Review: Sony PS3

Overview

The Sony PS3 Slim is the latest incarnation of Sony's opinion-dividing PlayStation 3 games console.

It's essentially the same console as before, but with slimmed down components and a new, smaller chassis. The key improvements in the new PS3 are the 120GB hard drive, up from 40GB and 60GB in previous UK versions, and it's also 36 per cent lighter, 33 per cent smaller and it consumes at least 34 per cent less power (it's probably even more efficient than that).

So why is this such a big deal for Sony?

The answer is that the PS3 Slim represents a new age for Sony's gaming arm – one that could well herald the start of a new profit-making era.

The vast majority of PS3 consoles sold to date (Sony has shipped over 24 million of them so far) have been sold at a loss - even the original 60GB version which retailed at £425 made a thumping loss per unit.

However, new manufacturing procedures have changed this recently, and a redesigned 45nm Cell processor along with other similarly small and power efficient components have reduced Sony's manufacturing costs significantly.

IN THE BOX: You get the console, a DualShock 3 controller, power cable, AV cable and USB cable - but no HDMI cable

So coupled with the fact that the PS3 Slim is selling for £250 in the UK – only marginally cheaper than the bigger, fatter PS3 original – you can see that Sony can finally expect to start making a return on its investment. And it's about time.

But really, the questions are: should you care about that? And should you buy the new PS3 Slim?

Continue reading our PS3 Slim review to find out.

Design

The first thing to note about the PS3 Slim is undoubtedly the design. It's split opinions in the office so far, and although this reviewer thinks the design is an abomination, others think it's actually nicer than the original.

The differences are: the design is very similar, but one third smaller. So it actually looks like something of a smaller brother to the original PS3.

Instead of a nice glossy finish, what we have here is a dull matte, flimsy plastic casing that neither feels classy nor sturdy.

Gone, too, is the sexy chrome trimming, with the silver 'PlayStation 3' writing being replaced by a lacklustre 'PS3' logo embossed on the top of the case.

The on/off and disc-eject touch-sensitive buttons are also conspicuous by their absence, and they've been replaced by real buttons that give way when you push them. How boring is that?

You've still got two USB ports round the front, and round the pack there's the usual HDMI, AV multi-out, optical-out and ethernet ports. The kettle power cable has been replaced by a slimmer two-pin cable.

The problem with the PS3 Slim is that it looks so cheap. Sony has taken the opportunity to strip out all of the cool, aesthetic design features from the original, in what can only be a cost-cutting measure.

We're not totally against this, although we'd have liked some more of these savings to be passed on to us - the PS3 Slim is still £50 more expensive than the newly-priced £199 Xbox 360 Elite.

Consider also that the PlayStation 2 spent the vast majority of its life selling for $199 in the US and £199 in the UK. Nearly three years into its life, the PS3 still costs £250 – that's a lot of money in the scheme of things.

Performance

Once you get over the new-look design, and despite the slimmer, more power-efficient innards, the PS3 is still essentially the same beast.

Once you've turned it on, the differences end. The interface is the same. The controller is the same – although you do get a DualShock 3 controller instead of standard SIXAXIS – and the user experience is the same.

We did some very basic real-world benching and found that the PS3 Slim does actually boot a couple of seconds slower than our original 60GB PS3, although in practise that makes zero difference. The time it takes to load games and play DVDs are exactly the same.

Fan

One of the main gains you'd expect from a more power efficient PS3 would be that it would operate a lot more quietly. After all, with less energy being wasted as heat, the fan doesn't need to work so hard and thus pumps out less irritating white noise.

While we didn't measure the exact volume of the PS3 Slim's 17-blade fan, 95mm fan, it did seem to our trained ears to be slightly quieter when playing games. However – the PS3 has always been pretty quiet. Compared to the Xbox 360, the PS3 can be considered an extremely stealthy console.

The main noise actually comes from the disc drive. When you're watching a DVD, the spinning disc makes a lot more noise than the cooling fan. And this hasn't changed much – if at all. It's still loud enough to be annoying during those quieter scenes.

Home cinema

Of course, as before, the PS3's major trump card is its built-in Blu-ray drive which gives you the power to play back Blu-ray movies in glorious full HD 1080p.

The major new home cinema feature inside the PS3 Slim's new components, though, is its ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver over HDMI. This will seriously please the audiophiles, but for the rest of us it'll make almost no difference at all.

One slight disappointment with the PS3 Slim is its performance as a CD player. The original was a pretty decent CD and DVD spinner – but the Slim's thinner Blu-ray drive has proven to be a bit of a let-down.

Our colleagues at Home Cinema Choice actually measured the audio jitter of the slim – which returned a figure of over 460ps – a world apart from the original PS3's 138ps.

The audio in DVD playback was also disappointing from a perfectionist's point of view – with a measured high frequency response of -6.14dB. Will you notice this if you haven't got a top of the range hi-fi set up and a perfect set of ears? Probably not.

Still, though, the PS3's ability to upscale DVDs remains. The console uses its Cell processor to upscale DVDs to 1080p high definition, so even your DVD movies will look fantastic on an HD display. The Cell's enormous processing power can also be used to clean up fuzzy, blocky or grainy parts in DVDs or downloaded movie files.

Media and gaming

The PS3 is also compatible with a wide array of file formats which means you can play almost any media file – picture, video or music – without a problem. Popular DivX and Xvid video formats are supported out of the box so playing your digital movie collection is pretty straight forward.

And you can do that in two ways - you can copy them to a USB storage device and plug it in, or you can stream them from your PC over your home network either wirelessly or via Ethernet.

