While the streamlined gameplay and GUI made Mass Effect 2 a huge success, Norman pointed out some major criticisms from members of the official BioWare forums. Threads like “Mass Effect 2 is not an RPG” and “Gears of War with interactive dialogue” were given as examples of disappointed fans complaining about the strong shooting focus of the second game.

Likewise; with the transition from the first title to the second, BioWare is taking these criticisms to heart for the third game, hoping the third installment will offer “richer RPG features” and “more combat options.” Something that we can probably expect to see less, howeever, is the mining minigame, which was described by Norman as the part that “nobody liked.”

[Via: Joystiq]

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Google has released a new application for Android called Google Shopper which lets you compare, read reviews and get more info on items by scanning cover art or barcode of movies, books, music and other objects with your Android phone’s camera. You can also search by using Google’s voice search.

You can now just take out your phone and take a snapshot of the cover or the barcode of the book you saw in the bookstore and see if you can get it cheaper online, or just read others opinions on the book itself. You can also tell the application via voice commands to search for the product and Google Shopper will try to find the correct product and list you prices from various web retailers. Ones that use Google Checkout as a payment method will most likely have emphasis.

The results you get not only show you prices, but also reviews, specifications of the item and other images of the product available at Google Product Search.

While this is not the first application to provide scan-based shopping comparison, it sets itself apart from others by searching amongst various web retailers and not just one site like Amazon’s application for Android does. It is also faster than Amazon’s application, because you do not have to sign in to anything and also do not have to snap an actual picture; you can just hover the camera over the product you want to search for and when Google Shopper finds some info on it, it will automatically open up the results page.

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Crysis Wars had a total of two other free trial weeks since it was launched 7 months ago. The free trial that has started yesterday will continue on until next friday, which is 17th of April. During this time, players will be able to play through all of the maps, use all three mods and all multiplayer features without any restrictions. You can dive into Crysis Wars by signing up and downloading the game from this site.

[Sign up and client download: MyCrysis website]

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One of the letdowns of the product is that you need to have WiFi (wireless network) connection to be able to call local numbers. Voice delivery over EDGE is not permitted (or maybe not possible? I don’t have a clear idea yet.).

Don’t forget that you can call other users over the wireless network for free. The features that were available in the desktop version are also available in the iPhone app too.

So, the other details and user experience for Skype for iPhone application are as follows:

• When you enter your username and password and successfully login they will not be asked again.
• Sound quality: Sound quality is way better than a normal phone if you call another Skype user. However, if you call a local number instead, the sound quality will be the same as of a phone’s.
• You can write and send messages through EDGE but can’t make any calls. That is to say you can login to the system to see and message with people who are online but it gives you a warning message when you want to make a call.
• The application doesn’t work on the background. In order for you to get a Skype call, you need to leave the application on at all times. The screensaver being on doesn’t provide an obstacle; you can still get your calls and messages.

My opinion: Is a must for all iPhone users to have it on their phones.

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1. Scan barcodes, books and cover art and shop smarter with Google Shopper Google has released a new application for Android called Google...

1. Scan barcodes, books and cover art and shop smarter with Google Shopper Google has released a new application for Android called Google...

As a result of this leap taken in the Game Developers Conference taking place in San Francisco, PhysX technology has gained even more strength with two parallel platform game engines it has incorporated.

The first of the engines’ name is BigWorld Technology 2.0. The engine, specifically used for MMOG type games and virtual world applications, will be used with many new games including Stargate Worlds. It is also said that another popular game is in the works by Sierra Online which uses the same engine.

Another engine which is incorporated by PhysX technology is Trinigy Vision Engine 7. Known game developers such as Ubisoft, Firefly, Take 2, Neowiz, Dreamcatcher and Spellbound are known to be using Trinigy.

You can go here for more details.

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I think that most of us gaming aficionados who have played or at least heard of Sony’s mind-blowingly action-packed adrenaline-pumper hardcore action platformer God of War have been waiting for the sequel to the greatest action game of all times, God of War III. And the geeky gamers we are, most of us must have seen the trailer of the upcoming game by now. The good fellows at joystiq.com have brought us some more goodies for us: raw gameplay footage and impressions from the game. In this new clip, Kratos fights off against a horde of enemies by mounting a weakened cyclops and wreaking havoc. The clip also shows us how the new camera system works, and how fluent the action packed scenes look in the game. Read joystiq.com’s post for more info on this particular news.

[Via : joystiq.com]

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1. BioWare sets goals for Mass Effect 3 BioWare’s Christina Norman talked about the radical changes applied to...

1. BioWare sets goals for Mass Effect 3 BioWare’s Christina Norman talked about the radical changes applied to...

• Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.1 GHz)
• Core 2 Duo T8300 (2.4 GHz)
• Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5 GHz)
• Core 2 Duo T9500 (2.6 GHz)
• Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2.8 GHz)

Although Intel will take orders for these models until June 24th, the distribution of both boxed and tray versions of the products will end respectively on October 23th, 2009 and September 24th, 2010.

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AMD/ATI will release the Radeon HD 4890, which has its parallel processing performance and clock speed improved, on April 6th. Right after that nVidia will provide its competitor and rival, the nVidia Geforce GTX 275, precisely to be released three days after Radeon HD 4890. We expect to see these changes in the presentation on April 9th:

• 633 MHz core speed
• 1404 MHz parallel processor speed
• 2328 MHz GDDR3 memory
• 240 parallel shader processors
• 896 MB memory
• 80 texture units

The card is based on G200b GPU core. It is expected substitute the GeForce GTX 260 (revision two) in $230-280 price range.

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It may not be one of the sexier changes Microsoft has made in Windows 7 beta, but the company has changed the way the operating system handles disk defragmentation. Microsoft developers Rajeev Nagar and Matt Garson have written a lengthy post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog explaining how fragmentation occurs, how modern hardware like high capacity hard drives changes things, and how Windows 7 differs from Windows Vista and Windows XP when it comes to defragging your hard drive.

In addition, the defragmentation window now has more detailed information about the running jobs. Windows 7 also has automatically scheduled disk defragmentation jobs, so users do not need to set it up themselves. The ability to defragment multiple hard disk partitions simultaneously is also added to the new system.

Microsoft has not forgotten the solid state disk users (which may not be so many now, but hey, they do think for the future): because there is no need to defragment flash memory, defragmentation on these volumes are turned off by default. Additionally, they state that continued write access to flash disks could actually shorten its life. Interesting huh?

Via: [DownloadSquad]

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