A PAX East Low-Def Photo History

2010

Gamers Gaming - Expo Floor

Mr. Pope - Rock Band Lounge

Rock Band Lounge

Open Chord Rhythm Game Prototype - Expo Floor

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Steam App for Android is a Good Start

I love Steam!  Last month, Valve Software released their free Steam app.  Steam is a multi-platform distribution hub for video games, with presence on PC, Mac OS and PS3,  iPhone, and now Android.

Steam is a major success largely due to the dedication and support from the company that created it.   Valve has a storied reputation for being incredibly supportive of it’s community.  Of the thousands of games on Steam, many are free-to-play, and games are put on sale every day.   Twice a year there is a major 15 day sales event, during the summer and christmas seasons.

Once you purchase the game, the files are downloaded and installed on demand, and should any official update ever be released for the game, Steam will automatically update your copy.   This goes a long way to increasing the user’s  satisfaction with Steam, because keeping track of and installing updates takes time away from being able to play them.    Let me put it this way, I stopped caring about whether or not I was using the latest version once I switched completely to Steam.

Steam has similar features to XBOX Live, in that you have a Friends list where you can tag your fellow gamers, join games, as well as voice and video chat.   Steam also has it’s own achievements, but these do not carry an individual point total and as a result you don’t have a ‘gamerscore’ as you would on Live.

So does this Steam app come with all of the great features that the full version does?  Not exactly.

Pros of the Steam App:

• Store – You can browse the impressive catalog of titles for Windows and Mac, add to your ‘wishlist’, and of course purchase the games.  Purchases show up in your Steam client once you login again.  You can even purchase games and ‘gift’ them to anyone else on Steam.
• Slick mobile interface – one of the cooler interfaces on the market, information is presented properly for mobile devices and not just scaled down to fit.
• Steam Chat – So far only text based chat with a very similar presentation to SMS messaging.  Somebody, somewhere on Steam is talking about the game you are interested and this makes it very easy to follow or join in.
• Friends List & Updates – You can keep connected with your Steam friends on the go, and keep track of their game progress as well.

Cons of the Steam App:

• No games for Android or iOS – They have already said this is coming soon, but this was somewhat disappointing to learn that not a single Android or iOS game is available for purchase. You will have to stick to the marketplace/iTunes store for the time being.
• Can’t see your own Acheivements – Again this is another feature that is in the works, but currently you can only see your friends’ acheivements.
• No access to Steam Forums – You have to use a different app to browse the Steam forums (like Dolphin).  This is important because many times before I purchase a new game I’ll check the associated forum to find a review, recommendation, or list of complaints, which can affect my purchasing decision.

Overall this is a fantastic app if you are a Steam gamer, or are at least interested in shopping online for games.  Once games and a few more features are added to the app, it will be major competition for the Marketplace and iTunes stores.

You can download the free Steam App for Android here.

app-a-day: Rock Band Reloaded for BlackBerry

Today we dive into one of my favorite games of all time, on one of the mobile devices I use daily. How do you think Rock Band will hold up on BlackBerry? Will it rock or not? Read on… 

NAME: Rock Band Reloaded

PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts

PLATFORM: BlackBerry

GENRE: Rhythm Game

PRICE: $6.99

TRY IT: N/A

BUY IT: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/22193?lang=en

WHAT IT DOES: Are you aware of that console game with plastic guitars, plastic drums, and karaoke style vocals? If you are on this site, I’m sure you are aware of Rock Band. Well, this is a BlackBerry mobile version of that game. It’s actually, the second version of Rock Band for BlackBerry, the first being titled Rock Band Mobile. Rock Band Reloaded does not actually use any plastic instruments or karaoke vocals. In their place, are dots scrolling across or down the screen that you need to tap in syncronization with the music. For touchscreen BlackBerry’s, all the commands work well on-screen.  For non-touchscreen BlackBerry’s the keyboard has commands to simulate screen touches.

As for the music, you do not actually the real songs, or the full songs. What you do get is 16-bit renditions of the songs without vocals. Think of the sounds from Sega Genesis games. As for song lengths, after about 2 minutes, the in-game songs fade out and end.

Graphically, the game is fine. The background looks like what is on Rock Band 1 on consoles. The notes coming at you look nearly identical to what you get on consoles too.  Instead of having your band rocking out on stage in the background, you just get a static image of a band or a player.

Now, let’s talk gameplay. With easy, medium, and hard modes available, you get the ability to tap a few or a lot of bars coming at you. I found it ok in tapping the screen for guitar, bass, and drums. It’s not overly responsive, but not frustratingly poor either.  For the simulated vocals, you tap notes on-screen due to the lack of real vocals. I found the side-scrolling of vocals impossible to get the full 4-stars (and difficult to get 3-stars).

There are single song playlists and a World Tour mode like in Rock Band 1 for consoles. With World Tour mode there are achievements encouraging you play the songs multiple times to achieve the necessary score or goal to gain the achievement and unlock other songs.

