Game Corner - TitanFall - Review - Guest Blogger

       There's not much to say about this game that hasn't already been said, good or bad. This game, for starters, is my all time favorite shooter. I'ts fresh take on the re-used Call Of Duty and Battlefield concepts is what makes it stand out from all the others in a way. The gameplay style is a breath of fresh air, with fast paced gameplay as well as unique concepts of it's own. It's lack of content is not a good sight, but it makes up for it with the overall experience you have while playing.
       I think one of the best parts is the overall customization possibilities, which is added to drastically by the titans. Everything is balanced by a basic system of strengths and weaknesses such as range, fire speed, aim speed and so on. All of the weapon, skill, and titan combinations can be countered by something else, which helps to lessen the problem of campers which is prominent in most other shooters. What also helps bring this problem down is the map setups, which give people a lot of vantage points, all while keeping them from being too inaccessible to other players.
       The only problem with this game that I hope will be fixed in the future is the matchmaking, which sometimes matches you in a team with very low experienced players, or puts the other team in the same situation, which can make the game very frustrating to the newer and older players alike. The players are matched at random, with no regard to skill level. Other than this problem, the game is completely worth buying for any fan of shooters, or people who just want something fresh. It's incredibly addicting, fast paced, and overall a great buy.

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Tech Wars - PC Gaming Platforms

Welcome to Tech Wars! Every Tuesday and Thursday we take two or more tech services/products and put them side-by-side to see which one prevails. Follow us on Twitter (@allstuffnerdy) to get updates when a new Tech War comes out. To see more Tech Wars articles, click the "Tech Wars" link at the top of the page.

PC gaming has been evolving at a rapid pace. Many years ago, most people didn't play games on their computer. That's what consoles were for. But now with the turbocharged power of desktop hardware, the majority of gamers prefer PC's for gaming. We can now put multitasking power into the hands of the average consumer. I know people who stream music, video chat, play games, and record their screen all at the same time with minimum lag. So we now have the need to put that multitasking power to use. That's where PC gaming platforms come in.

In the past few years, many game client platforms have come through, but two stand out. Valve's Steam service, and EA's Origin service.

To kick this Tech Wars off, let's put the two side by side and see how they stack up:

	Valve's Steam	EA's Origin
Membership cost	FREE	FREE
Created	2002	2005 - Renamed to Origin in 2011
In-game overlay	Yes	Yes
Social network (friends, disscussion boards...)	Yes	Yes
online game streaming (Ex: twitch.tv)	No	Yes
game streaming (Ex: read here)	Yes	No
Game store	Yes	Yes
Allow running external games	Yes	Yes
Fanbase	75 million	9.3 million
Games on store	3,000	Unknown (less than 500)
Cloud support (for saves and game data)	Yes	Yes
RAM usage	28,000 Kb	159,000 Kb
Flagship games	Valve branded games	EA branded games

After stacking these up, it's time to see which one dominates. But first, it's worthy mentioning the types of sales that go on in the two game platform stores. EA sells many expensive games (avg $50 USD). It does, however, offer occasional discounts and On the House deals (see here). Valve on the other hand offers a wide range of prices on their products, and often has deep sales (ranging from 25% to 90% off the original price). Now with that out of the way, we can go through it and come to a conclusion. So obviously both are free to use. And Steam is a much more experienced player in this field considering it was created back in 2002 for the purpose of distributing updates for it's then popular game Counter-Strike. Origin is much more recent in the respect that it wasn't a gaming platform until 2011. Before that, it was just a download manager and digital game store. Both have an In-game overlay that you can access by pressing a pre-defined key combination to access. From there both platforms support their own social network (chat, friend activity, forums...). Origin has a surprising feature where it can stream your game online to services like twitch.tv. Valve however allows streaming to other devices on your network in a different way. Basically Valve has made it so you can stream any game that you have set to launch through Steam to any device on your network that is running Steam. The client also supports sending key presses back so essentially you are remote controlling your computer. If you want to read more about this, read here. Both platforms support buying games online from their custom store as well as importing existing games by searching your computer for their executable (.exe). And Steam has the largest pool of active users while Origin is seriously far behind. And not to mention that Origin is lacking in a selection of games. And both Steam and Origin use a considerable amount of RAM, Origin seems a little greedy in this category. And of course both platforms are heavy supporters of their own games. Valve's flagship line includes Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod, Portal, Half-Life, and more. EA's top games include Titan fall, Battlefield, Crysis, Sim-city, The Sims, and a few others.

