Asus` Four Tablet Musketeers cry one for all and all four one

En Garde ! 
It`s a great day when you get to present not one but 4 tablets , the CEO of ASUS should be rightly proud of his company . The Asus keynote earlier this week was not like rival presentations concentrating on one product built with off the shelf vanilla tech with oh so last year Tegra 2 chipsets +/- the Tron Evo laced UI that Google calls Honeycombe or the Biblically monikered and plagued Eden OS... No Asus is doing something different wisely casting its nets far and wide:

One 4 all and all 4 one ............. The Eee Pad is not one slate it is 4!  Transformer, Slider, MeMO and Eee Slate EP121: What Asus have done is tune and  evolve the tablet form factor with the evolving  needs of the tablet audience , for we have outgrown our fun large screen ipods , we want the functionality of a pc in a slate , a high end pc,running a full desktop OS , or we want a smaller mobile slate , and one you can write on..with a pen ! or we want freedom from iOS but not from apps i.e we want the promise of  Android Honeycombe slates . To their great merit Asus has catered for all audiences  and this their Four tablet Musketeer riposte to Apple and the iPad dominated slate sector is really more likely to succeed than any other company to date. 

A year on into using tablets , there are millions of people who actually want to do something productive with them other than catapult elastic banded Aves Iratus , we want and demand the power AND the freedom of a high end PC  in the slate form factor.


Unlike other softer competition who have struggled to even get to the preorder stage for their wunder tablets, with  Asus behind the manufacture , and design you know the Eee Pad series  is going to be mass produced ,widely available and you can already order the flagship , ASUS Eee Slate EP121-1A011M 12.1-Inch Tablet PC and  ASUS Eee Slate EP121-1A010M 12.1-Inch Tablet PC , that's an i5 cpu running full Windows 7 , with a key board dock that actually makes it a laptop and not a vanity mirror with a faux keyboard that many rivals end up looking like.  It is if it works out , the first real slate that qualifies as a  laptop replacement.


Don`t believe the hype! Windows 7 is a great slate OS : How do I know ?
I am writing this on a Joojoo running Windows 7 Ultimate , with 4gb of Ram and a 64 Gb ssd , there is no of the lag or slowdown , touch is responsive , all the aero fx work,flash full screen hd video (which many blogs claimed couldn't be done , anything I can do on my desktop I can do with Windows 7 on this slate,short of run Crysis maxed out  , Windows 7 is infinitely more useful than any of the sub os app based iOS or Android slates  , all this with a 1.6ghz Atom CPU , I cannot wait to try out a fully powered i5 or i7 slate like the EP121 as the one thing I cannot swap out from the Joojoo is the motherboard/cpu , but who knows ?


The freedom you will gain with Windows 7 a full OS running on a slate so outdoes the novelty of a gimped phone OS or Tronified [the wrong Tron at that] UI that Honeycombe turned out to be  ,  that many a future iPad 2 purchaser may now be warming to Asus and the return of simple concept of giving the customer what they want as opposed to telling them what they need and can have. 


The price of Asus Eee Slate is so close to what the high end iPad 2 will be, infact it is seriously cheaper than my present iPad with all the dongles , whilst at the same time packing more punch than high end MacbookPros , and Macbooks  and undercutting them by say $1000 that this could signal the end of the net book vs laptop vs slate argument .


It is likely that one or all  of the 4 Asus Tablet Musketeers will defeat the iPad 2 and millions will be freed from their iOS shackles.... 


Watching the keynote I believe it will most likely be  the D`Artagnan or Dogtangan  of the bunch : the ASUS Eee Slate EP121-1A010M 12.1-Inch Tablet PC that does this 

 and here is Mr Johnny Shih showing you how and why...

This public announcement has been brought to you thanks to the genius of Alexandre Dumas , Dogtanian and the Muskahounds and of course ASUS 

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Burning Rangers +Dark saviour + Xmen COTA + Virual On + Virtual Hydlide + Magic Carpet + Battle Stations

Time enough  for some Sega Saturn classics , 7 in fact  : 

BUY NOW FROM THE GAME VEDA 

Burning Rangers is one of the finest looking Saturn games produced , built with code tools at the time that were deigned to outshine the flashy transparencies of its great rival the irrepressibly flashy Sony Playstation. The gameplay of course did shine , and this is one of those games that needs a next gen update , or at the very least a release as DLC on PSN , Xbox Live or as now is the norm on iOS and Android: 

If Burning Rangers pushed the 3d capabilities of the Saturn to the point where proud owners now felt less envious of the PSONE  , games like   X-Men Children of the Atom showed clearly where the Saturn could not just equal but surpass the Sony machine , with  near perfect ports of Capcom 2d Arcade classics , there was even a cartridge to add extra RAM , just to rub it in ... Many people experienced their first Bezerker Barage whilst playing this game which is the finest Saturn 2d fighter.

check out some moves from the manual before you start screaming ICE BEAM and TORNADO CLAW all night long.

