- So I've been using the xbox 360 wireless headset with the PC wireless adapter for teamspeak and ventrilo during World of Warcraft raids. It works ok but sometimes I don't want something on my ear during a long play session. Also, the 360 wireless headset is a bit glitchy sometimes and requires frequent power cycles to clear up static that occurs once in awhile. The nice part about this being just a mic and not a full headset is I still have all the game sounds + voice coming from my pc speakers (adjust your master volume in Wow to balance game sounds against voice. Titan panel is a good mod that lets you get to volume adjustments quickly). This way I have nothing on my ears.
- You can clip this mic to your shirt or do what I do. I just swing it around my neck and let it hang near the top of my chest/near my neck. I use a little tape to tape the mic to it's own cord so the mic end points up toward my mouth when it's hanging.
- It's pretty sensitive and I actually had to turn off my mic gain boost to zero otherwise it would distort.
- Everybody says I sound quite a bit better on vent now with this mic vs what I was using before.
- The cable is really long.
Highly recommended. At $13 it really is amazing and performs great. If you have an environment where you can use your PC speakers this is a great setup.
So this is the first tablet I've owned (I don't even own a netbook). My kids have been begging for one since last Christmas after playing with one their cousin brought over while visiting. I told them I would consider getting one when the iPad 2 came out and besides they had quite a bit of Christmas and birthday money saved up. I figure I would buy one for the family to see how they (ok mostly me) would use it.
On release day I swung by the apple store after work around 5:45 and they had already cut the line off saying they were sold out. It was the same story at best buy. I'm not much of a line waiter so I just ordered one online. Estimated ship date was April 1st. I got it on march 31st around a week earlier than the original estimate. I decided to go with the the black 64gb wifi only model. I already have a virgin mobile mifi so I figure I would use that if I need 3G. Sure, I lose gps but I think I can live with that while saving $130.
- iPad is heavier than expected. If you hold it with one hand pinching one edge your hand will get tired. It works better if you wrap your hand around the back or just use two hands. I'm sure it's pretty light compared to other tablets and the iPad 1 but for a first time tablet user it still feels heavier than it should be. - Coming from the retina display on the iPhone 4 the 1024x768 does feel pretty low res in comparison. This isn't such a big deal for games and movies but it is pretty noticeable while trying to view tiny text without zooming in first. Other than that the IPS screen is still very nice. - I can typically touch type at around 80 wpm without errors. My first mistake was trying to touch type in landscape mode. It's just not realistically possible. The keys are way too cramped and without any feedback it's just not possible to type without looking at the keys. I've now modified the way I type to using 2-3 fingers on each hand for a speedier hunt and peck method. It seems to work pretty well and is much faster than only using your thumbs on an iPhone. Still, I wouldn't want to use the touch keyboard for writing really long articles. Good thing any standard bluetooth keyboard works just fine like the logitech pro media board I have. My original plan was to write this entire review on the iPad. I ended up only writing about half of it using Pages. It wasn't an overly horrible experience but I much rather use a keyboard for typing articles of this length. - The battery life seems very good in the few days I've used it. We aren't just talking surfing or video watching here. Even with heavy gaming the battery holds up incredibly well
- Yeah the iPad has two cameras now but man are they BAD and I mean really bad. The front one for facetime is about what you would expect but the back one takes mostly horrible photos. Almost any interior shot (excluding except maybe a professional lit studio) comes out incredibly noisy. The size of the CCD used must be incredibly small. Talk about cutting corners. I've read that the camera was really more designed for shooting video, and the 720p video it produces isn't half bad. Just don't ever take any still shots of anything you remotely care about. The iPhone 4 back camera is about 1000X times better.
- The apple dock connector is a little harder to plug into. The area around it is rather tapered. I guess that's the price you pay for thin.
- Movies encoded using Handbrake and the iPad preset look fantastic. File size for a typical movie is around 1.2GB.