All media can be accessed in this way, which means if you've got a lot of photos, music and videos on your computer, you can view them on your PS3 as though they were stored locally.

Gaming

As a gaming device, the PS3 is arguably slightly more powerful than the Xbox 360. So technically, in terms of graphical fidelity, the PS3 is as good as they come.

However, three year's into its life cycle, the PS3 still lags far behind the Xbox 360 as a gaming device, and that's because of the games available.

The Xbox 360 launched over a year before the PS3, and so was able to build up a large catalogue of games before the PS3 even made it into one living room. And even since then, the Xbox 360 platform has seen more games launched.

And that's before we even mention the differences between Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network (PSN). Comparing the two services is like comparing a fine wine to a bottle of Lambrini. For multiplayer gaming then, the 360 has it.

But the PSN on the PS3 is catching up, with big updates expected very soon.

The PlayStation 3 does, of course, have plenty of gaming exclusives of its own. Series' such as Metal Gear Solid will only ever be available on PlayStation consoles, and then the much-mooted Gran Turismo 5 will be launched on PS3 this Christmas.

Back compatibility

You also need to remember that other than the original 60GB model, no PS3 is compatible with PS2 games. So beware if you're thinking of ditching your PS2 and upgrading - you'll need to hang on to your old console if you still want to play all your existing games.

So if gaming is your main consideration when buying a console – and it seems likely that it is – your best bet is just to look at the games available for each platform and make a decision from there. Who knows, maybe you'll realise that what you've wanted all along is actually a Nintendo Wii?

Verdict

The jury is out on whether you should buy the new PS3 Slim. If you've already got a PS3 in either its 40GB, 60GB or 80GB flavours, it's almost definitely not worth upgrading to this slimmer 120GB version.

Unless you're desperate for more storage, there's not much here to justify spending another £250 on the newer model.

However, as a games console and media device, the PS3 is an unbelievably powerful contraption. It's an unrivalled living room media machine, and a powerful games console.

We do have serious concerns about the price, though - £250 is a lot to spend these days, especially when you can get the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for less than £200.

We liked

Even though we don't like the aesthetics of the design, the smaller size is great – at last, here's a PS3 console that isn't so big that it dominates any room you put it in.

Other than that, it's business as usual. We loved the PS3 before the PS3 Slim came out, and we still love it. The Blu-ray drive is great as ever, but what we really love is the ability to stream almost any media file format from your PC or memory stick.

We also like the fact that you can use almost any Bluetooth device with the PS3. You can use any Bluetooth headset to chat with your friends. And you can use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to navigate the built-in web browser.

We disliked

Yeah, we think the design is ugly. But hey, you might like it – some do, some don't. But even if you do like the look of it, it's impossible to appreciate the general cheapness of its build. The original PS3 felt bullet proof. The new one feels like it might break if a moth landed on it.

Considering the reduced manufacturing costs associated with the PS3 Slim, and the horrible, cheap plastic it's encased in, we'd have expected a price closer to £200 – so cost is another big drawback.

Conclusion

Over all, the PS3 Slim is a phenomenal piece of kit. It's amazing that something so small can do so much. And so if you've just bought a new telly, that extra £50 you'd have to spend over the cost of an Xbox 360 Elite will be worth it just for the Blu-ray player.

Game Review: Jurassic Park: The Game

Movie tie-ins are nothing new to gaming. They crop up repeatedly throughout the industry’s history, as both successes and failures. For every good Star Wars-licensed game, there’s a bad one. For every copy of E.T. for the Atari buried in a landfill, there’s a copy of GoldenEye still being used by nostalgic Nintendo 64 fans. So it was with a potent mixture of excitement and trepidation that I approached the newest high-profile movie tie-in: Jurassic Park: The Game. What I found was something more movie than game, which falls short of truly being either.

Jurassic Park is a bit of an outlier as tie-ins go. The source material, Steven Spielberg’s film of the same name (not Michael Crichton’s twenty-one-year-old book, mind you), is sixteen years old, and Jurassic Park 4 has been "in development" since 2002. So instead of retelling of a story we already know, Telltale Games wrote their own parallel story, giving them license to nod and wink at the film without being utterly beholden to it.

As a canonical companion to the original film, Jurassic Park largely succeeds. You’ll see a few familiar locations, hear a few memorable quotes, and spend plenty of time with old friends like the velociraptor. You won’t, however, encounter any characters from the films (except some dinosaurs and the corpse of a greedy, near-sighted computer programmer).

Jurassic Park’s cast is a motley crew of park employees, mercenaries, and a teenager with a penchant for petty theft. Alliances shift constantly as everyone (save the innocent father/daughter pair) fights for possession of a notorious can of shaving cream. Their story – divided into four episodes – isn’t amazing, but it moves swiftly and nimbly. You also view it from a variety of angles, taking turns controlling each character. Shifting perspectives so often kept me guessing as to some of the character’s true motives, as well as which members of my party might not make it off the island.

Now when I say “control” each character, I’m using a rather loose definition. For a product titled Jurassic Park: The Game, gameplay occupies an oddly low position on the design totem pole. Your limited interactions with the game consist of selecting perfunctory dialogue options, clicking around icon-littered environments until you touch upon the one required to advance, and going toe-to-toe with increasingly fiendish quick-time events. Most of the time, Jurassic Park is more concerned with the delivery of its plot, and if you happen to break its flow by missing a button prompt, you’ve failed.

Failure in Jurassic Park (often accompanied by a swift, grisly death at the hands of ravenous dinos) plays a significant – and frustrating – role. I found it nigh impossible not to die at least a few times in each episode, mostly because I am not psychic. During action sequences, button prompts often appear with only a vague relation to the action taking place on screen. And if you’re caught up watching the cinematic action sequence, you’ll likely miss a few prompts.