+

Dark Saviour is of course a Climax ,the famed designer of the Landstalker/Timestalkers series ,  classic , the mixture of isometric spinny rotaty and 3d graphics set it immediately apart from all the other RPGs of its generation and most of todays as well .  

Virtual On Cybertroopers , is not a game it is a sport , an art , a perfection of rock paper scissors game mechanics , played out in the armour of giant mech duellists ,that move at SPEED , that's Manga/Anime speed and most definitely not in the plodding trundling Western FASA Mechwarrior tradition.

Virtual on is a perfect game , one you can take years to master , or play for minutes , if you hook this to a pc and two force feedback pros , the ones that jump into your hands ! you can go beyond  emulating the original version . Mere Mortals should seek out the twinsticks , the Saturn versions are far superior to those released for the Dreamcast.

  

and to go with these we have Magic Carpet , Virtual Hydlide and Battle Stations 




so collectors BUY NOW from thegameveda Ebay:

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Just Cause 2 for £4.99 putting the fun back in your sandbox....

Over in the sandbox genre corner sits  a Cowboy ... a steal horse he rides ... plus or minus zombies , but whats that look up in the sky its Rico Rodriguez

Just Cause 2 (PC DVD) for £4.99 is criminally cheap , registers on Steam too , and by now you are done with the wiki... wiki..  Wild West Zombie mash up that Red Dead has become , also Just Cause 2 is full of Direct X11 loveliness on the  PC , runs on multi screen setups with ease , and is the most impressive and fun open world sandbox to date , as evidenced by the constant competitions by gamers to outdo themselves in the loony stunt arena as you can check out here 


Rarely has a sequel to a game so outdone its rivals and predecessor , Panau is vast , open to your imagination , breathtaking and insanely beautiful . That you get to play out all your favourite Bond , secret agent delivering chocolates by parachute fantasies is a bonus.The question is where do Avalanche go from here ? 

American cousins check out Mr Rodriguez adventures in Just Cause 2  here 

Notion Ink Adam : Death of a Tablet part 3: this is not the Droid you have been looking for ...move along

I have awarded Thegameveda 2010 coveted plastic Dodo award to the Notion Ink  and its Adam. 

CES 2011 is online/over  , and an army of around 100 Tablets is about to derezz the Notion Ink Adam even before the first one lands in the hands of its few purchasers... who has I predicted in a previous treatise entitled  Notion Ink Adam Death of a Tablet part 2  and prior to that in a discourse entitled The Notion Ink Adam Dead and Buried before Arrival  , are not going to receive their Adams on time .... it is not even funny any more...


Notion Inkers , the family , the few ..the happy few , have been spoon fed videos of leaves , hdmi out displays, and wonder of wonder videos of screen rotation!  to the un-enchanted the over complex and overstretched software layer  has managed to make the hardware look like its dressed for oblivion wearing a giant Albatross around its neck ... Enough I cannee take no more Captain...too many ornithological riffs .

As I write there are still no preorders available , and there still has been no live demo of the fabled pixelqi screen. There is an official on site video but this does not manage to actually show actual use of the tablet , they went for a Wetab simulated concept demo . Isn't that nice ? . But all of that is irrelevant , for alas poor Adam ,is dead , we did not know him well , a tablet of infinite jest it seems... not...

As I write  the new tablet army is ending the year long tease that the Notion Ink Adam launch has become ,satiating the hunger and expectations of millions of tablet fans.  Frankly outside of a few 1000 punters who through the power of the Notion Ink Blog Grooming scheme have talked and talked and talked themselves into buying the thing ,  believing falsely that the Adam would arrive in 2010 , be available to preorder , and be revolutionary compared to its competition , able to run Honeycomb with the rest of the big boys , well you know none of that has happened.