The conclusion:
My conclusion would have to be Steam. Despite not supporting in-game streaming to the internet, it beats Origin in all the other categories. It has the largest store and fan base, it uses much less memory when running in the background, and it's the oldest which means it has the most experience. Plus Steam releases lots of updates so there are always new features being released. And that's a winner in our book.

So let us know in the comments, do you agree with our pick? Would you have picked something else? Do you think we left out a worthy competitor? Let us know in the comments. And stay tuned every Tuesday and Thursday for more Tech Wars.

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Free games from EA - Origin on the house deals

By now most of us know what Valve's Steam service is. It's a gaming platform that provides a game store, mods and customization sharing platform, along with a social network complete with screenshot and screen capture sharing. Valve has refused to release actual data, but it is rumored that Valve owns the majority of the gaming market on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux combined. Although small and unheard of, Origin is the largest competitor to Steam. Steam owns the market with an all-in-one package of a social network and game store. Plus they have insane deals going on all the time. They even have their own in-home streaming service (read more here). EA saw this as a major challenge. They needed to get attention back to Origin. But how do you beat insane deals that sometimes can shave 90% of the original price? Give away games for free. Yes, EA is giving games away for free. And it's not sweepstakes or links to piratebay. They are giving away free EA branded games to anyone who wants them. EA announced On The House Deals back in may and has been giving away 1 free game ever since. They only do one title at time. Recently some major ones include Dead Space and Plants vs. Zombies Game of the Year Edition. You have to act fast though, EA says on their website: "...On the House specials can appear and disappear at any time". EA says on the website "... [EA's on the house deals are] a fantastic way to see what Origin is all about." So obviously this is a big promotion to move people away from Steam. In my experience, I just download Origin to claim and download the game, then I add it to steam as a non-Steam game. That way people can see what I'm playing, but I can still take advantage of EA's on the house deals. You can bookmark https://www.origin.com/en-us/store/free-games/on-the-house or just check our Twitter feed (see below) to get updated when a new game comes out.

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Nvidia shield - Overview

Ever wish you could play your graphic-intensive games on the go? Mobile technology is achieving higher clock speeds at a rapid pace, but it is nowhere near as fast as desktop computing hardware. Not to mention that they lack the room to allow for proper cooling. Nvidia has found a potential solution. They created the Nvidia Shield.

For those not familiar with the company, Nvidia is a large graphics card manufacturer that owns about 62% (tekrevue) of the GPU market. Not to mention that Nvidia has created some of the fastest GPUs ever made. So they already have a large base of gamers to test with. They took note of how lots of people use their mobile devices for games (usually not hardcore 3D gaming, but gaming in general). So they created a device that could play top-of-the-line games with bottom-line hardware. The whole system relies on the user owning a computer that has a supported Nvidia GPU (most Nvidia GPUs made in the last two years should be fine). Then using the Shield, they can pick any game from their library. The game will launch on their computer and the computer will stream the screen to the Shield. The Shield will also send back key presses to the computer to interact with the game. Essentially, it's just a fancy way to remote-control your computer playing a video game. The Shield supports sending 60 FPS @ 1080p over either Wi-Fi or Ethernet (Ethernet is faster). Recently Nvidia has announced that it will be supporting streaming over the internet, so you are no longer tethered to your home network. The Nvidia Shield itself runs Android on a 1.9 GHz quad core ARM processor called the Tegra (which is also manufactured by Nvidia). It has 2 GB of RAM and a 1280x720 IPS Retina display. The Retina part of it means that it has more pixels per inch than the human eye can tell apart, so the images look more realistic. It was released at $299 USD but has since dropped down to $199 USD. Overall it seems like a reasonable device, but the price tag of the Shield and a compatible Nvidia GPU is overkill. But if you like to play your games almost every waking moment of your life, it may be worth considering. Recently a lot of competitors have released their own version of Nvidia's streaming service (read my article on the Steam streaming service here).