The intention seems to be to create tension: “Where will the next prompt come from?” “Will the next one you miss be one that kills you?” This tension sucked me in during an excellent rollercoaster sequence in Episode Two but wore out its welcome in the latter half of the game.

Technically, Jurassic Park is a bit scattershot. Some of the dinosaurs, particularly the T-Rex (seen above), look wonderful. Others, like the mysterious troodon, feel out of place, too cartoony. All of the infamous dinosaur sounds are there, of course, and they’re still as unnerving as ever. The humans don’t fare as well. You’ll spend a lot of time in conversations, which you’d think would be a good thing because the voice work’s actually rather good. But the lip-synching seems to just fall apart on occasion, and bizarre sound hiccups (e.g. characters’ voices echoing in the middle of a jungle) call way too much attention to themselves.

Jurassic Park is an ambitious amalgam of adventure game mechanics and cinematic aspirations, but it never quite excels in either respect. The bulk of Jurassic Park’s code is that of a blockbuster movie – action sequences, dialogue justifying the action sequences, more action sequences – but it ultimately feels incomplete and small given the setting and material it’s working with. The shallow gameplay plugs the holes but, just like frog DNA rounding out the genetic code of a dinosaur, also creates unfortunate consequences that cause the whole operation to go awry.

Franchise diehards will likely enjoy Jurassic Park: The Game (sometimes it’s enough just to hear that soaring John Williams score), but they should know they’re getting a frog in dinosaur’s clothing.

This review is based on PC retail code. Jurassic Park: The Game is available for $29.99 on PC, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3 and iPad 2. You can find the modest hardware requirements below:

 PCMacOSWindows XP/Vista/7Mac OS X 10.6Processor1.8 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent2.0 GHz Pentium or equivalentMemory2 GB2 GBVideo CardATI/NVidia card w/ 256 MB RAMATI/NVidia w/ 256 MB RAMDirectX®:DirectX 9.0c -

 

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The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested

AMD has been trailing Intel in the x86 performance space for years now. Ever since the introduction of the first Core 2 processors in 2006, AMD hasn't been able to recover and return to the heyday of the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. Instead the company has remained relevant by driving costs down and competing largely in the sub-$200 microprocessor space. AMD's ability to hold on was largely due to its more-cores-for-less strategy. Thanks to aggressive pricing on its triple and hexa-core parts, for users who needed tons of cores, AMD has been delivering a lot of value over the past couple of years.

Recently however Intel has been able to drive its per-core performance up with Sandy Bridge, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to recommend AMD alternatives with higher core counts. The heavily threaded desktop niche is tough to sell to, particularly when you force users to take a significant hit on single threaded performance in order to achieve value there. For a while now AMD has needed a brand new architecture, something that could lead to dominance in heavily threaded workloads while addressing its deficiencies in lightly threaded consumer workloads. After much waiting, we get that new architecture today. Bulldozer is here.

Read on for our full review!

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Review: OnLive

Just what is OnLive?

After over a year of forcing North Americans to do the guinea pig work for us, OnLive has finally granted Great Britain access to its ambitious cloud gaming service. The platform could, in theory at least, pave the way for how we consume and play videogames in the future.

The firm says its on-demand service is now more robust thanks to the work of the good old US of A, but can it really compete with the likes of PS3 and Xbox 360? More importantly, can the UK's broadband architecture cope with OnLive's lofty demands?

OnLive works rather differently to a traditional games console stuffed full of various high-end components and screeching heat fans, streaming all of the actual computing involved in your game of, say, Splinter Cell to one of the company's faraway servers, which it says it upgrades every month with the latest graphics cards and RAM sticks.

Basically, you're playing a game remotely via the internet. When you aim your silenced pistol at a nasty henchman's bonce and pull the trigger, the command is sent over to OnLive's server den, which does all the computer work and then sends back the result of your gunshot via images down your broadband pipe.

The advantage of farming out the hardware bit is that you can run OnLive's library of titles on a number of different devices that would normally never be able to the cope with that calibre of game without 300 quid's worth of heatsink strapped to their sides.

PCs, Android tablets and iPads all support the OnLive platform, with the latter even supporting custom touch interfaces for some games, such as Ubisoft's excellent god sim From Dust. There's also a dedicated Games System, which you can buy to play the service on your TV.

Check out our Hands on: OnLive video to see what we think about the service:

brightcove : 1175303689001

The Games System hardware

Inside the shoebox-sized starter pack, which costs around £69, is a tiny Game System, Xbox 360-style Wireless Controller, all the power adaptors you need to get it going, plus USB, Ethernet and HDMI leads.

Setup is straightforward and guided by a minimalist, Apple-style leaflet inside the box. Plug the box into your television via HDMI, connect it to the power mains, attach an Ethernet cable from your router – unfortunately there's no Wi-FI, but you can set up a bridge – and OnLive will be ready to put pretty pictures on your TV screen.

It only takes about five minutes to set up your free account and get started, and then you're left to navigate the platform's main Dashboard to purchase games, spectate other players' activities or watch Brag Clips (more on those later).

The Wireless Controller feels sturdy and includes every button and trigger you could possibly need for today's top games, although it's perhaps not quite as comfortable as the similar Xbox 360 joypad.

Face buttons carry the same naming convention as Microsoft's controller (A, B, X and Y), and the pad also boasts a pair of triggers, left and right bumpers and a D-pad on the bottom left of the controller.

Unlike Microsoft's controller, though, the OnLive peripheral houses a number of inputs along the bottom for controlling video, including buttons to play, stop and fast forward.