- The mute/orientation lock switch is a bit interesting. If all of a sudden none of your apps have any sound it's probably because at some point you had the switch set to control mute in your settings. You mute the ipad and then later switched it to orientation lock. Now the ipad is muted even though there is no indication it is actually muted (like when you adjust volume). Just change the setting so the switch goes back to controlling mute to unmute the device and everything should be back to normal. Also, I noticed holding the down volume button accelerates really quickly and will quickly go to 0 volume in like .25 seconds. Not sure if I like that (I guess it's another quick way to "mute") but that's just the way it is.
- Facetime: It works quite well on the iPad. In the settings|facetime you can associate one or more emails which you would use to call the iPad. This is very similar to the mac osx app. If you want to call an iPhone just use the phone #. If you want to call an ipad, ipod touch, or mac you use the email associated with that device. If you have more than one device associated to the same email then all devices ring. Example: I have my iPad and macbook pro on the same facetime email. When I call it from my iPhone both the iPad and the mbp (if I have the facetime app running that is) rings. It all just works how you would expect it. Both cameras on the iPad work just fine for facetime and don't look nearly as bad as when taking still photos. The iPad even rings when the smart cover is closed and the iPad is sleeping. It's suggested though that each non iPhone iOS device has at least one unique email associated with it. Otherwise, I wasn't able to call my mbp from the iPad when they both shared the same email address. By adding another unique email to each iOS device gets around that issue.
Apps
- Here is a small sampling of apps that I found interesting. I'm mostly omitting any apps I've previously mentioned in my iPhone reviews since you can read about them there.
- What's great about app purchases is you can install and reinstall them on as many iOS devices as you want after only buying the app a single time. As long as you use the same apple id/itunes account you should be fine. Granted, only up to 5 pc's can be authorized for content but as far as iOS apps is concerned it's pretty much unlimited. I can buy an app once and run it on my two iphone 4's and my iPad 2.
- The kids love this thing. Besides the games there are some nice children books like Alice and How to train your dragon.
- iSub and Air Video have very nice iPad interfaces. Air Video over local wifi looks fantastic.
- Tried the Daily (first 2 weeks are free). It's pretty much fluff. I will NOT be subscribing.
- I love all the news/social network aggregators that format it into a nice magazine layout like Zite, hitpad, taptu, and flipboard. Zite has to be hands down my favorite though flipboard is nice too. It's pretty amazing how well it can create a customized magazine based on your twitter, google reader, and delicious accounts. On top of that it has thumbs up/down to continue to train it.
- I love reading magazines on this thing. Zinio is pretty good though I wish it had more magazines (and better prices on some of them). I couldn't quite pin down why I hated reading a magazine on a pc but I finally figured it out. It's a combination of the form factor, how you hold it similar to a real magazine, portrait vs landscape, touch interface, and flipping pages instead of just scrolling down with your mouse. It's a combination of all these things that makes magazine reading amazing on the iPad. No more dead tree magazine subscriptions for me. Get it on the iPad or I'm not renewing (I'm looking at you MaximumPC!). What kind of sucks is the nook color has all the magazines I like and at very reasonable prices. The problem is those only work on the actual nook color hardware and not on the iPad nook app. What is up with that?
- For reading novels I still prefer my iPhone (stanza ftw). I usually read right before going to sleep so e-ink is right out. I just find the iPhone much more comfortable to read on especially when lying in bed. I don't mind flipping pages more often. It really doesn't bother me.
- Goodreader does an amazing jobs with PDF's plus dropbox integration.
- I've only briefly messed with Garage Band but it seems pretty darn impressive for $5.
- Pages is a nice word processor. It needs native dropbox support but I guess dropdav works. iworks.com isn't bad though for sharing your documents.
- There are a ton of remote desktop apps. Logmein is still my default for general use but there are some interesting new high performance ones that are actually fast enough for gaming. Everyair seems to show the most potential so far.