A favourable review  sorry preview  , sorry hands on in some dark corner of CES , by usually Apple centric blogs,one  by the same journalist who was so wowed by it 1 year ago.... represent a few patronising pats on the back for young Rohan from the big blogs perhaps , to make up for the universal vitriol poured on Fusion Garage on their sites.... and the realisation that the day will come when one of these Asian genii will dethrone Jobs and Master Gates ,  it won't be Notion Ink or Fusion Garage though!


lets see what Rohans up against : or why the Adam died....


Design choice faults were obvious in the Adam from Creation or inception as folks like to say these days  ......where to begin , too much talking and too little action , most importantly settling on a suboptimal res of 1024 by 600 when the Tegra 2 tablets are all running beyond this and the ref for tablets to use Honeycomb is 1280*720 .Wasting time designing a leaf based UI , remember the leaf based Linux UI of the Joojoo? and vapour launching the tablet before Honeycomb 3  . The tech is dated , rushed , software clunky , complex and futitle when you think every tablet and your toaster will be running Honeycomb 

The Adam like the doomed Tegra 2 based Folio will fail because of its impatience to release before the only UI layer designed for tablets ,Honeycomb,that can take on iOS is released. Oh you few 1000 users may be able to hack some version of Honeycomb , but it wont be the bells and whistles , tablet OS that every other cheaper faster , larger and more widely available Tegra 2 tablet will be running .

1.We have the 4 Musketeers from Asus who have not one but 4 tablets out , including they claim the most powerful tablet ever :


2.Having defeated the Asus Musketeers the Notion Ink Adam will have to take on  The Motorola Xoom  which is the greatest thing to come out of CES , for many , and has been awarded that title officially.

3. Then the more   powerful full OS Windows 7  tablets from Motion Computing   , futuristic dual screen  tablets in the form of the Acer Iconia .. as well as too many to mention competitors  including an i5 powered Windows 7 tablet the Eee Slate EP121, which has a 12.1-inch  screen up to 4GB of memory and  Bluetooth 3.0 , and then how about some  Honeycomb running variants from 7 to 10 inches . The Eee Slate works with a Wacom Digitizer pen and also comes with a bluetooth keyboard . And then there are all the others with Toshiba , LG , Motorola, and Blackberry to name but a few that all showed their wares .

4. And of course in the last weeks of January the tech world is readying itself for the annual vegan (I am sure) Cupertino luau where Steve Jobs  will roast the competition in an underground banana leaf oven with the announcement of iPad 2 


Then if by some miracle Notion Ink get the Adam past that lot , we have around 74+ other tablets too numerous to go into here , but you get the picture , Adam is over.


5. the Adam isn't fighting against hundreds , it is fighting against millions:Say the Adam  hardware Cyrano like manages to win its moonlit  duel with 100 odd tablets , what about the Software ? Well major players like Google , Blackberry , Apple and even Microsoft with Windows 7 tablets have millions of developers collectively working for them.  The Adam cannot scale this software wall , unless of course it was designed to leverage Android or Windows , but after   CES we know that their is no official Android app store for it , Honeycombs native res for tablets is too much for the Adam , and there is no way you will be installing Windows 7 without ripping it open adding RAM and an ssd ,much simpler ,cheaper and wiser to go for an i5 powered   Asus Ep121 for instance.... Although you won't be convincing many Notion Ink sheep who would probably be happy with an empty box with Adam written on it , the way they worship the thing. But consider they have wasted a year of their lives blogging for some tech that was outdated the day it was announced , and is outperformed in price and power by much more viable alternatives from name manufacturers and I do not mean Apple alone people!


So Notion Inks Adam is a dead , a deceased parrot of a semi-vapour tablet , even its official video does not show the tablet ! yeah you noticed that too did you?


Lessons in how to not design a tablet or any other product for that matter:


1. And most importantly ,too much design bs - there is a years worth of how not to design a tablet blog nonsense for students of how not to design tablets on the official blog. Not entirely different from the mistakes Fusion Garage made although they did not tease their prospective customers so much...


