The New York Times
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November 25, 2008
Best Video Games By SETH SCHIESEL
In these challenging economic times, it may come as a surprise that a well-chosen video game can be one of the most cost-effective gifts possible. Sure, the $60 price tag on some top games can be daunting, but when you realize that the right one can wrangle dozens or even hundreds of hours out of the right player, games can start to look like the smart entertainment investments they are.
Here are some of the best games of the year, each of which could be the perfect gift for the right person. The shrewd will notice no sports or music games on this list. That is because those are easier to shop for: pick the desired sport or tunes and go.
Amazon
GRAND THEFT AUTO IV
DVD
Ideal audience: well-adjusted adults who want to explore a rich, intelligent, politically incorrect digital rendition of New York City. As long as you can accept that a great work of modern entertainment can revolve around criminals — something long assumed in television and films — then it is almost impossible to deny that G.T.A. IV is one of the most compelling games in recent years. The driving and shooting is fun, but the real star of the game is the city itself, rendered with a loving sense of decay and populated with perhaps the best cast of dysfunctional characters to grace a pixel. For Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (PC version coming in December). Rating: M for Mature.
Amazon
SID MEIER’S CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION
Ideal audience: families interested in fostering an appreciation of both global history and strategic thinking; also, commuters looking to upgrade from Tetris. Civilization is the top strategy franchise in the history of video games. With Revolution the series moves beyond PCs and arrives on consoles and the hand-held Nintendo DS. The premise remains the same: guide a historical culture from the dawn of history to the space age. Nothing feels better than dominating Genghis Khan and Napoleon at the same time. For Xbox 360, PS3 and DS. Rating: E10+ for Everyone 10 and older.
Amazon
WARHAMMER ONLINE
Video Game
Ideal audience: massively multiplayer online gamers who cannot satisfy their bloodlust in World of Warcraft. Don’t get me wrong; like more than 10 million other people, I love World of Warcraft. But great games can stand some competition, and Warhammer Online, the new online version of the decades-old British fantasy universe, provides it. Warhammer employs many conventions from Warcraft but gives them a new twist in a game that focuses largely on player-versus-player combat, rather than on battling computer-controlled foes. For PC. Rating: T for Teen.
Amazon
WII FIT
Ideal audience: couch produce of all ages. Nintendo’s best game of the year is not really a game. It’s a light exercise system meant to take just a few calories off. The most surprising thing: it works. For Wii. Rating: E for Everyone.
Amazon
LITTLEBIGPLANET
Video Game
Ideal audience: aspiring game designers and anyone else with excellent eye-hand coordination. Th breakout title this year for Sony’s PlayStation 3, LittleBigPlanet is in some ways as close to YouTube as games have come. In its essence it is merely a “platformer”: you navigate your little beanbag character mostly by running and jumping. The secret sauce is that the game allows users to create their own levels and share them easily with other players online. Rating: E.
Amazon
DEAD SPACE
Ideal audience: people who like being scared. Dead Space is a straight-ahead science fiction survival-horror experience. You, the player, are trapped on a spooky spaceship with a horde of space zombies who want to eat you, or turn you into one of them, or something. You wade through them while engaging in what is charmingly referred to as “strategic dismemberment.” For what it is, though, Dead Space is both conceived and executed at a high level. For Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Rating: M.
Amazon
FALLOUT 3
Video Game
Ideal audience: old-school role-playing gamers and anyone who wants to see Washington in ashes. The return of the classic Fallout series is a sprawling re-creation of the Capitol area after a nuclear war. The tone is darker and less slyly humorous than previous Fallout games, but the sheer size and ambition of the game impress. For Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Rating: M.
Amazon
PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE CURIOUS VILLAGE
Ideal audience: puzzle fans. One of the sleepers of 2008, Professor Layton ties together more than 100 beautifully designed brainteasers with an endearing anime-style story. The puzzles themselves are perfectly intelligible to nongamers. For Nintendo DS. Rating: E.
Amazon
GEARS OF WAR 2
Ideal audience: testosterone-fueled core gamers who like chain saws. When you think about the stereotypical video game, this is what you’re thinking about: big guns, voracious alien bad guys, great graphics, huge explosions, cardboard-cutout characters, silly dialogue and cheap thrills all around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. For Xbox 360. Rating: M.