- I love games that are universal apps like Rage HD and Infinity Blade. For 3D games it makes perfect since. For the most part it's just rendering out at a higher resolution and moving some controls around. For 2D games I can kind of understand why there are usually 2 separate versions since it usually requires a different set of art assets (where is tiny wings HD!!??!!). It's games like modern combat 2 HD from gameloft that cheese me off. It's like paying extra just for unlocking a higher resolution setting in a PC game. It's just WRONG!
- UPDATE (4/21/2011): Comics - Stanza (my favorite ebook reader) now supports CBR files. It's fast and works pretty well but no double tap to zoom. Comicflow isn't bad but I prefer Bookman. Both are free. I find bookman's thumbnail view, bookshelf, and organization better. The overall UI is just a lot more polished. Comixology engine powers their own Comics app, DC comics, and Marvel. They each have slightly different comics available and marvel requires a separate account from the others but the app works pretty much exactly the same on all 3. It has a neat panel flow mode that works well for the iPhone. I didn't bother trying comic zeal since it was $8.
- Atomix Magazine - $.99 in app purchase per issue. Produced by Area 5 (co-op guys). It has a pretty slick interface and well written content.
Accessories
- Power: My existing cheap eBay USB chargers seem to work fine. Unfortunately, my computer USB ports don't seem to want to properly charge the iPad. I get the dreaded "not charging." This was with the usb ports on the back coming directly off the motherboard. I did some reading and testing and apparently it is getting power but with the screen on there isn't enough juice to actually get a charge going. Instead, you break even holding battery levels at about even. If you put the iPad to sleep it actually does charge albeit more slowly (I did confirm this is the case). Apparently motherboard manufacturers have released drivers to up the power to the USB ports so it charges iPads properly (I have not tested this). I also have this issue with the cheap no name car charger that I use for my iPhone. Mobile usb battery packs like my Just Mobile Gum Pro work fine though.
UPDATE: Asus AI Charger works great even on my gigabyte motherboard. Now it charges the iPad just fine even while in use.
- Camera Connection Kit:
The camera adapter is interesting. I first tried my 64gb USB key drive. It complained about not having enough power. Next, I tried a 2gb sd card which works fine. I had this idea about how maybe you can use sd cards to store additional movies which you can load onto the iPad while in the field without the need of a computer or iTunes. Putting some m4v files converted with handbrake into the root of the sd card didn't work. Next, I tried to fake it by recreating the same directory structure my canon camera uses (DCIM directory) and renamed the extension to mov and added a thm thumbnail file (apparently you don't need to do this step. The key is the DCIM directory). This actually worked letting me import the entire movie file into the photo app. All of this seems rather convoluted and clunky and probably not worth the trouble. The camera adapter is really rather limited. It only works with the camera app and it only let's you import photos or movies into that app. There was no way to get them into the video app. So theoretically you can swap movies from an sd card as long you have some working space but it seems more trouble than it is worth. It's too bad you can't view media directly off the sd card. Also, the photo app doesn't resume video where you left off. I found out the best use of these adapters isn't so much importing photos from your own camera but others. I was recently at the in laws and my wife wanted a copy of all the photos her dad took. Normally this would require powering up a laptop. Now, I just pop in their sd card into the iPad and import the photos she was interested in.
HDMI Adapter
- Works with iPhone 4 and iPad 2. The low level mirroring only works on the iPad though (not the iPhone).
- It doesn't scale the image. So unless the app natively supports 1080p (like the video app and some games) you are going to get some black borders (this includes most games). There are exceptions like Chopper 2. I was able to use my iPhone 4 as the controls, playing it on my iPad 2 which is hooked up to my HDTV using the HDMI adapter. It's all pretty amazing actually.
- Real Racing 2 HD is suppose to get 1080p output support soon too though that patch hasn't hit yet. For now, mirroring works ok. Update (4/21/2011): The update is out now that supports 1080p output. I'm going to have to try this soon.