Does it work?

Now, so far you're probably thinking this all sounds like a nice idea, but will it actually work on your old BT Broadband connection? The answer is: probably. On a 50Mb Virgin connection, the OnLive technology really is impressive – we played various online sessions of first-person shooter Homefront and almost forgot we weren't holding a PlayStation 3 controller.

On the right connection, games start up quicker than you'd be able to walk to the television and fiddle with a DVD, and OnLive really starts to feel like the future of gaming.

However, on the less speedy 3Mb connections that most of the country has to make do with, the 2011 on-demand gaming scene can be a completely different experience (if your old pipe's good enough to connect in the first place, that is).

Those lower down the broadband chain might find that while less reaction-speed-reliant games such as Lego Batman work fine, titles in the vein of Assassin's Creed that require quick movements of the analogue sticks to keep the camera pointing in the right direction feel sluggish. It's a bit like playing when you haven't activated Game Mode on your brand new 400Hz OLED TV.

Outside of lightning-quick connections, there's also a noticeable – but not huge – drop in picture quality compared to the lush visuals outputted by the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

At times, graphics don't look as crisp as their console counterparts, and some distortion can also be apparent when your broadband throws a wobbly, especially on HD televisions. Lower-resolution PC monitors seem to hide this better.

The good news if you have to make do with a single-figure connection is that OnLive includes a five-minute drop-out feature that means you've still got a chance of rescuing your game if your connection drops.

With such a pioneering platform, it's probably acceptable that not everyone's going to get perfect service from the off, and it's certainly likely to improve along with Britain's internet infrastructure.

If you're worried your connection might not be up for the job of efficiently streaming a 16-man Unreal deathmatch from 100 miles away, the beauty is it won't cost you a thing to try. OnLive is free to sign up for and you can easily jump on and have a go on a few game trials on your PC or Mac.

Social gaming

The thing that really impresses us about OnLive most is not its ability to magically put Prince Of Persia on our iPads, but its exciting interface and platform, which includes some features that the big console manufacturers could really do with nicking – if they have the technology to even implement them.

The first is simple but incredibly impressive: when you start up your little box, a flashy boot-up screen will illuminate your telly, depicting a giant globe built entirely out of little video screens, eventually settling on the same gameplay windows that make up the backdrop of OnLive's menus.

Those squares of video aren't just placeholders – they're real-world users playing away in real time. The Arena is the showcase for this baffling and brilliant innovation, enabling you to browse a wall of live gaming, picking any box you like to stretch the video to full screen and watch another OnLive user playing a game live from their living room.

It's very, very impressive stuff and from here you can leave your spy victim a thumbs up message, add them as a friend, or simply enjoy their half-pipe skills in Skate.

The Arena has more practical benefits for the game-playing experience too. If you're considering handing over your hard-earned cash for a title you're perhaps not too sure about, you can highlight the Arena tab and bring up every user with open privacy options who's playing that game right now. (You can also trial the title for 30 full minutes, as is possible with almost all OnLive games.)

You don't have to own the title as you would on an Xbox or PlayStation in order to spectate, of course – the hardware doing all the work is in some warehouse God knows how far away.

Another head-spinning feature comes via those video input buttons on the bottom of the Wireless Controller. Press the tiny record button on your pad and OnLive will instantly record your last 10 seconds of gameplay, attach it to your profile and upload it to the service's YouTube equivalent, Brag Clips.

That means the next time you pull off a mental Virtua Tennis shot or expose a game-breaking glitch in Batman: Arkham Asylum, you can record it on video and share it with the world.

The Brag Clips interface looks identical to the Arena – basically, a giant wall of video all playing at once, like the end scene from The Matrix Reloaded. From here, you can arrange the clips by highest rated, most viewed or most recent.

It's no surprise that at the moment a lot of the popular Brag Clips are saucy scenes from Duke Nukem Forever, but there are some hilarious Homefront kills and Red Faction glitches to be discovered.

The games

Around 120 games are available on the service at the time of writing, the newest including big hitters such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT 3. The most popular games at the moment appear to be sandbox titles such as Just Cause 2 and Saints Row, and these work well with both varying internet connections and the comedy Brag Clips you'll be keen to stick in your user profile.

At the moment, OnLive is running a promotion that means UK users can purchase their first game for just £1, after which you'll have to shell out as much as £35 for some games. That's disappointing considering how much you can pick up their boxed equivalents for.

Renting options, however, are far more tempting, with three-day (£3.49) and five-day (£4.99) passes available – you could easily finish Warhammer 40k: Space Marine in that kind of time.

There's also a PlayPack Bundle, which gives you access to 100-plus games for less than a tenner a month at £6.99. While the newest titles aren't included, there's plenty to give you your money's worth.

As a whole, there are undoubtedly some quality titles on the service at the moment, but there are also glaring holes in the portfolio that need to be addressed over time (and we suspect they will be).

For the UK market, there's no football game on the platform right now, and a lot of the big titles gamers will be searching for this Christmas – Call Of Duty, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim – will only be available on the traditional home consoles.

That said, we imagine OnLive's business model is extremely attractive to games publishers, so it's probably only a matter of time before the gaps in its service are aptly filled up.

OnLive gaming also needs to progress. Shooters such as Homefront, as we mentioned previously, cope very well with the doubled network task of streaming both game and shooting-your-mate-in-the-face data. Other types of game, such racing and sports, suffer from reduced picture quality and lag at times.

The service as a whole isn't exactly bursting with online players either, but then again there aren't many titles available yet that offer multiplayer. Once again, we suspect this is something that will be fixed over time.