Amazon
FABLE II
Video Game
Ideal audience: emotionally mature children and most fans of delicate entertainment design. This game is rated M not because it is especially violent or profane. It is rated M because in between casting spells and swinging swords you can have children, you can get married (and have affairs if you choose), and you can buy condoms. Shocking, I know. For children who are comfortable with the basic facts of life, there is no reason not to share Fable II. It’s a wonderful game on its own, and it beats handing a child a virtual machine gun. For Xbox 360.
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
David Pogue’s Gadget List of 2008
August 7, 2008, 4:22 pm
David Pogue’s Gadget List of 2008
Two years ago, totally strapped for a column idea, I resorted to raiding my own e-mail Inbox. There I found a reader request:
“I would love to see a feature where you list what you personally use. Call it Pogue’s List or something. It would be great to see what someone as plugged in as you uses personally. Everything tech — watch, laptop, TV, car, digital camera, film camera, like that.”
What’s really surprising to me is how many readers have written to request an update of that list, especially lately.
Actually, the time is probably right. This year alone, I’ve bought several of the products that I reviewed in my column. So here it is: Pogue’s List 2008.
* Camera. When the picture counts, I grab our Nikon D80 and its Amazing 11X Image-Stabilized Lens (Nikon’s 18-200mm zoomer, which cost almost as much as the camera). It’s a fast, loaded, prosumer digital S.L.R. that takes jaw-droppingly beautiful pictures. (I sold my old D50 to my sister.)
But the Nikon is big and bulky, so my wife carries a Canon SD700 IS shirt-pocket camera; it’s also a rockin’ machine. It has image stabilization, it’s fast (processing and focusing), it takes really great movies and the pictures are superb for a little cam. Unfortunately, its autofocus just died this week. So I’m pretty sure I’m going to replace it with the Canon SD890 (5X optical zoom–unheard-of in pocket cams) or the SD950 (which has a 0.6-inch sensor, much larger and therefore better than the usual 0.3-inch or 0.4-inch sensor in pocket cams).
* Camcorder. No question here: Canon HV30. It’s a hi-def tape camcorder that doesn’t kid around with image quality; when they say high definition, they mean it. And it’s got everything: top-loading tape door, mike jack, headphone jack.
To me, all those non-tape camcorders (hard drives, DVDs, memory cards, etc.) have two huge drawbacks. First, all of them–ALL of them–compromise image quality, even the ones that claim to be hi-def, because they have to compress the image to fit the limited storage.
Second, I don’t understand where people think they’re going to store all their movies. Once the hard drive or memory card gets full, you have to empty it onto your computer’s hard drive. And then what?
I have a drawer containing 200 MiniDV tapes, documenting the lives of our three kids. I’d need NINE 300-gig hard drives to store all that. And what are you going to do when the drive dies?
* Cellphone. I occasionally grumble about Verizon, but never about its network; the signal stands head and shoulders above the other companies.
I’ve been a longtime fan of LG’s Verizon phones. When my 8100 died, I treated myself to the 8700, a silver, brushed-metal, superthin flip phone; it was the best-looking phone in the store.
As I wrote last October: “The sound quality amazing. The screen is brilliant. And I took some sample shots with the 2-megapixel camera and found it even better than my own LG.”
Unfortunately, “the darned thing is so thin and slick, it’s hard to hold; a rigid thin slab is not actually very easy to hold in your round, fleshy palm.” Oh, and this phone erased the magnetic strip on two hotel-room key cards before I got smart and started keeping them in different pockets.
I concluded: “If I had to it over again, I would not have bought this expensive, classy, impractical two-seater roadster. I’d have bought the Toyota Camry that my wife did: the LG8300. It’s a nearly perfect cellphone.”
(Why don’t I own an iPhone? Because AT&T has feeble coverage where I live, and because I’m on a two-year Verizon family plan.)
* Computer. I live on a MacBook Air. In the five months I’ve owned it, I’ve missed having the built-in DVD drive once; missed having FireWire about six times; missed the speed of a more serious machine about 20 times.