Protecting your iPad 2 (making it slightly more child resistant)
- I decided to go without a case this time to keep the iPad as light and thin as possible. Instead I went with a screen protector ($30), carbon fiber back ($20), smart cover ($40 <- obscene apple tax), and a sleeve ($12) for travel. That's over $100 spent on just protecting the iPad! My kids are actually very good with electronics. They were taught to "respect the electronics" before they could walk! But a little protection sure can't hurt when your kids are handling a $700 "toy."
- Smart Cover: For the most part I really like the smart cover. The auto aligning magnets really work well. As a stand it's ok. There is only one angle in landscape, you really can't prop it up in portrait, and the keyboard stand mode flops around a bit too much to use on your lap. The magnetic on/off switch is nice though blackberry has had this for ages. Now, if only apple would add a dedicated indicator led. The switch kind of reminds me of a refrigerator door light.
- $30 and you only get 1. I decided to go with the anti-glare this time instead of the crystal since the iPad lower resolution screen is minimally impacted by the slight loss in clarity with an anti-glare film (Don't get me wrong. You can barely tell it's there. It's still very clear just not as completely transparent as the crystal). Also, I just love the feel of the anti-glare and it does an amazing job of hiding finger prints. - $30 for 1 shot is pretty darn pricey. You want to make sure you do a good job installing it. Here is how I got a pretty much perfect install.
1) Start by trying to create your own "clean room." I used the master bathroom and closed all the doors. Run the shower on hot and steam up the room. As the steam cools it pulls all the dust out of the air. Make sure you turn off any central AC/Heating too. Clean the surface you are going to work on and wash your hands.
2) I cleaned the iPad surface with a slightly damp paper towel using highly diluted vinegar and water solution. This helps make sure you remove all finger prints and oils. I next went over it with just a very slightly damp paper towel using only water this time. Wipe it dry with a fresh paper towel. Then, wipe it down with a lint free cloth. You might also want to clean the outside of the film a bit after taking it out of the packaging since the outside of the film might have lint/dust that could drop on top of the ipad during installation.
3) This step is key. Take long strips of scotch tape and stick it over the surface of the iPad and peel it off. Repeat this until you've covered the entire surface of the iPad. This acts like a lint remover and does an excellent job of removing every last spec of dust or lint. Tape is cheap. Your screen protector isn't. Use several strips of tape and be thorough!
4) Now you've got a completely clean iPad in your "clean room." Just follow the instructions from the site on how to apply it (go watch their video). It took me about 3 tries to get the alignment just right. Then it was just a matter of working out the air bubbles. Since none of the air bubbles were the dust/lint kind they were pretty easy to work out. If you did get a piece of dust or lint stuck underneath the screen protector, just use a piece of scotch tape to lift it off either from the iPad or from the film depending on where the dust is stuck.
- $20 for back only. I wanted to keep the size and weight of the iPad 2 but also wanted to protect the back from scratches. Carbon Fiber seemed like the way to go. It's thin and light and gives it a nice texture too. I also like the look.
- The instruction video is excellent. I pretty much nailed the alignment but the corners are a bit tricky. You only need about 2 seconds of low heat from a hair dryer to soften up the film (DO NOT overheat!). I suggest you use your entire palm to press down on the corner and then smooth it out with your finger. If you use only your finger it's harder to get a nice smooth looking corner.
- The adhesive seems very strong. I'm not too worried about it peeling. You can also remove it without leaving a residue. Once removed though it cannot be reapplied.
- It works great with the smart cover. The magnets feel just as strong as it did without the iCarbons.
- Finally, I wanted a sleeve to use when I travel with the iPad. I love the case logic sleeves that I use with the 13" MBP so I figure I'd just go with a similar one. It's not specifically designed for iPad but it fits pretty well if a tad on the roomy side.
- I like the small zipper pouch which is perfect for holding the hdmi, camera adapters, and the charger.
