Short Review: Nintendo DS

I think it's about time I wrote a hardware review again. :D I've chosen the Nintendo DS as my, um, victim. OK, so I have a DS. I decided that with the advent of the DS Lite, I should take this opportunity to grab a DS as the prices decline. :D First off, I believe a comparison is in order. There are reasons why I thought the PSP was higher on my 'to buy' list than the DS, and this picture shows it.

While arguably, my photo taking skills suck, this photo is merely to show you what I think Nintendo screwed up on the DS. As you can see, the screen is visibly worse. You think that PSP is on max brightness? Think again. That PSP is on minimum brightness.

Why did I use the flash? If I didn't, you wouldn't be able to see the difference. Some people might argue it doesn't matter, and a flash shouldn't be used in this comparison. It matters - a flash is a good test of which screen performs well in sunlight or very well lighted conditions - if the screen can't handle it, unfortunately you won't be seeing much.

Both screens have been protected with the exact same brand of screen protector - and I'm not kidding. Another grouch I have with the DS besides it's already simple firmware is it's shoddy volume control. I remember the days when my Game Boy volume was controlled by a wheel. But no, Nintendo had to use this sliding thing for a volume control. Trust me when I tell you that it is pretty worthless for controlling volume. My opinion is that the DS has 3 settings only - mute, some sound, really loud sound.

(look to the left of the photo to see the volume control)

The buttons on the DS do feel a tad worse than the PSP's. However, it is still on par with old Game Boys and the main feature of the DS is the touch screen. It also features a built-in microphone, however I haven't seen too much creative use of it. Most of the time, you end up blowing into the microphone, and the only few games I know of which make use of voice recognition are Nintendogs and Brain Age. Needless to say, with the small capacity of DS media, these recognition engines are quite finicky, and can act strangely.

A lot of DS games make use of the touch screen, but there are a number which use it exclusively as a second screen. I have seen a few games make only trivial use of the second screen, but many of them use the second screen to great effect.

It uses the same charger (and I believe the battery is the same too) as the Game Boy Advance SP.

The DS game slot is small and behaves like a lot of new spring-loaded memory card slots do. The stylus is kept (not very firmly) in a small slot for it in the DS, but is very short (most certainly among the improvements in the DS Lite).

As with most things, I like to do media size comparisons:

As you can see, the DS game (Mario Kart DS Australian version) is noticeably larger and thicker than ordinary memory cards like the MMC and MS Pro Duo next to it. It is still a lot smaller than the UMD which is used by the PSP, but I'd like to draw attention to that the fact is, a DS cartridge only can hold at most 1Gigabit (128MB) while all the other media in the photo can hold far more. The UMD is supposed to top off at 1.8GB.

While you might not think games need so much space on a portable, I believe the limitation of a DS cartridge might actually be the bane of developers - larger carts as I've heard mean slower transfer speeds on the DS. Note, that this review is tainted by my opinions. :D

Do I think the DS is a good gaming console? By all means - yes. The DS Download Play feature is amazing. While the feature is supposedly present on the PSP, I've yet to see any game use it. A lot of games support the DS Download-Play feature. A lot meaning really a lot. Sonic Rush, Mario Kart DS, Tetris DS, Polarium, Meteos, and the list goes on. The features rocks, period.

I certainly would like a browser of sorts for the DS, and maybe the ability to configure WiFi from within the basic firmware itself, rather than through a Nintendo WFC enabled game. That being said, I think Nintendo should watch out for design errors like those in the DS in any upcoming consoles. I'm not saying the DS is a bad buy, but I think that the DS Lite is a better bet if you are in the market for a DS to play DS games. And by the way, Metroid Prime Hunters is absolute pwnage when it comes to controls. :D

Photo Review: Gamecube Hardware

This time round, I decided the shock and awe tactic would be better. Here it is: the photo review of the Gamecube hardware! Don't expect any game reviews with photos any time soon, but do expect game reviews. :D

As we all very well know, the Gamecube was the smallest console of its generation (let's not count any subsequent hardware shrinkage, e.g. the PS2 70000 series). I thought an interesting thing to do would be to take photos of the Gamecube which you usually wouldn't see like the ports, and heads and so on unless you actually had a console, or went digging through the entire Internet.

