go through my open applications instead (and I’ll be the first to admit mission control is a stupid name. Better than iMission Control though I suppose).

I tried out Apple’s competitor to Microsoft office, iWork. I hated it. I didn’t particularly like the interface at all, especially when I was already comfortable with Office. So I bought office, and it’s fine. I’m using it now. Of course, this is purely a personal preference.

So what about those gaping flaws I mentioned? Well, they’re mostly to do with the interface, in my opinion. My least favourite thing about OS X is the renaming of files. On a PC, you right-click the file of interest, click rename, and type in the new name. In OS X, you right-click (or command-click if you haven’t bought that handy external mouse yet) the file, click Get Info, Expand the “Name” section of the window that pops up, type the new name in the box, and then close the window. It doesn’t sound like much but sometimes it’s enough to drive me insane when I want to rename a bunch of files. If any one knows a trick to do this quicker, for the love of chickens please let me know! The other problems have to do with the actual fluid-ness of your graphical experience. Things always seem a bit slow and sluggish, even if you’ve really reduced that amount of graphical showing off. I wish there was an option to tone down the graphical effects and just make the whole experience more functional and instant. When I want to minimize the window, I want it MINIMIZED. I don’t want the window to slowly visually collapse into the dock. Sometimes, and I’m not kidding, these two issues, albeit small, are enough to drive me to start using my PC more for periods of time. But then again I’m a very impatient person. There are lots of other things that bug me about Lion, but I suspect most of them are more on the personal side so I’ll leave it at that.

A very simple song I wrote and recorded in Logic Express, a example of well-known and widely-used audio recording software that is unique to a Mac.

There’s a bit of a stereotype about Macs being good for us artsy-fartsy people. I was talking to the art designer where I work and she said she wished she had a Mac to work on instead of a PC. In fact, the guy she replaced actually requested that his computer be themed to look more like OS X before he would work. I asked her why and she mumbled a bit about the interface and stuff, and because I’m partially afraid of her I didn’t ask her any further questions after that. I think what it boils down to is that there is a greater selection of stable, highly-featured software out there for Macs. Although I could be wrong. First of all, most of the big names in these sorts of programs – ie. Adobe’s photoshop, illustrator, after effects, etc., and many others, are available on both Mac and PC. And I have no idea why, not having experienced it first hand, why it is that Mac users always seem more happy with their software than PC users do. Mac also has a selection of software unique only to it (PCs do as well, to be fair, but they seem less high-profile), such as Final Cut and Logic Pro. I personally use Logic for my personal audio recordings and I love it. I’ve yet to try Pro Tools though, and when I get around to it you can be sure a Lagview will follow (maybe even comparing Pro Tools and Logic! Now there’s an idea!). But really, I can’t think of much more to say on this end. I like Logic more than, say, Ableton Live. That’s all I’m really (barely) qualified to say on the subject.

On the whole, with Apple you buy an attractive-looking product with an attractive-looking interface that even comes in attractive-looking packaging. Apple does the “simple yet elegant” thing quite well. I believe that their iron grip on things such as user-created content on the App Store helps to ensure the stability and reliability of their products, and although I can see why people such as Cheese think it’s crap and people should be able to do whatever they want to their products, I can also see Apple’s side of the story – they have a reputation to maintain, after all.

I think a huge part of Apple’s shortcomings is due to their drive to be different. Everything they produce needs to be a fashion statement, they need that bandwagon for people to jump on to, and they’ll do anything to hold it.  They’re too busy trying to stick their hand down the front of your pants to make something that really blows their competitors out of the water. This is not to say Apple doesn’t make a great product – of course they do, especially on the software side of things. I’m reluctant to say an iPhone is better than an Android competitor, and likewise I’m not going to tell you a Mac is better than a PC. I’ve been on either side with respect to both, and if you ask me to make a definite decision I’m going to look like Paul McCartney in half the pictures he ever took with the Beatles – jaw dropped, looking into space, seemingly lost in thought. What it comes down to is that it’s all about personal preference. I’m sorry! It just is. So if you’re on the fence about buying a Mac over a PC, let me offer some advice:

1. If you want to play games, buy a PC.

2. If you want to record music, do photo/picture editing, or other artsy things, buy a Mac. Although I’m certain for most things you can find a suitable piece of software to do what you want on a PC as well.