3 reasons you should get it:
1)You can stream your games to play on the go.
2) You will soon be able to stream your games from anywhere in the world.
3)It runs android, so it can function like a normal Android tablet (without calling or SMS)

3 reasons you should not get it:
1)It carries a heavy price tag
2)It requires a fast computer and internet connection to function properly
3)Most people don't have a use for this. They like their giant screen that they play games on.

So ahead and leave a comment below, what would you use the Nvidia Shield for?

Sources:
http://www.tekrevue.com/nvidia-takes-62-of-discrete-gpu-market-share-in-q2-2013/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Shield

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Valve releases in-home streaming service from beta

For those who have not used Steam before, Steam is a game distribution network created by Valve. It includes a game and DLC store along with a social network and content sharing platform (mods, screenshots and videos). Recently a few weeks ago Valve brought its streaming service out from beta and released it to the public. This seems to be a direct response to the streaming of the Nvidia Shield with select Nvidia graphics cards. In terms of what it can do, it's basically a way to remote control your computer playing a video game. Normal remote control clients like Teamviewer are not built for video games. Most of them do not support full-screen programs like DirectX and OpenGL. And they are not built to transmit the screen images fast enough in order to reduce lag in a game. That's where the Steam streaming service comes in. It allows streaming of almost any video game (even ones not bought on Steam) in 720p or 1080p (select devices) to any client running Steam. Right now you can only stream from Windows computers, but the client can be Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (including SteamBoxes running SteamOS). And the service is optimized to run on slower computers. I performed a test using the following computers:

Host (the computer running the game)

• 2.6 GHz single-core AMD Athlon CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• AMD 7750 GPU
• Windows 7 64-bit

Client (the one playing the game)

• 1.7 GHz dual-core Intel Atom CPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Integrated Intel Media Accelerator GPU
• Windows 8.1 64-bit

Both computers were running nothing but the Steam service. I started with something simple. I fired up Just Cause 2 and began to play on my laptop (the client). Normally I can't run Just Cause 2 on my laptop (the game refuses to run on integrated graphics), but it worked out pretty well. Just running around in an empty desert I had about 29 FPS on a 720p quality stream over my home Wi-Fi network. During a couple of frantic fire-fights, the framerate dropped down to 20 FPS, but then it shot back up to 45 FPS when it downgraded the quality to 480p. The controls remained very responsive, it seemed like they had programmed it so that controls were always a higher priority. I then wanted to test it in a more intensive environment, so I launched Super Hexagon. For those of you who have never played Super Hexagon before, it's a game that requires total concentration. It's a game built on reaction time and how quick you can process information on a screen. While playing, it stayed locked in at 30 FPS at 720p. But there was a slight noticeable lag in the controls. The game moves at such a fast pace, you will notice every millisecond of lag in the controls.

In all, this seems like a very promising feature. While it only works under your own network, Valve may follow in their competitor's footsteps and add streaming over the internet. And in my tests, I pushed two, 6 year old computers to their limits by encoding and decoding 720p video in real time, and I was surprised by the results. For the record, my laptop has never been able to play any game (including Super Hexagon) at above 10 FPS. This service really breathed new life into my laptop. If you want to check it out, head over to steampowered.com to download Steam.

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Rii Wireless Keyboard (re)Unboxing-Now With Video

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Hello blog readers!
Just to let you guys know, I have uploaded a video review of the wireless keyboard. You can watch it below or follow the link to watch it on YouTube. Have Fun!

http://youtu.be/YYS9YkX-H6s
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Spring break madness kickoff

Hello blog readers, spring break had started so I thought I should kick off the week with a video about the raspberry pi. The link to my channel is in the sidebar on the right. And here is the link to the video http://youtu.be/rQxPrlN76Vc. Have Fun!