But I still consider those small sacrifices for the pleasure I get out of this machine the rest of the time. I use it like a glorified Palm Pilot. You pick it up with one hand. It turns on instantaneously. I’ve even read through e-mail while standing in the X-ray line at the airport.
I also just bought a Dell Inspiron 530s (total, delivered and taxed: $497). It’s a tiny little box that you can lay horizontally under your monitor, which is exactly how I have it. My favorite feature is the front panel: memory-card slots, USB, audio in, headphones, and so on. I’m constantly plugging and unplugging stuff, so it makes total sense.
I really shouldn’t reward Dell with any more business, considering how furious I am to this day about the design of my previous machine, a Dell Dimension 4550 tower. It had front-panel USB jacks, too, but they were hidden behind a door that was hinged at the top and only opened about two inches. You had to crawl on the floor with a flashlight every time wanted to plug something in. I sure hope that designer has found some other career.
* Mobile Internet. This is the greatest splurge, and the greatest convenience, in my entire portfolio: a Sierra Compass 597 cellular modem from Sprint. It’s a tiny, 2.5-inch stick of plastic that slides into the MacBook Air’s USB slot and gets me online at impressively high speeds.
The service costs $60 a month, which I find slightly outrageous–it’s clearly designed to gouge corporate drones on expense accounts.
But I have to tell you, in my travels, I’ve seen every kind of Wi-Fi hot spot under the sun. And Sprint’s cellular Internet beats the nation’s network of increasingly flaky hot spots any day of the week; in many a hotel room, it’s turned out to be much faster than Wi-Fi. Not to mention that it gets me online anywhere, even in the 99.9 percent of America where there is no Wi-Fi signal.
I’ve never found a dead spot, and the software is much slicker (and requires less time to connect) than the equivalent modems from Verizon.
* Movies. I bought the Vudu box this year ($300). Its hard drive contains the first 30 seconds of 5,000 movies. When you pick one to watch, it starts playing immediately–and the next section of movie downloads in the background. Great quality, huge selection, elegant software.
The best part: no monthly fees. Movies cost $2 to $4 to rent, or $15 to $20 to buy, meaning that they stay on your Vudu hard drive forever. So when life gets busy, I don’t pay anything.
The service keeps improving since I reviewed this thing last September. More hi-def movies, more TV shows, better features.
I canceled my HBO and Showtime subscriptions–something like $240 a year–which made very little economic sense for us. If I’m lucky, I have time for two or three movies in a month, so it’s much more economical to pay as I go.
* Car. Toyota Prius. Wow, what a great car. In April, I tried to buy a second Prius–and was told there’s a 10-month wait. Thanks a lot, gas crisis.
* TiVo. I bit the bullet and bought the Tivo Series 3, the hi-def masterpiece machine (which has, grrr, already been discontinued). Runs like a Swiss watch, has never let us down. Still the best DVR software and features on the planet. Subscribes to my favorite Web videos. When I’m away, I can program it from across the Internet.
Looking over this year’s Pogue List, I can see that, in my middle age, I’ve gotten fancier in my tastes. A few years ago, you wouldn’t have caught me dead with that $60-a-month cellular modem.
But life is short, travel is hard. And at its best, technology makes the most of both.
David Pogue’s Gadget List of 2008
Two years ago, totally strapped for a column idea, I resorted to raiding my own e-mail Inbox. There I found a reader request:
“I would love to see a feature where you list what you personally use. Call it Pogue’s List or something. It would be great to see what someone as plugged in as you uses personally. Everything tech — watch, laptop, TV, car, digital camera, film camera, like that.”
What’s really surprising to me is how many readers have written to request an update of that list, especially lately.
Actually, the time is probably right. This year alone, I’ve bought several of the products that I reviewed in my column. So here it is: Pogue’s List 2008.
* Camera. When the picture counts, I grab our Nikon D80 and its Amazing 11X Image-Stabilized Lens (Nikon’s 18-200mm zoomer, which cost almost as much as the camera). It’s a fast, loaded, prosumer digital S.L.R. that takes jaw-droppingly beautiful pictures. (I sold my old D50 to my sister.)