3. If you can’t afford a Mac but want the fancier UI and visual effects of the operating system, buy a PC and put Linux on it (unless you want to run Mac-specific software, in which case you’ll need to sit down with Cheese for a few hours, and then again because he probably won’t make much sense the first time). Or you could do a hackintosh, but this isn’t really the article you should be reading for that.

4. If you want a computer that can browse the internet and check your email (and that’s it), buy a PC. Why? Because you can pick up an old piece of crap one for cheap. Or a netbook, or cheap laptop.

5. If you’re a student in need of a device to take notes, don’t spend the money on a Mac. It’s unnecessary and it only does two things for you: (1) you’re a sheep and are willing to spend lots of money to be “fashionable,” and (2) you have way too much money.

And I love my Macbook.

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For quick reference:

Mac Myth #1: You can’t right-click on a Mac

Yeah you can. Just buy a proper mouse, even one made by Apple. Don’t be an idiot, this isn’t the 90s anymore.

Mac Myth #2: Macs never crash

This is bull, my Mac has crashed plenty of times. However… only once was with Logic, which is an Apple program. It’s crashed several times due to Microsoft office, though. Running Microsoft software, it’s as stable as a PC. Software affects stability!! Whether you have a Mac or PC is irrelevant. To a point, anyways.

Mac Myth #3: Macs don’t get viruses

Nah, I got a virus on my Mac easily. I’ve had as many viruses on my Mac as on my PC (one in each case. At least that I’m aware of).

Mac Myth #4: Macs can’t play games

This is half true. They are certainly capable from a hardware standpoint, but the amount of games that will actually run with respect to software/drivers/other stuff that I don’t want to go into detail about is pretty lame in comparison to a PC. Although the situation is improving as developers aim at making games that can run on the “big three” operating systems, I’m still going to tell you: if you are a PC gamer, you’re a PC gamer. Don’t buy a mac, because you’ll be disappointed.

Mac Myth #5: Macs are better than PCs for art-related stuff

Actually, there’s a grain of truth to this one… read the above paragraphs for more information. My argument is a little weak, though.

Mac Myth #6: Macs are significantly more expensive than PCs

I didn’t really cover this in the paragraphs above, but this is another good example of a Mac Myth. This is a little bit true, but not as much as you might think. When you buy a new Mac (Macbook or iMac), you are buying a (nearly) top of the line computer. If you price out a similar PC laptop by Dell, HP, etc. with similar hardware specifications, you’ll notice that the price difference is not actually that much. Yes, the Apple product will be more expensive, but not by as much as you might assume. It basically comes down to preference in the end. The reason why you can pick up a PC for much cheaper is that PCs usually come in a much wider variety of specifications, and you can get one for much less than a new Mac. And, as you’d expect, you would have bought a less capable computer with respect to hardware.

Mac Myth #7: Macs are much more user-friendly than PCs

Not really. Depends how you look at it, I guess. It’s different. You may minimize a Word document, and if Word is usually on your dock you may have Word running all day long without realizing it. Clicking the red circle at the top-left of the window does often NOT close the program itself, just the window. Make you sure command-Q (quit selected program) to exit the program completely. A lot of people don’t realize this. The interface does take a while to get used to, and I’m really reluctant to call it user-friendly. It’s just different!

- – -

Pros & Cons of a Mac (compared to a PC)

Pros

Great battery life on Macbooks.

Sleek operating system, but it does have it’s own problems (ie. Renaming files is a pain)

Great selection of software

Buying new often means you have (nearly) top-of-the-line hardware

You get that simple-yet-elegant thing that Apple does so well

Improved reliability/stability (due to reasons outlined in the paragraphs above)

I prefer the interface to Windows 7 in many aspects

You own an Apple, which is a bit of a fashion statement. This may also be considered a con, of course.

Cons

Not a lot of ability to play games.