Just three years ago I was pretty much anti-apple with zero apple products. I was a die hard pc user. Now I have two iPhone 4's, two mac book pro's, and now an iPad 2. There are still a ton of things about Apple that I hate like: app approval process, walled garden - can't side load apps without jail breaking, no storage expansion, apple tax (though a tad less so with the iPad), battery replacement (btw it's $100 for the iPad), stupid flat out greedy subscription policy, etc. But man do they make some nice hardware. The apps are second to none not just in quantity but in quality. I think you would be hard pressed to find as many polished and just plain useful apps on any other platform. Add to that the incredible performance iPad 2 has even compared to the mighty Tegra 2. iOS is going to lead in gaming for the foreseeable future IMO.
I came into this not sure exactly how much use I would find in a tablet. In the end I've been pleasantly surprised. Most of the family is using it quite a bit on a daily basis (the wife still doesn't get it. I'm working on it....). I love using it for web browsing, catching up on news, reading a magazine, or maybe even a comic book (though I really don't read comics but it sure is nice on the iPad). For consuming content it's great and this new form factor really does change things up. Have I drank too much of the kool aid? Am I caught in a reality distortion field? Maybe just a tad. I like to think I still look at tech objectively with an open mind and give credit where credit is due without preconceived biases or prejudice. I think it comes down to do the merits of the products outweigh all the evil (and lets face it all big corporations are evil! :P). The iPad is just one really impressive experience. It's the total package. I haven't been this excited about a new toy in a LONG time (stares over at the Nintendo 3DS which I haven't touched much since the the first night I had it with two new unopened games).
- Everyair is another remote desktop solution similar to microsoft remote desktop, logmein, vnc, etc. except the focus here is on quick framerates and gaming rather than general desktop use. Think of it as running your own personal OnLive service.
- The iOS client is a universal app and is $5.
- There is a server install for windows or osx. I say install loosely since all you have to do is unzip it and run the exe. I've only tried this with windows so far.
- There is one huge drawback currently. There's no sound. The developer has promised sound in the next major release which will be 1.2.
- Framerates are great over wifi and the controls are pretty responsive with little lag. Video quality isn't half bad. All the usual gestures are there to scale, pinch to zoom, and scroll around. There is a handy button on the top right that automatically scales to full screen for the current foreground application.
- The virtual gamepad isn't too bad and is mapped to the arrow keys for the left stick and by default the mouse to the right stick. You can even toggle right click on which is handy in World of Warcraft so it acts like mouse look.
- I wish I could move the virtual keyboard to the top so I could see my chat window at the same time.
- I tried to use a bluetooth keyboard but that didn't work.
- It only officially supports wifi but it does indeed work over the internet and even 3G. All you have to do is forward ports: 9793-9893 and know you external WAN IP address (domain names do not work). You can require a password but I'm not so sure how secure this thing is. Official internet support is coming in a future build. For now I'm not going to leave the server running or the ports forwarded. If I need to fire it up remotely I can always use logmein and setup everything to get it going and then switch to everyAir. 3G works surprisingly well. The video above is on lowest quality but I also tried on medium and it also worked fine. Controls lag a bit probably due to 3G latency but other than that it really does work.
- The framerates are great so you can even use it to watch flashvideo or surf flash sites on your desktop browser. It's not that great for general desktop application use since it doesn't even emulate a scroll wheel like logmein does.
- Obviously this works with any games you might have, some types of games better than others.
- The server program is still a bit buggy. I wasn't able to connect both my iPad 2 and iPhone at the same time (or maybe that's just not supported). Then, when I went to shut down the program it would crash.
- Maybe with a custom wow UI with large buttons you might be able to do some quests but I don't think I would try a 5 man with this thing quite yet.
- Fullscreen didn't work so well for me. It caused some flickering. Instead, I just ran wow in a windowed mode which worked fine.
I'm pretty floored that this thing actually works. It's some really impressive tech. I'm not entirely sure how practical this is but it sure is neat to mess with. EveryAir has huge potential.
Highly Recommended!
UPDATE: Looks like they got bought out and stopped development. Booo. But they do plan to open source the client and server.
- I tried it briefly. The good: It has sound!, performance is pretty good especially for flash video, it supports bluetooth keyboards, It's more polished overall especially the server software.