Verdict

It's clear that the cloud is going to be a big feature in all of our lives, and that includes our virtual worlds as well, and as connections get faster and more robust things will get better and better.

OnLive is impressive enough to convince us that cloud gaming will play a part in how we consume videogames in future – but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll take over from the traditional method of sticking a disc in a box in front of the telly just yet.

We liked

It's a remarkable system to witness in action and the social features that make up its flashy interface are very exciting indeed.

The user interface is well designed, and it is clear that this has been built with a community in mind, and our cynicism over the latency issue has been greatly reduced as we spent time trying out the games.

For older games and those less reliant on super speedy reactions, the lag simply isn't a major factor, unless your connection is truly ponderous, prone to dropping out, or your ISP decides that OnLive is actually a P2P connection and throttles the speed.

Once the games library starts to fill up – especially with OnLive exclusive titles taking advantage of its superior hardware and iPad options – we can see the platform really taking off as an alternative to traditional out-of-the-box thumb waggling.

We didn't like

There's a part of us that's left feeling that it's not the gamers – the ones who'll care about the slight reduction in image quality and miniscule response lag – but the mainstream populous who OnLive should be aiming at.

The newer games are currently run on 'optimum' settings, which can mean that the super-high end graphics you are used to from your computer are simply not even attempted.

At the moment, there are parts of England that don't quite have the broadband connections to run every game at its top-notch capabilities. That said, we do urge those curious to give OnLive a go for free on their PCs before dismissing it entirely.

Verdict

OnLive is an impressive glimpse into the future of gaming. It's not perfect, but it is far from the laggy-monster we feared. For casual gamers this is a very real option.

Game Review: The Binding of Isaac

There is some special alchemy at the heart of The Binding of Isaac. Developer Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) has combined biblical monsters, scatological humor, and tense twin-stick shooting into a thrilling and, at times, disturbing game about a boy and his troubled relationship with his mother.

A pregame Flash animation shows Isaac’s mother, who likes to watch Christian television programming, being told by God that Isaac is a creature of immense sin. To prove that she loves her deity above all else, she attempts to kill Isaac, who escapes into a cavernous basement of hideous monsters and terrible trials. After his fall, Isaac awakes, ready to seek revenge.

To reinvent one of the oldest stories in Western theology (Abraham almost killing his son Isaac at God’s behest) as a videogame, McMillen drew inspiration from venerable entries in gaming canon. Isaac, who cannot stop crying, shoots his tears in a manner reminscent of Robotron and Smash TV. Some enemies harken back to arcade classics like Asteroids and Centipede. The UI and environment design smack of The Legend of Zelda on NES, replete with hearts, bombs, shops and grid-based dungeon maps.

But Isaac owes the most to Rogue and its many descendants. Roguelikes – loosely defined as dungeon crawlers with randomized elements and permadeath – have seen somewhat of a renaissance in the indie community, and Isaac rides that wave. The game can be beaten in about an hour (if you make it that far, for death is permanent and means starting anew). But no two playthroughs of Isaac are the same. I was on my tenth or eleventh session before I saw a room I even vaguely recognized and have yet to see a sequence of rooms repeat.

All of Isaac’s demented loot drops with similar randomness, and none of it is explained. Upgrades come in many forms: trinkets, pills, tarot cards, blood pacts with the devil. They each change Isaac cosmetically, reflecting the shame and punishment inflicted by his mother (lipstick, heels, and a coat hanger are a few choice examples). There is no manual to tell you what they do, and if a guide crops up on the Internet, I  urge you to avoid it. The whimsy and danger lurking behind each item pickup make Isaac’s journey all the more precarious and exciting.

The uncertainty and randomness breed resourcefulness. Sometimes the game will hand you powerful items early on, only to withhold heart and bombs in the later levels. Other times you will receive plenty of bombs and keys but few meaningful upgrades to Isaac’s skills. To succeed, you must adapt your play style to what the game gives you. Unless you have issues with the core gameplay, it could take ages to become bored with Isaac’s breadth of game-changing content.

So about that core gameplay: it’s purposefully loose and imprecise. Isaac can only fire his tears in the cardinal directions, and they don’t always travel in perfectly straight lines. Moving while shooting allows you to angle the shots a bit, but it isn’t an exact science. Movement’s controlled with WASD, and Isaac glides a bit, especially after a few speed upgrades. Navigating some of the spike-filled rooms is difficult when your protagonist can’t stop on a dime.

Despite this, I love how Isaac handles. The controls enhance the overall tension while still feeling fun. You need to be mindful of the environment, how Isaac moves within that environment, how the enemies move in reaction to Isaac, and how and when you can harm them. Fighting a bit of imprecision fits in well with the rest of the game’s randomness and adds to the challenge.

Isaac’s crude Flash aesthetic suits McMillen’s twisted take on Scripture yet keeps the possible severity of the subject matter at an adolescent arm’s length. The design of Isaac and his enemies feels like the result of McMillen regularly daring himself to a gross-out contest.  Upgrades permitting, you can shoot poison tears at piles of poop (see above). When Isaac enters a room with a single heart remaining, he will urinate on the floor in fear. Most boss fights leave the room dripping with blood and entrails. You will find many horrible things in the dungeons below Isaac’s house. Subtlety isn’t one of them.

While guiding Isaac through the depths, stop and give a listen to the delightful soundtrack by composer Danny Baranowsky (Canabalt, Super Meat Boy). Baranowsky consistently finds ways to channel retro game music without resorting to composing on a Game Boy. I’m particularly taken with the surprising warmth of the “Caves” theme. He also admirably meets the challenge of writing his own riff on the “You Found A Secret” chime from Zelda.