2.Every tablet turning heads at CES eg the Xoom is reliant on the might of the big players creating the OS . Fusion Garage had hardware that could have run Windows but went nuts over a cloud tablet , possibly 10 years before we get used to cloud computing , how do I know it could run Windows 7 ? because I am typing this on it . Notion Ink similarly , for all their talk designed themselves out of a market , that will be controlled by simple hardware design , giving the customers what they want does not mean ignoring what is best for them . Honeycomb is ready to shine on the 100 odd new Tegra 2 tablets , all of whom are going to be more easily available ,cheaper , and useful than the Adam with Eden , its leaves and its suboptimal res. Windows 7 tablets will cater for the power hungry or anyone who wants to be free from App slavery. There is no place for Adam in this very busy  arena.


3. Again , the screen resolution is totally wrong , you have powerful hardware , but Notion Ink pair it with a screen that does not even run at the minimum resolution that is required by Honeycomb to function on tablets. And of course every other Tegra 2 tablet is running at that optimal res. 

With the tablet competition hotting up , even Steve Jobs will have to work some wicked voodoo with iPad 2.0 , Rohan and Notion Ink do not stand a chance , another Adam chased out of Eden by the bite of an Apple .....

4. Adam is ugly the bezzels are astonishingly large , giving it a certain early Shenzen  Apad chic ... I do not want a bezel I can replace , I do not want a bezel at all 


So people do not waste your hard earned cash , no one who preordered will get theirs on time , or before the tsunami of above tablets arrives , its the wrong res for Honeycomb , Eden is  another useless over complex UI that will not compete with Honeycomb ,  or full OS tablets ,  there are around 100 alternatives weeks away , all with better hardware and pricing , in reality this year long tease has been a tablet version of the Emperors New Clothes .
  
Is there a single promise that has been kept by this company and are you going to  walk around with obsolete tech and software when the latest whizzbang tablets are raining down all around you?


Notion Ink Adam? ...more like Notion Sink Adam.....too much conversation and too little action as the King used to sing...and ... thank you very much ..huh..huh...right I am off for my refried banana snack is ready ...

I just hope it does not go through a resurrection , as I am running out of bird similes......

check out some of the Adam competition below : 

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Pandemics The Saboteur for £5.49 ..ahhhh...Paris ..in Wartime.....

Get The Saboteur (PC DVD) for £5.49 . Pandemic are coding legends and if you are without The Saboteur now you have no excuse. Remember to persevere past the race level ! liberating  wartime Paris , and several of its more liberal citreons,is great fun. 

And over in the USA if you would like to help liberate a virtual wartime Paris and not be virtually thanked for it , in fact be virtually hated for your efforts,  The Saboteur awaits....


Adieu 

100 Rogues free from iTunes today!

Hankering for some tongue in cheek top down RPG action that  brings back memories of the so bad  it was great Warlock of Firetop Mountain computer game  ? Well it seems they do make them like they used to ! (only better !)

get on over to iTunes and own 100 Rogues , which is an excellent game , for free today only

 

check out 100 Rogues 

and this is Warlock Of Firetop Mountain back in the day ...the day of the ZX Spectrum...

find out more about Warlock of Firetop Mountain here 

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DRAGON AGE II teasing that sexy fire at you from Steam now !

Dragon Age 2 : Confusion 

So now I am slightly ...confused , my experience of buying recent Bioware and Bethesda RPGS tells me to hold off : There are too many iterations of Dragon Age 2 and some with time limited offers , there is no clue as to if the retail version will register on Steam . And the dread DLC purchase cycle has already started prematurely , before the main game has been released . 

Now consider that Dragon Age Awakenings the prequel  had all this DLC

• Dragon Age: Origins – The Stone Prisoner (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Warden's Keep (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Return to Ostagar (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening (Expansion Pack)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Darkspawn Chronicles (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Leliana's Song (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – The Golems of Amgarrak (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Witch Hunt (Downloadable Content)
• Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition

Purchasing that lot would have pushed your donation to Bioware's horde of gold , closer to £100 than you might at first have expected.And if you waited till this Steam Christmas sale you could have had all that for £11.99 ! All 22gbs of it!

Then consider that Dragon Age 2 will also have at the very least DLC costing the same,if not more .... 

You know half of the otherwise excellent game experience , is going to be DLC,or deciding when to buy the DLC .  And you would be better off waiting till the summer or winter sale of this game that you will never have time to play through anyway , especially after the Nintendo 3DS has had its way with your wallet . 

Frankly there should be a law against companies selling games like this as incomplete products , you would not expect to pay for half a  Bluray film , and then pay for DLC to complete it .  Avatar ends when the credits role , if a 500 million dollar movie can be released in completion to its audience , as a complete experience without fans having to purchase DLC and  register and log on to  company servers that are going to be shut down eventually any way , why can`t a million dollar video game be released in completion.Avatar took 10 years to make ,so the usual excuse by game companies claiming games take so long to develop is a moot point.