- The bad: It performs best when you let it change your desktop resolution to match the native ipad resolution (1024X768). Performance suffers quite a bit if you leave it at your desktop resolution (mine is at 1920X1080). Having your resolution change and then firing up wow will mangle your carefully crafted custom UI that was designed for 1920X1080 so that right there makes this a poor choice for gaming.
- The keyboard support is kind of odd (you must pop up the mini virtual keyboard to put it in keyboard mode). On a bluetooth keyboard there is a pause before the repeat kicks in while holding down a key. So if you hit "w" to move forward there is a pause before your toon continues to move forward. You can't chord keys (like alt+1) without hitting the virtual alt key in the app and then you can hit 1 on your physical keyboard. It's really awkward.
- On the virtual keyboard it's even worse. It doesn't repeat at all. You have to rapidly tap "w" to keep moving forward. It's basically completely unusable for gaming.
- It only has two quality settings: Smooth and sharp. Smooth is good for gaming/video, sharp is good for text. There is no in between slider like everyAir.
- It's not a universal app. They want $5 for the iPad version and $2 for the iPhone version.
- Scroll wheel is implemented (two finger scrolling) but it's slow....a lot slower than logmein.
- There is no handy scale to full screen for current active window.
- It doesn't support fullscreen games at all where everyAir kind of tries to.
- It strictly forces aspect ratio (this can be good or bad) when scaling.
- There are no virtual game pad controls. This is a huge deal for gaming and really makes this worthless for anything more complicated than simple mouse driven games.
- Overall, splashtop is definitely designed for more general purpose use and less for gaming. I can see it being useful for viewing flash based sites (I watched some hulu and it looked very good). But for gaming I think everyAir has a lot more potential (especially once they get sound working).
- The lite version is free and lets you try out their gaming/performance mode for a few days. The universal paid version is $20!!!!
- Performance isn't too bad. It feels similar to splashtop.
- It has sound.
- Resolution is changed.
- Only works in windowed mode.
- It's keyboard implementation is much better. You can also have a series of well laid out sets of keys used commonly in games (like arrow keys or wsad). These work quite well. The big thing it's sill missing though are the virtual control pads like everyAir has. Without a way to map the mouse to a thumb pad it makes certain games like MMO's very hard to play. Developers need to understand that controls are everything when it comes to making a pc game playable on an iPad.
- I like it over all but not $20 like! The price is way too high IMO.
- So my old falcon based XBOX 360 Arcade finally died with an E74 error (usually means gpu or ana/hana hardware scaler chip problem). This is the third xbox to die on me but the first one out of warranty so I was thinking maybe I can try fixing it myself. If your 360 is still in warranty then I would highly recommend you just warranty repair your 360. This fix should work for RROD too.
- I already had some Arctic Silver 5 which if you build pc's you should already have. The repair kit comes with thermal paste but I prefer as5.
- Isopropyl alcohol. Again, the kit comes with cleaning solution which I did use but I like to finish off with a good wipe of Isopropyl alcohol.
- Heat gun for about $32 from amazon. They go as cheap as $10 when on sale though. Just make sure it has 2 temperature settings.
- A nice Torx driver bit set. I bought this one from radio shack for $16 a while back (needed it for other projects.) Specifically, you need a T8 and T10 which this set has. The repair kit comes with some but I hear those are cheaply made and you do NOT want to risk stripping the screws on your 360 or you will have a very hard time taking it apart.
- A good jewelry/precision screwdriver set.
- adjustable wrench for removing the existing screws attached to the heatsinks.
- The repair kit comes with a sheet of paper with a URL that directs to 2 pdf's: one for disassembly and one for repair. Go ahead and look over those. But the most helpful things are this series of youtube videos. The disassembly video was spot on. I used my jewelry screwdriver for most of it. I used the tool from the repair kit for taking off the back panel which made popping in all the tabs really easy.