At just $5, The Binding of Isaac is priced as an entertaining distraction, but it offers much more. McMillen and his programmer Florian Himsl have packed this retro hybrid with loads of secrets and unlockables. After six hours I'm still discovering new items, new enemies, new endings. Nothing about a boy being tortured by his mother should be this fun, but it is. And it’ll likely stay fun and fresh for a while.

A copy was provided for the purposes of this review. The Binding of Isaac is currently available on Steam for $4.99. You can find the hardware requirements below:

 

PC Requirements

Mac RequirementsOS

Windows XP/Vista/7, 

OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Snow Leopard 10.6.3Processor2.5 GHzIntel Mac 2.5 GHzMemory1 GB

1 GB

Hard Disk Space50 MB50 MBVideo CardDirectX 9.0c Compatible Card --

 

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Antec Solo II Review: Sonata Evolved

When we reviewed Antec's Sonata IV recently, we found it left a lot to be desired. Antec had updated their Sonata design, but barely, and the enclosure as a whole felt grossly behind the times. Apparently some of Antec's engineers agreed, because we have the brand new Solo II in house now and there's clearly been some serious retooling. But is the Solo II enough of a step forward, or does it still have some growing up to do?

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The AMD A8-3850 Review: Llano on the Desktop

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Review: The Sleekest Honeycomb Tablet

The AMD Llano Notebook Review: Competing in the Mobile Market

Review: Genius Wireless Pen Mouse

Whatever you do, don't mistake the Genius Wireless Pen Mouse for a replacement for a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet, or even Genius' own G-Pen M609. This isn't a device for graphical artists to replicate their brushstrokes on the computer, and if you bought one thinking it was, you'd be disappointed.

What the Genius Wireless Pen Mouse actually is, is a pen-shaped mouse. Dragging the tip of the pen across a desk, we were able to control Windows pretty well. Pressing down on the nib replicates a left mouse button click, and there is another button on the shaft for right mouse button clicks.

It works rather well, with the familiar shape of a pen allowing you to get used to the new input device pretty quickly.

We found that the Genius Wireless Pen Mouse is best suited for working on large and multiple monitors, as you can move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other quickly, in a small space. You might find the Genius Wireless Pen Mouse a bit over-sensitive when you first use it, with its 1200 DPI sensor, but changing the mouse cursor speed in Windows can make a big difference.

It's a device that works well, and we can certainly see the appeal of it. It's not quite good enough to completely replace the traditional mouse for most tasks, however.

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Review: Medion Erazer X6813

Medion's Erazer X6813 – branded as a "gaming notebook" – might seem like an oxymoron to some.

Gaming is a traditionally immersive endeavour, and while casual gaming marches forward with the momentum of a sinister (but casual) army of men in silly hats, there are still serious games with serious budgets that offer serious escapism, if you've got the gear to render such visual finery.

Here's where the 15.6-inch Medion Erazer X6813 comes in. Like the MSI GT680 and the diminutive 11.6-inch Alienware M11x, it's designed to offer gamers the kind of frame rates they're used to on desktop machines, but on the go – at the expense of £1,000 or more.

Here's where the incongruity kicks in – how and why would you want to play such visually impressive, immersive titles in public places? Isn't that the point of notebooks, after all?

Well, maybe you're taken with the idea of using the Medion Erazer X6813 like a traditional notebook while you're on the move, working with office apps and browsing the web, then plugging its charger in when you get home and unleashing that powerful GPU on the latest DirectX 11 games. Some 'notebooks' such as Alienware's M18X throw that notion out of the window entirely, and compromise practicality for sheer performance.

Like MSI's GT680, the GPU that Medion has opted for with the Erazer X6813 is Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460M.

The GPU is an absolutely pivotal component for a gaming notebook, and while the GTX 460M's impressive architecture and performance are undeniable, Nvidia's release of the GTX 570M and GTX 580M Optimus mobile discrete GPUs shoves it down the pecking order somewhat.

Not only are the GTX 570M and GTX 580M the fastest notebook GPUs ever, but they at least promise to improve battery life, the mortal enemy of gaming laptops and notebooks.

With AMD's excellent Llano APUs already hitting shelves and offering comparative performances to notebook GPUs from an integrated graphics solution with much better battery life, Medion's Erazer X6813 comes at an interesting time in mobile gaming.

The biggest asset that Medion has given its Erazer X6813 is pure gaming performance. As the 3DMark 11 scores indicate, that GTX 460M under the hood does a sterling job with bleeding edge rendering techniques such as tessellation, bokeh filtering and advanced dynamic shadows and lighting.

The GTX 460M itself is based on the GTX 450 desktop GPU, which might be overshadowed by the GTX 460 (note the lack of an 'M') in the desktop market. It's a capable Fermi card with solid architecture.

It's not perfect, though. The chief drawback comes from the noisy fan and the hot air it chucks out. For a notebook, these are real drawbacks. MSI's GT680 is equipped with the same GPU and suffers the same problem, but as Medion's Erazer X6813 will set you back £400 less, the cash you save might drown out the fan noise somewhat.

The bottom line for the GTX 460M inside this Medion Erazer X6813 is that playing new games at max settings shouldn't be a problem, even at the screen's native resolution of 1920 x 1080.

Of course, it has help from the Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU, too. With four cores of eight threads at its disposal, and a Turbo Boosted running speed of 2.9 GHz, it's one mighty fine piece of Sandy Bridge silicon.

The downside is that although the integrated graphics processor (iGPU) in the 2630QM is capable in present day integrated graphics terms, early testing of AMD Llano chips blows this Intel HD Graphics 3000 engine out of the water.