The simple-yet-elegant thing can sometimes be a pain – see my sore wrists for more information

You pay a lot more for hardware you may never utilize to it’s full potential (do NOT buy a Mac to check your email if you value your hard-earned money!)

Compatibility with Windows applications, although there via bootcamp, is a little inconvenient

Sometimes the interface can be a little confusing if you’re coming from a PC

Let’s be honest, a PC is much more versatile than a Mac! A PC is really the jack of all trades in the computer world.

This is my first game review for a Pandora game, and actually only the 3rd game I’ve completed on it so far. We are fortunate in the Pandora community to have people willing and able to port these games and even more fortunate that the original developers allow this to happen. The game isn’t open source, so I think in this case VVVVVV’s developer specifically gave permission for it to be ported, nice! I had actually tried this game on my PC previously, but gave up when I reached a point where I did nothing but die. The game isn’t anywhere near as hard as say, Super Meat Boy, but it does benefit from a proper controller, which the Pandora does have.

VVVVVV is a platform game, but unlike most of those, you can’t jump. Instead, the game’s core mechanic is to flip the direction of gravity, so that you are either falling up or down. Though you can only do this when your feet hit either the floor or roof, however you want to look at it. The entire game revolves around this idea, though you get introduced to other things to, things like a “spring” which forces you to change gravity’s direction, or looping rooms, where you walk to the left and come out on the right, for example. You’ll find all these things in different rooms, which in a way form puzzles.

Given that there’s only a few different elements making up the gameplay, it’s probably a good thing that the game is relatively short. It took me just over 2 hours to beat it, but I only collected 11 of the 20 trinkets. During that time I died 985 times and died 80 times in one room, named “The Gravitron”. Was it frustrating to die almost 1000 times? Not really. The game gives you lots of checkpoints so if you’re stuck somewhere and finally get past it, you won’t lose your progress, and if you do happen to die a lot in a particular room, it’s usually because you didn’t first examine the room to figure out the correct way to get through it, so you have only yourself to blame, really. The room where I died so many times was a bit special. You had to dodge incoming things (not sure what to call them) for one minute. If the timer had reset to 60 seconds every time you died, chances are many would never get past this room. But the game compromises and the timer never goes back more than 5 seconds. This sort of compromise takes away a lot of the frustration you might have but still gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally get through it. It works.

Here’s a video (not mine) of the “Super Gravitron”, a level you can unlock:

What also works is the graphics and sound. They are intentionally retro-styled but still manage to look good. Part of that is probably the higher resolution than what was available long ago, and that the Pandora’s screen fit the game at 640×480 very nicely and given that it’s so small the graphics looked nice and crisp. Plus with the sounds being relatively simple they came out of the Pandora’s speakers sounding quite natural, so that I didn’t feel tempted to put on a pair of headphones to get better sound quality. It all comes together feeling quite polished.

Overall I enjoyed VVVVVV a lot more than I expected. It’s not amazing, but it does what it sets out to do very well. I think the experience I had with the game on the Pandora was better than I would have had playing it on a PC, and that’s saying a lot considering I do almost all my gaming there. The only thing I can say I don’t like about it is having count all the V’s as I type out it’s name.

8/10

First:

Before installing Ubuntu, make sure that the wireless is working under Windows, specifically that the hardware switch (Fn + F7) is set to on. If it’s set to off, you’ll be forced to reinstall Windows to do it – apparently there’s currently no way this can be done within Linux on this laptop.

You can verify that this is done correctly by putting in the command rfkill list into the terminal and seeing something like the following. Note that what you’re looking for now is that nothing is hard blocked, it might still be soft blocked, but the next steps should take care of that.

colby@colby-laptop:~$ rfkill list
0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

To get it working temporarily:

This is more for trying out a live CD, etc.. Run this command in the terminal:

sudo modprobe -r acer_wmi

and you should have wireless for your session.

To make this permanent:

Open up /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf with your favorite text editor, for example:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add to the bottom:

blacklist acer_wmi

And that should be it. Restart and you should still have wireless. Hopefully this helps someone. If I’ve omitted something important, please visit the forum and tell me so I can correct the article.

If your U400 seems to be running way hotter than it should be under Ubuntu, check out this article.