- So after taking apart the 360, removing both heatsinks, and cleaning everything really well (I used both solutions from the kit and then finally some Isopropyl alcohol) it was time for the heat gun (you do this in place of the baking process from the pdf).
- I more or less followed the heat gun video. To create my heat barrier I just cut up a cardboard box into strips, taped it around the chips I wanted to heat like show in the video, and then covered with aluminum foil. I then took a baking sheet covered in more foil and stuck the motherboard on that. I then put the baking sheet on top of some pot heat pads. I suggest you do this outside since it's probably not a good idea to breath in a lot of vaporized solder or whatever smell this process creates.
- Make sure you keep moving the heat gun in circles. Never hold it in place for even a second.
- Let it all cool off for 45min before putting the heat sinks back on and follow the pdf instructions to make sure you get the order of the washers correct.
- Reassembly goes a lot faster. Note: You don't need the black 8 X T8 torx screws anymore. This is also covered in the pdf.
I've played several hours now without any issues. It's as good as new. In fact with the xclamp fix I'm guessing it is better than new. Now that I've done it I'm sure I could do it a lot faster. The entire process took about 3 hrs. I still have an original xenon XBOX 360 (no hdmi) that I'm just waiting for it to die. If it does it's good to know I can fix it for $10 and a couple hours of work. It was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. If you've built pc's before then this repair should be pretty easy. Besides, it was kind of a fun project to do, and you learn all about your xbox 360 inside and out.
UPDATE: 3/30/2011
- I've put in probably over 25 hrs of play on this repaired xbox over the past 2 months, and it is still working great!
NOTE: This is an old post I wrote about a year ago that I never got around finishing up and posting. But I figure I would just go ahead and post it as is.
- Cheap bastards continue the tradition of not including any usb cables for charging.
- Setup was easy enough. I positioned the camera right below my HDTV.
- The controls feel good in the hands but the big glowing ball in different colors makes you look rather comical.
Sports Champions
- The pointer tracked very smoothly and precisely on the screen. It has a nice calibration screen before each sport that shows you where to stand and has you move the wand to shoulder height, down at your side, and belt height.
- Archery is pretty fun and works pretty well. I finished the bronze level and my arms were pretty tired by now. Fun, but didn't seem that much different than wii sports resort with motion plus at least from a performance perspective.
- Next up was Gladiator. Now THIS was fun. Playing solo with two move controllers is rather awesome. One controls the shield and the other the weapon. The buttons let you dodge, jump back, shield bash, or activate a super attack once you charge up the meter from successfully blocking attacks. Location of your attacks and blocks is pretty key. There's actually a bit of depth. Dodging too much makes you stumble and leaves you open. The only way to avoid a shield bash is a dodge. A missed shield bash opens you up for attack. You can thrust and the speed and strength of the swing seems at least partially taken into account. It's not perfect but it's a marked improvement over what I've seen on Wii. Next, I let my kids at it. In single move controller mode you have to use the trigger to toggle between weapon/shield controls. Other than that it still works pretty well. They had a blast flailing around.
- Table tennis felt off to me. I've played quite a bit in real life and this still doesn't feel right. Placement of the ball is difficult. You can't slice. Spinning is hit and miss. It was pretty disappointing overall.
- Kids played some beach volleyball which had a nice co-op option. It seemed fun but I didn't get a chance to try it.
Time Crisis: Razing Storm
- The calibration is more accurate than the demo. Tracking and aiming is pretty smooth.
- After some time the tracking tends to drift. If you aim too far out of the screen then the crosshair no longer lines up with where you are point and is off center. You can try nudging it back by aiming way off screen in the other direction or you can recalibrate but this is really annoying and needs to be fixed.
- Having to press the move button on TOP of the controller to control going behind shield cover/reload is retarded feeling. At least support using a separate ps3 controller or the navigation controller. Come on Namco!
- Graphics are pretty good and it's nice having 2 players share the same screen vs the horrible tiny 2 screens in time crisis 4 during co-op.
