GeekwithEnvy

Richard Vincenti Jr

BlizzCon 2013 Official Date Set

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BlizzConLogo

In case you missed it, BlizzCon is back and will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9, 2013 in Anaheim, California. Hopefully you will be able to get tickets to go as they usually sell out in seconds. If you can’t be there you can always watch online for a small fee, something that I’m sure will be available this year as well.

The last BlizzCon (2011) was pretty awesome and they even closed out the show with the Foo Fighters! Can they top that this year? Who knows, but I’m hoping to hear more about project “Titan” and I’m  always just generally curious as to what Blizzard is going to be doing next. You know what would be really strange? A Blizzard FPS style game. That would be interesting; even more interesting would be if it was also brought to consoles. You can read the official press release for more details.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Now Available for OS X

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BGEnchancedSS2

Yes! OS X users can now download and run Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition without any special software. The game is now available to download for Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher from Beamdog. 

The Original Baldur’s Gate is an awesome RPG that has been around for over ten years. Eventually the original game gained some enhancements that helped it fit a little better on a widescreen monitor along with adding new content like “The Black Pits” and adding new characters like Dorn Il-Khan, and Rasaad yn Bashir. The enhancements don’t end there either, they went on to add over 400 improvements to the original game. If you love classic RPG’s and have OS X, then this is a must buy, plus the game is only $19.99

 

 

Yahoo Homepage Gets a Makeover, Love it or Hate it?

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NewYahooSS

After a few years (four) of the same look and feel of Yahoo’s home page, we see some pretty dramatic changes, but not everyone is loving it.

The new look of the Yahoo homepage does feel a bit cleaner and seems like it will match up with the style of Windows 8 quite well. The new homepage offers up a sleek tile design that you can easily customize to fit your needs. Another noticeable perk of the new design is how the site looks on a retina display or any other very precise display, it’s much clearer. As with pretty much everything these days, Yahoo is also getting a bit more serious with social networking and invites you to log in with your Facebook account for further customization and social linking.

The user response to the new look of the site is mixed so far. I can’t get through the comment section of almost any post without someone posting a complaint about the new look. Users are saying things are too big or not displaying very well on their screens while others just don’t see why they had to “fix something that wasn’t broken”.

I am taking a more optimistic approach and I actually think that while it may not be perfect it’s a move in the right direction. Infinite scroll on the newsfeed  and the a better connection to social media are a few of those “right” steps. However, there’s just something about the new look that feels a bit out of place; maybe it’s just because it’s new and so much different than the last. I think Yahoo may have to update this look, maybe relatively soon, in order to add a better feeling of solid design while preserving what makes Yahoo appealing in the first place, perhaps more of a hybrid of old and new. How do you feel about the new look?

Playstation 4 Details and Quick Thoughts

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Dual Shock 4 Controller
Dual Shock 4 for the Sony Playstation 4

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “leave them wanting more” but the Playstation 4 announcement from Sony was lacking pretty much everything. Fortunately, we did get a little bit of information about the new console. So here is a quick breakdown of what we learned about the Playstation 4.

-The Playstation 4 is designed like a gaming PC and will feature a custom x86 CPU, custom PC graphics hardware that utilizes GDDR 5 (very fast memory), 8GB of Unified Memory, and of course a hard drive. All of these hardware choices were made in order to make it as developer friendly as possible, unlike the PS3 which is notoriously difficult to program for.

PS4GraphicsDemo
A rendering showing off the graphics capabilities of the Playstation 4.

-The new console will allow you to pause and instantly resume gameplay without having to wait for the console to boot up. It will go directly where you left off, much like sleep mode for your computer. This is a great feature and I can’t wait to see it in action.

-The new PS4 Controller has a touch pad and offers up a share button that quickly uploads your best or worst gameplay moments to social media. The new controller does feature a 3.5 mm headphone jack which confirms earlier rumors. There is an additional stereo camera system that will work with the Dual Shock 4 for added interaction with your favorite games; it reminds me of a larger version of the Wii(U) sensor bar. The top of the Dual Shock 4 has a light on top of it which looks similar to the  PS Move controller, this is what the camera system uses to track the controllers motion.

-The PS4 will be coming “Holiday 2013”

Unfortunately, that’s about all we know for right now and we never actually got to see the console it self. I don’t want to completely trash the new console and I know it hasn’t even been released yet, but I have to admit that I’m not blown away with the PS4. It feels a lot like a PS3.5 and not a PS4. The hardware is solid and it looks like it’s going to be the most powerful console this generation but it’s still missing that “WOW” factor. We will just have to wait for more details from Sony.