And when the AC adapter's unplugged from the Medion Erazer X6813, you're relying on integrated graphics for rendering tasks. As is the status quo with gaming notebooks, you're only really able to make use of the notebook's full gaming performance when you're hooked up to mains power.

It's another element of the whole 'gaming notebook' concept that doesn't quite work, along with having to cart around peripherals such as controllers and mice.

Nowhere is this problem more prevalent than with Alienware's M18X. It'll set you back a cool £2,318, for which you'll get two AMD Radeon HD 6970Ms in a CrossFireX configuration, but as soon as it's separated from its AC adapter you're pretty much relying on that HD Graphics 3000 engine again.

Plumping for 8GB of DDR3 RAM instead of the oft-preferred 4GB among system builders, Medion has ensured the Erazer X6813 offers nippy file operations and CPU-intensive tasks. You won't see a whole lot of difference in gaming performance between 4GB and 8GB, but at this price point that extra memory comes as a welcome addition, rather than an unnecessary extra outlay, as is the case with the MSI GT680.

The choice of components inside the Medion Erazer X6813 can't be faulted, and represent real value for money. Gaming performance on Alienware's M11XR3 at the same price isn't as quick, even on an 11.6-inch screen with a smaller native resolution of 1366 x 768, and while MSI's GT680 can compete in performance terms, it's much more expensive and doesn't justify that extra cash.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch. In order to ensure the Erazer X6813 lands near the £1,000 price point, there are some less than premium elements to this gaming notebook's package.

The most obvious shortcoming is the screen. Clarity isn't the problem; it's the black-and-white saturation. Lighter colours appear washed out, and forget about trying to get a true black out of this screen – you can fiddle around with brightness and contrast until the cows come home.

For anyone prepared to pay £1,099 for a notebook, this is a major sticking point. You're paying for bleeding edge graphics, but for all the hard work that the Nvidia GTX 460M puts in rendering them, if the screen can't deliver a good picture it becomes a slightly moot point. The same goes for watching 1080p HD movies. If you want a good quality display, your best bet is to make use of the HDMI output.

There are further grumbles to be had about build quality. Alienware really has this area sewn up – both the M11XR3 and M18X offer unrivalled sturdiness and a reassuring feel to their keyboards and trackpads. You do pay through the teeth for it, though. MSI's GT680, on the other hand, suffers a poor screen, flimsy keyboard and dated visuals.

The problem for the Medion Erazer X6813 is likewise, with a slightly unresponsive trackpad and flimsy keys. The visuals won't set many gamers' hearts a-thumping either, but they're at least kept restrained and offer a welcome break from tacky neons.

Battery life isn't great, either. The GTX 460M is a power-hungry card and that results in gaming times of around one-and-a-half to two hours. Again that hobbles any notion of genuine mobile gaming, but it's a malady that spreads across the market – it isn't localised to the Medion Erazer X6813.

Benchmarks

CineBench R11.5: 4.99 pts
3D Mark 11: P1812 3D Marks
Battery Eater 05: 1h20min

The Medion Erazer X6813 stands up very well against competition from Alienware and its M11XR3 and M18X notebooks, and also MSI's similarly specc'd GT680.

At the same price point, Alienware's M11XR3 falls behind in gaming performance but does offer superlative build quality and the Haile Gebrselassie of batteries. The M18X is a frankly ridiculous beast, priced at £2,318, but it's about as mobile as an OAP.

We liked

Medion has done a lot right with the Erazer X6813 gaming notebook. The crucial components are all top-notch. A Sandy Bridge CPU isn't to be sniffed at and will excel in multithreaded applications, thanks to its eight available threads.

The component that gamers really care about is the GPU, and again Medion is on the money by sticking an Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M inside the Erazer X6813.

In mobile discrete GPU terms it's just been pushed out of the limelight by Nvidia's new Optimus cards, the GTX 570M and GTX 580M, but it still has more than enough clout to generate playable frame rates from demanding DX11 games, thanks to some solid Fermi architecture.

What the GPU gives the Medion Erazer X6813 in performance, the CPU and RAM add to with aplomb, and for just over a grand the gaming performance it offers looks almost bargainous.

We disliked

The problem is, the whole notion of mobile gaming doesn't stand up too well to scrutiny. For all the fancy mobile components, as soon as you factor in battery life, peripherals and integrated graphics, it seems a tiny bit pointless – the better a notebook performs in games, the heavier and more battery-draining it becomes, making it distinctly less 'mobile'.

The MSI GT680 is really close in performance terms to the Medion Erazer X6813, but costs around an extra £400, which makes the Medion's price tag look more and more appealing. Sadly there are compromises to keep that cost down but still include such quality CPU and GPUs. The Erazer X6813's screen is the worst of the MSI and the two Alienwares, suffering from some seriously washed-out blacks and whites.

Elsewhere, the track pad doesn't always recognise your taps, and the keyboard feels light and low budget. The aesthetic in general doesn't match the gaming notebook vibe and the high-end components inside.

Verdict

So can a gaming notebook with a mediocre screen and build quality be recommended on the grounds of gaming performance alone? It all depends on how you intend to use the Medion Erazer X6813. Its uses are limited by short battery life, but it does compare favourably to other manufacturer's offerings at this price.

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Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X1

Lenovo is well known for its ThinkPad range, a collection of rather serious-looking business laptops that often do their job in an efficient, if unexciting, manner.

When we first laid hands on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1, we were definitely impressed. The conventional plain black design remains, but the firm body measures just 27mm at its thickest point and weighs a mere 1.8kg, making it effortlessly portable.