It's quite pointless to review a piece of hardware, but photos are no problem. :D

Now, let's begin with the picture everyone should be familiar with.
The top of the Gamecube:

Then, here's what you don't always see, the fan on the left side:

And then vent on the other side:

I've also taken photos of the ports in the rear of the cube:

More importantly, expansion slots at the bottom of the Cube.

I didn't want to show it covered because that looked pretty uninteresting and pointless. However, I did make sure I took a photo of what the cube looked like with a disc and memory card inserted.

A Gamecube memory card looks a lot like the PS1 and PS2 ones, as you can see:

The console is small because the big AC adapter is outside of it.

This jack looks rather peculiar to me, but I think it avoids user stupidity.

(Photo is blur, do not check your eyes.)

The AV-out connector for each console is unique, and I think the Gamecube one is a tad more hardy than the PS2 one.

Here's a few of the shots of the controller:

The connector is rather small and tiny, but then again, I think it's just that the PS2 ones are too big.

Last but not least, what do the games look like?

The discs are really small, I could lose them under a stack of newspaper. (referring to the cliché people kept using about the Mac mini) Bad jokes aside, the disc is proprietary, but nevertheless, is still pretty cool and probably easier to hold for young children. (and yes, this is another bad joke.)

And that concludes my Gamecube photo review. I was thinking that it might be funny to include another relevant picture to show that my PowerBook ain't small fry. I thought an Exposé screen might be sufficient while I was halfway through the process of cropping and shrinking photos.

So, here's the image of Exposé in action, showing that my PowerBook ain't that slow, contrary to popular belief.

(And yes, some photos didn't make the final cut, and yes, this is as I was going through it halfway when I decided it would be a good idea to make Windows users jealous.)

Short Review: Dawn of War: Winter Assault

Just when I was so bored to death, I was pleasantly surprised with a new way to spend my time: a new expansion pack to one of my favourite real-time strategy games: Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War. The expansion pack, as the title of this post states, is Winter Assault. This is actually the theme of the planet where the single player campaign plays out, where it's snowing everywhere. So what's new in this expansion pack? Well, I think the promise of an entirely new 'race' which an entirely new tech tree and special abilities should suffice. How many expansion packs actually add an entirely new race to the roster? Of course, Winter Assault's best addition is not really the new race, but the single player campaign. The original Dawn of War's single player left much to be desired, as it was relatively short and relatively simple.

I'm not going to bore you with what you should already know about Dawn of War with the squads and what not, that's why this is only a short review of Winter Assault. If you loved Dawn of War, there should be nothing short of lack of funds or stock stopping you from getting this expansion pack. The new race is fun to play, but I believe it is pretty difficult to play it in the campaign. In the single player campaign, the first few missions restrict you to mostly infantry, which is the WEAKEST point of the new Imperial Guard. This actually makes the Order side of the campaign a big pain in the ass to play since your men lose morale quickly and start dying like flies. Despite this, the new race is still pretty fun to play, but you'll find (or at least I found) that they just take longer to do certain killing activities.

However, their vehicles make up for their weaknesses, and unfortunately, these vehicles are few in the first few missions. This means long long campaign games compared to the first few Disorder missions, where charging through or expanding your forces will generally win you the game. :P One thing to note about the Imperial Guard is that they will allow for possible 'rush' tactics in multiplayer (which are conveniently useless in the campaigns). You can build their basic military squad straight off the bat from your Field Command. The other races generally need you to build a Barracks equivalent to get access to the basic military squad.

One thing I did have to complain about was Winter Assault patching up Dawn of War. Sure, it was convenient to have one megaupdater with all the separate update files, but I find is a tad annoying that the developers didn't put together a large cumulative patch that could patch anything and everything between 1.00 and 1.30 to 1.40 instead of the incremental updating. It's not a pretty sight seeing the same files being patched over and over again. I think they are eventually going to have to do it, why not at this most important expansion pack stage?

The good news is that it got the job done, and it's otherwise pretty good. No score because there is no need for one. If you like Dawn of War, buy this expansion pack. Adds loads of maps to your multiplayer life. LOL