There are multiple choices of options

When are Bioware going to grow up and release a full game - make us wait a year and just release it in one package. When ? Never as the DLC model is too easily lapped up by fans ....for now  

Another option would be to release a prestige edition that includes all future DLC free , but consider I got my Dragon Age Ultimate edition for £11.99 , less than a year after I purchased the original collectors edition . Waiting for a Bluray to drop in price may save you £10 , but waiting on a pc/console game can save you £100 .... 

EA she loves to tease....

Most annoying thing about the sexy game with Dragons part 2 release is the time limited upgrade of the retail version to the Signature edition , timed to run out on 11/01/10. Like I care , people go to work without ties now,people , they don't want to be told you have to buy game x before date y or you will miss out on Z . The whole point of this digitally distributed gaming revolution is that I can buy what I want when I want ! and get the best deal! 

oh really? like all that and all impending 12 DLC packs won't be in the Ultimate Edition come ......October? 

So yes some questions has been answered , will Dragon Age 2 hit Steam , yes it will buy it now from here . However a new question has been awakened .There is no news on how or  if the retail versions will register or if any of the so called signature edition nonsense will be included  for pre purchasers of the Steam version . There are a few meagre bonuses at present  .. we are talking real meagre .. here's hoping Gabe works some magic and every one gets upgraded to the Signature Edition . 

At present Bioware , EA and Steam have dashed the hopes of many fans , maybe this is all part of the tease that sexy rpg game with dragons part 2 comes with. 

Pre-Purchase now to receive two special in-game items! [ why so generous?] 2 whole items yaaaay!

FADESHEAR (sword)

The core of this blade is old. As old as the first smiths who sought a way to battle the nightmares from the land beyond. It has fought the demonic hosts in countless battles. Sometimes it has been held high in triumphant victory. Other times, it has lain broken besides its dying owner. But after every defeat it has always been reclaimed, reforged, and made stronger. Fadeshear has passed through many hands before yours. Now it is your turn to make the demons of the Fade pay for crossing the Veil into the waking world.

• Improves with each level-up
• additional damage vs. demons and undead

THE LION OF ORLAIS (shield)

At the height of the Summer War all of Orlais was embroiled in fierce battles. Over the course of the war dozens of contenders for the Imperial Throne emerged – most long forgotten except as footnotes in scholarly tomes. But everyone remembers the gallant young lord Emile Deveraux, “The Golden Prince”. Thought outnumbered at every turn, he racked victory upon victory culminating in the Seventh Battle of Roses. While wearing this shield he broke through his uncle’s vanguard to win the day. He never knew the taste of defeat, instead meeting his end at the hands of a jealous lover in the dead of night.

• 2 rune slots
• Adds to health
• Adds to % XP gain

Abysmal!


The preorders for Dragon Age 2 - Signature Edition UK   and the retail pre order versions of Dragon Age 2 have up to now been the Signature Editions  : in fact there does not seem to be a normal vanilla edition .. now I am even more confused .. I should begin that 22gb download of Dragon Age Ultimate Edition purchased for £11.99, to remind myself that patience is its own virtue...


A warning to Bioware and EA  in recent years I have spent more time thinking about buying your games rather than playing them . Oh I own them all but I have definitely spent more time downloading the games than playing them , soon if Bioware keep bloating their games every fan will spend 100 hours downloading a 30 hour game! Then factor in all the annoying  DLC purchase choices and you come to the golden truth about video games , how much of your life is actually being wasted on sexy RPG games with Dragons or Aliens  , when you could have been up to far nicer things back in the real world with real people ...people!


After this gen of AAA titles up to Mass Effect 3 , Bioware will hit the same RPG development wall that Square Enix hit with its Final Fantasy series. So we have had sexy rpg game with Aliens,Dragons and later this year with Wookies..Where do they take rpg gaming from there?I hope they start making changes to their incomplete game release model , with the DLC hunger they create and the bloatware size of  full game downloads which have many of their fans spending longer downloading Bioware games than actually playing them. And with less time and code devoted to simulating interspecies wooing and mating rituals ,who knows they might yet invigorate the rpg genre that over the years their talent has largely rejuvenated .