- The game is really short but as a bonus you get some sort of pirate game and a complete copy of Time Crisis 4 on the same disc. As far as I can tell there have been no updates to this version of time crisis 4 except adding move support.
- Guncon 3 is also supported.
- Let me rant a bit about light gun games in general. I love this genre ever since Virtua Cop (which is still one of my all time favorites). For those of you who have played paintball, air soft, gone to a firing range you know what it feels like to fire a gun, how to at least line up your sights and aim properly. If you have an accurate light gun that mimics a semi automatic pistol that requires reloading, with actual sights on the plastic gun that work and NO crosshair on screen you actually have a semi realistic simulation that requires actual aiming and some skill to play. What the current genre of light gun games have become are fully automatic guns with a crosshair on screen where you just wave your controller around and literally hose down everything that moves. Just sit back and enjoy the chaotic display of graphical effects with almost no gameplay involved. Younger kids might enjoy this but I find this experience extremely shallow. I really do miss Virtua Cop on Sega Saturn and Virtua Cop 2 on dreamcast. Those were nearly arcade perfect ports with a great gun peripheral. I think I still have all that stuff but they don't work with LCD TV's.
The Shoot
- Now this is a nice contrast compared to where the Time Crisis series is heading. This game actually rewards accuracy with a multiplier and earning power ups. It's all about making accurate single shots. I still don't have real iron sights on my plastic gun, and there is still a crosshair painted on the screen, but it's a step in the right direction.
- So the premise is a movie shoot and you are shooting these popup fake wooden bad guys (think Hogan's Alley). I actually like this change of pace in presentation. You want to make accurate consecutive shots without missing to increase your multiplier and earn you special moves. To pull off these moves you have to either shoot at the ground, sky, or spin around (this last one does slow motion bullet time). Here's the problem. It has the EXACT same issue as time crisis. If you spin around it completely throws the calibration off and the crosshair is no longer centered where the gun is pointing. This issue needs to be fixed or move is essentially dead for light gun games. I can't tell you how annoying this is.
- You actually have to move your body left/right to dodge some attacks or duck to avoid others.
- Occasionally you have some scripted moments where you have a quick draw showdown with a boss or something.
- Out of the two light gun games I would probably go with The Shoot. It uses more features of move and actually requires a bit more interaction than your typical light gun game.
PlayStation Move Shooting Attachment
- It's $20 from amazon.
- It feels pretty good in your hands.
- The move controller is easy to get in and out without having to remove the wrist strap.
- The trigger action feels pretty good.
- There are no sights.
- Looks like stubby gun with a big glowing ball on the end.
PS3 Move Quad Charger
- So this old Nyko ps3 controller charger that works great for my dual shock 3 doesn't seem to work with playstation move.
- So I picked up this PS3 Move charger for $20. It will charge up to two 2 controllers, 2 navigation controllers, and has 2 additional usb ports to charge whatever you want (dual shock 3, more move controllers, etc).
- It has clear LED lights to indicate if it is charging or if charging has completed and an on/off switch on the back. I kind of like to leave the controllers in the charger with it off and use it like a stand.
- Highly Recommended. It's only $20 from amazon with free shipping. It works very well and charges all my ps3 accessories.
Recommended but you might want to wait. You'll definitely want at least 2 of the move controllers but consider getting 4. I don't have any games that use the navigation controller but you apparently can use a regular ps3 controller instead if you want. Remember, the navigation controller is basically just a dual shock 3 chopped in half and made to fit in one hand. It has no motion/move technology in it. It's a lot of money to spend for very little content right now. But if you've got the money to blow it was better than expected (for non light gun games). As soon as my arm heals I'll be playing more of that gladiator game. Also, don't let sony fool you into thinking this is cheaper than Kinect. The bundle is $100, move is $50 each, and navigation is $30. So for just two players you will spend at least $150. For my setup with 4 move controllers and a navigation controller that is already over $250 even with discounts. Add the charger and shooting attachements (I picked up 2) and I'm now looking at $315 and this is before buying games.
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