You won’t find any DLC available for Rock Band Reloaded. You get 20 songs.

DO I WANT IT: As an extremely hardcore Rock Band player on Xbox 360, I have played Rock Band Reloaded many times. I have also played the iPhone and Android versions as well (those have full-length real versions of the songs, high resolution graphics, and DLC). This BlackBerry version is no comparison to its Xbox, Android, or iPhone brethren. This game is better to play with the audio turned off, since the lo-fi audio is terrible and does not always sync to the notes on-screen.

I almost wish Harmonix did not put their name on this version of Rock Band, as it is by far the worst implementation of a Rock Band game on any platform. Unfortunately, there is not a free version to try first, so I did buy the app at the steep $7 price point.

In summary, stay away from this abomination. BlackBerry has never been known as a good gaming platform, and this game proves why.

Others agree:

“Worst game you could ever buy for your phone”

“It doesn’t hav full songs and no singing”

“I’m a Rock Band fanboy…And this version of the game is an embarrassment.  The music is all MIDI renditions of the original (think 8-bit Super Mario Bros theme song). Songs fade out about 3/4 through the song. There are no vocals, they are all replaced with synth MIDI sounds. Graphics are decent, achievements are nice, menus are good…looks like the iPhone version. The music issues heavily outweigh the decent look of the game.” <– Actually I left that review in BlackBerry App World

app-a-day: Airport Mania 2 Wild Trips HD

Welcome to our new feature app-a-day. It’s pretty simple, we pick an app (chosen either by you or our editors) and walk through its details. You might get a mobile app, console app, browser app, or something else. We will work on making this a regular feature, based on traffic to the site and feedback in comments. If you like this feature, or hate it, let us know.

To start things off, read on…

Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips HD (for Tablets)

NAME: Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips HD for Tablets

PUBLISHER: Reflexive Entertainment

PLATFORM: Android (also available on Windows and Mac)

GENRE: Casual Game

PRICE: $1.99 Android tablets, 99¢ Android phones

TRY IT:

BUY IT: http://amzn.to/wrVIiI

WHAT IT DOES: Basically, you act as air traffic controller and lands planes. But, there is more to it. You guide planes to terminals for unloading/loading, you direct them the the garage for repairs, fueling, etc. So, you are the eye in the sky. It gets frantic quickly with many planes looking to land/take-off with limited runways and terminals. You also earn money to upgrade your airport. There are plenty of “achievements” and in-game mini-games, like popping ballons in between slinging jets around.

DO I WANT IT: The graphics and audio are very nice, looks great on a 10″ tablet. The game is very fluid, and well developed. You can play this game on a phone, but the touch screen gestures make it difficult to tap the right spot accurately. (For phones, I suggest going with the 99 cent non-HD version). The developer is also regularly adding updates and levels to the game.

This game is addictingly fun, and the challenge grows at a good level. So, yes I want this game. It’s worth the two bucks.

Others agree:

“I’m not very good at these time/task management types of games, but I found this one to have a pretty good difficulty curve. It was relatively simple in the first few stages, then slowly started to get more hectic and difficult. However, the “minimum score” to pass the level has generally been pretty low, so I think even people who are worse at these types of games than I am could still have fun and progress!!”

“this game surprises, it’s a feel good kind of game,something you can play for 5 minutes or hours. the concept is simple but the game itself can be challenging. you wont regreat buying this game.“

What’s MyGGGo Doing?

Hey, if you are reading this….thanks and why?

Months have gone by, many months. No Rock Band news or rants. No updates on my gadget obsessions. No shameless plugs for online deals to support our sponsors. Nuthin! So what gives?

Our first four years were very active (2007-2010), with multiple writers and sometimes many articles per day. (Remember, we run this site pro bono, make gilch, for free). Well not entirely true. It cost us money to keep it running. We do on a very rare occasion make a coin or two if you check out our sponsor links or buy from one of our Amazon links.

2011 had a turn (not for the worse, no one died or anything), just a turn. Shawn started a side-project in the smartphone security space (of course MyGGGo was already a side-project). He also started another side-project developing technical training courses. And finally started another side-project playing drums in a couple bands. Oops…I think that’s 3 too many side-projects.

Where are all the other writers from MyGGGo? They have faded into their lives, and we haven’t worked at replacing them. Our bad.

MyGGGo has suffered. I can’t say 2012 will return us to previous levels, but here’s a first ditch effort. Coming this week, will be our new feature, known as App-A-Day.

Since we have literally hundreds of apps (from business to games to time wasters) for many platforms, We are bringing (sexy) back all three G’s to MyGGGo (Gadget, Game, and Gizmo Obsession) with this new feature. We will have a standard format for App-A-Day and will walk through the details of an app, the good, the bad, the malicious, the free, the ridiculously expensive.

Get ready for stuff from the Android Market, iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Chrome Apps, Xbox 360 games, Xbox 360 Dashboard apps, BlackBerry apps, Wii games. We will go all over the map. Why the whole map, well we actually use them all.