This is also one of the most rugged ultra-portables we've seen. Sure, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 lacks the immediate beauty of the Samsung 9 Series or Apple MacBook Air, but it's solidly built in all areas, from the impressively tough lid to the rubberised frame. We're a sucker for rubber, which helps with grip and means no pesky fingerprints.

Unlike the fragile-feeling Sony SB Series, we're confident that this 13.3-inch PC laptop can survive a drop from a desk.

Not only can the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 survive a few whacks on the move, it can also handle accidental spillage. We witnessed a glass of tap water being poured into the keyboard by a gleeful marketing bod, which made the laptop shut down to protect its vital components. After tilting and shaking it to get rid of the water, we left it a short while then tried the power button. To the marketing bod's further glee, it powered up without a whimper.

When we got back to TechRadar HQ, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1's keyboard was thankfully dry again. We spent a couple of hours bashing out a lengthy exposition and were impressed by the comfort it offered. Each key is firmly set, poking through individual holes cut in the chassis, isolation-style. Even better, they're backlit for ease of use in the dark.

It's a great board for touch typing, although the arrow keys are a little cramped and we occasionally hit the PgUp/PgDn keys by accident. Our only other complaint is the corner position of the Fn key, which indents the left Ctrl key. We often hit Fn by mistake when using Windows shortcuts, which never failed to be bloody annoying.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1's touchpad is rather ropey, its bevelled surface proving unresponsive to our swipes and prods, while the mouse buttons are unfortunately integrated into the bottom corners. Lenovo has also built in its trademark 'nipple' pointing stick, which protrudes from the centre of the keyboard. We can't stand the thing, but others may disagree.

ThinkPad laptops always have a good range of features, aimed at business types, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is no exception. To the right of the touchpad you'll find a fingerprint scanner that can be used to log you into Windows and even your favourite websites. It's a good alternative to remembering passwords, if your memory is as bad as ours.

A SIM card slot at the back allows you to access the web while roaming, and you have standard built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi if you're in range of a wireless network. Other ports include HDMI and DisplayPort connections for attaching monitors or projectors, and a SATA port that doubles as a sleep-and-charge USB port, for charging portable devices with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 powered down.

You only get 320GB of storage, but there are few laptops this slim that offer more. This should still satisfy most people, although anyone who wants to carry around a large media collection would be advised to get a portable external drive. There's also no built-in DVD drive.

Although the Lenovo ThinkPad X1's screen is rather compact, at just 13.3 inches, it's also vibrant enough to bring photos and films to life. HD movies look fantastic, and even sound great thanks to the surprisingly powerful built-in speakers.

We were particularly impressed by the wide viewing angles, and it's bright enough to make working all day a comfortable experience. Unfortunately the Super-TFT coating means annoying reflections appear when it's used outside.

One of Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processors, a Core i5 2520M running at 2.5GHz, is the brains behind the Lenovo ThinkPad X1. We expected great things from our benchmark tests, and sure enough this laptop delivered.

The whopping Cinebench score of 10918 was only recently bettered by Dell's incredible XPS 15z, which packs an Intel Core i7 CPU. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 will happily run anything you want, and last you quite some time to come. We noticed no slowdown even when running the most demanding editing suites and memory-crippling software.

Unfortunately, there's no room in the Lenovo ThinkPad X1's slender body for a dedicated graphics card. While Intel's Sandy Bridge processors do a decent job of handling image rendering, more than doubling the performance of the previous generation chipsets, it's still nowhere near enough power to play the latest games on anything resembling a decent detail setting.

Still, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is a business machine at heart, and you definitely have enough graphical grunt to edit your media with applications such as Corel VideoStudio Pro. If you do want to kick back and relax, you'll at least be able to play older games such as Left for Dead 2 and stream HD video.

The battery uses Lenovo's RapidCharge technology, which recharges to 80% in a very impressive 30 minutes. However, we found the battery drained just as quick. If you watch a film on your hard drive with the screen turned up to full brightness, you'd better make sure it's a short one – our review unit died after just 107 minutes.

If you dim the screen and restrict your usage to web browsing or bashing out a chapter of your novel, you'll get another hour before the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 dies. It's still not massively impressive though, considering its ultra-portable status.

Benchmarks

Cinebench: 10918
3DMark 03: 7765
Battery Eater 05: 107 minutes

Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 business laptop may look familiar, but it's impressively slimmed down from previous models and also reassuringly rugged. But can this ultra-portable hold its own in an increasingly competitive market?

We liked

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1's rubberised body is solid as well as slender, and can take a few knocks or drops and come back fighting. We were particularly impressed by how well it coped with water spillage, powering down quickly and returning to normal as if nothing had happened.

The latest Sandy Bridge Core i5 technology provides stunning performance, coping with any software we threw its way. Features are plentiful, from the built-in 3G roaming support to the integrated fingerprint scanner.

We loved the Lenovo ThinkPad X1's vibrant 13.3-inch display, with its rich colours and excellent viewing angles, while sound quality is surprisingly strong from the built-in speakers. And all this comes in a slim and light package that can be carried around everywhere you go.

We disliked

The lack of dedicated graphics on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is a shame, but you can still watch HD films and run media editing suites. More of a sin is the battery, which dies in less than two hours when watching films on the move.

Although the backlit keyboard is well-sized and comfortable to use, the indented Left Ctrl key made using Windows shortcuts a real pain. We also found the Lenovo ThinkPad X1's touchpad awkward to use at times. It's not as responsive as we'd have liked, and the integrated mouse buttons are a downer.

Finally, if you want an ultra-portable laptop for working outside, bear in mind the reflective glossy screen coating.

Verdict

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 presents a tantalising combination of impressive power and ruggedness that should appeal to anyone seeking a regular travel companion. Just don't expect it to last long without a power socket.

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