Join us later this week for the first real blast-o-news for 2012 with App-A-Day. If you have any preference of platform, type of app, or a specific app you’d like us to highlight on App-A-Day, drop us a line below.

Xbox Indie Shmup Controlled with Microphone

Check this out. Use Rock Band mics to player a shoot-em-up Xbox Indie game. YouTube link below says it all.

Original article here:
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/04/04/this-xbox-live-shoot-em-up-is-controlled-using-a-microphone/

BlackBerry PlayBook runs Android Apps

The RIM press release today had a bit of info that has me now very interested in a PlayBook (which I already was interested).

They confirmed the Java VM on the PlayBook will be the same that’s on Android devices allowing Android apps to somewhat natively run on one PlayBook. I wonder if this will create a patch war like Apple and Palm had when the Palm WebOS had native iTunes support and Apple continually updated iTunes to break the support.

The PlayBook will also have native C/C++, HTML5, Flash, and AIR dev environments.

The dev potentials are quite large. I’m interested to see how it competes in the crowded tablet market.

Ready to Jump from AT&T for Verizon iPhone. Not So Fast

Unless you have been under a rock this month, you know the illustrious iPhone 4 will be heading to Verizon on February 10. This will be the first time, since the original release of the iPhone in 2007, that the phone has been made available on a CDMA carrier (Verizon and Sprint are both CDMA carriers in the U.S.) This will also be the first time that an iPhone will get 3G data speeds outside of AT&T, in the U.S. (T-Mobile users have been able to use unlocked iPhones, but unable to get 3G speeds).

There is a lot of rumbling that many people unhappy with AT&T’s service issues (that’s phone/data service, not customer service), will likely jump ship from AT&T for the greener grass of Verizon. If you are one of those people, there are a few major considerations you should be aware of before you make the big move.

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Slacker Radio gets On-Demand

My favorite online streaming music service is Slacker Radio. If you are unaware of Slacker, think of Pandora or Last.FM.  I believe the Slacker offering has the best user interface, a great selection of music, nice free (and relatively cheap paid) offerings, and was the first to offer on-device mobile applications with caching of music for offline use. I have my custom Rock Band Radio station over there too.

Today, at CES, the folks at Slacker announced the next generation of their web-based and mobile applications.  Most of it has been expected for a while, but good to see that they are pushing the marketing on it. Let’s get into the announcement.

This news comes to us from Hypebot and ZatzNotFunny who had a chance to interview folks at Slacker.

Premium Radio

This has been quietly announced on Slacker.com for many months.  This is a paid offering allowing users to select any song in the Slacker library on-demand for immediate listening.  I have heard that this paid offering will cost users a scary $9.99 per month, which is an extremely expensive cost in my opinion.  This new offering will compete immediately with Zune Pass, Rhapsody, Napster, and similar services.  It could also compete with iTunes and Amazon’s download services.

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BlackBerry Torch – My New Hotness

This month my gadget obsession resurges, as I move on from one device to another.  A passing (er, lighting) of the torch, if you will. This past Thursday (that would be Thanksgiving here in the states), I got my hands on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 on AT&T. This post is the intro to a series of articles coming up. The upcoming posts include: first impression, native apps versus 3rd party apps, and more. [Go here for a slew of old articles on previous phones.]

Let’s talk about why I chose the Torch this time around.  I use my phone as an enterprise device, for both work and personal use. I guess I’m a “prosumer“. In recent years, we have been limited at work to only BlackBerry devices, due the the centralized management and security it brings.  Within this past year, we have been offered the option of iPhone or Android devices, using Good Mobile Messaging software to integrate into our enterprise. Though Good remains limited in digital signing/encrypting of email.

Those limitations kept me looking at BlackBerry devices, and since I’m not married to any one carrier, I knew immediately that I wanted the BlackBerry Torch for AT&T.

The main reason, capacitive and large touchscreen. Having spent years with Palm Treo phones, and about 4 months with the BlackBerry Storm, I really have missed touch screen. The Storm “clicky” screen was not acceptable for me, as I could type faster than the screen could respond.  Ultimately creating a brick wall that I could never get past.

The Torch eliminates the click screen, and it’s what you’d expect from a modern smart phone. There is a slide-up physical keyboard and an on-screen (portrait and landscape) keyboard. The typing options are plentiful.

The Torch doesn’t have the highest resolution screen, but is plenty good looking. It doesn’t have the fastest processor, but it’s plenty fast. The new BlackBerry OS 6, is relatively snappy and pleasing on the eyes. [My wife, the resident iPhone user in the house, agrees.]

Other phone options currently available include a multitude of BlackBerry Bold offerings on Verizon and AT&T.  As much as I liked the capability of the Bold 9000 and have heard wonderful reviews of the 9700 (and newer), the larger touch screen is the device for me.

Coming up soon: My First Impressions article. Native Apps versus 3rd Party Apps article.

For now, here are a couple accessories I plan to pick up.