But the Nikon is big and bulky, so my wife carries a Canon SD700 IS shirt-pocket camera; it’s also a rockin’ machine. It has image stabilization, it’s fast (processing and focusing), it takes really great movies and the pictures are superb for a little cam. Unfortunately, its autofocus just died this week. So I’m pretty sure I’m going to replace it with the Canon SD890 (5X optical zoom–unheard-of in pocket cams) or the SD950 (which has a 0.6-inch sensor, much larger and therefore better than the usual 0.3-inch or 0.4-inch sensor in pocket cams).
* Camcorder. No question here: Canon HV30. It’s a hi-def tape camcorder that doesn’t kid around with image quality; when they say high definition, they mean it. And it’s got everything: top-loading tape door, mike jack, headphone jack.
To me, all those non-tape camcorders (hard drives, DVDs, memory cards, etc.) have two huge drawbacks. First, all of them–ALL of them–compromise image quality, even the ones that claim to be hi-def, because they have to compress the image to fit the limited storage.
Second, I don’t understand where people think they’re going to store all their movies. Once the hard drive or memory card gets full, you have to empty it onto your computer’s hard drive. And then what?
I have a drawer containing 200 MiniDV tapes, documenting the lives of our three kids. I’d need NINE 300-gig hard drives to store all that. And what are you going to do when the drive dies?
* Cellphone. I occasionally grumble about Verizon, but never about its network; the signal stands head and shoulders above the other companies.
I’ve been a longtime fan of LG’s Verizon phones. When my 8100 died, I treated myself to the 8700, a silver, brushed-metal, superthin flip phone; it was the best-looking phone in the store.
As I wrote last October: “The sound quality amazing. The screen is brilliant. And I took some sample shots with the 2-megapixel camera and found it even better than my own LG.”
Unfortunately, “the darned thing is so thin and slick, it’s hard to hold; a rigid thin slab is not actually very easy to hold in your round, fleshy palm.” Oh, and this phone erased the magnetic strip on two hotel-room key cards before I got smart and started keeping them in different pockets.
I concluded: “If I had to it over again, I would not have bought this expensive, classy, impractical two-seater roadster. I’d have bought the Toyota Camry that my wife did: the LG8300. It’s a nearly perfect cellphone.”
(Why don’t I own an iPhone? Because AT&T has feeble coverage where I live, and because I’m on a two-year Verizon family plan.)
* Computer. I live on a MacBook Air. In the five months I’ve owned it, I’ve missed having the built-in DVD drive once; missed having FireWire about six times; missed the speed of a more serious machine about 20 times.
But I still consider those small sacrifices for the pleasure I get out of this machine the rest of the time. I use it like a glorified Palm Pilot. You pick it up with one hand. It turns on instantaneously. I’ve even read through e-mail while standing in the X-ray line at the airport.
I also just bought a Dell Inspiron 530s (total, delivered and taxed: $497). It’s a tiny little box that you can lay horizontally under your monitor, which is exactly how I have it. My favorite feature is the front panel: memory-card slots, USB, audio in, headphones, and so on. I’m constantly plugging and unplugging stuff, so it makes total sense.
I really shouldn’t reward Dell with any more business, considering how furious I am to this day about the design of my previous machine, a Dell Dimension 4550 tower. It had front-panel USB jacks, too, but they were hidden behind a door that was hinged at the top and only opened about two inches. You had to crawl on the floor with a flashlight every time wanted to plug something in. I sure hope that designer has found some other career.
* Mobile Internet. This is the greatest splurge, and the greatest convenience, in my entire portfolio: a Sierra Compass 597 cellular modem from Sprint. It’s a tiny, 2.5-inch stick of plastic that slides into the MacBook Air’s USB slot and gets me online at impressively high speeds.
The service costs $60 a month, which I find slightly outrageous–it’s clearly designed to gouge corporate drones on expense accounts.
But I have to tell you, in my travels, I’ve seen every kind of Wi-Fi hot spot under the sun. And Sprint’s cellular Internet beats the nation’s network of increasingly flaky hot spots any day of the week; in many a hotel room, it’s turned out to be much faster than Wi-Fi. Not to mention that it gets me online anywhere, even in the 99.9 percent of America where there is no Wi-Fi signal.
I’ve never found a dead spot, and the software is much slicker (and requires less time to connect) than the equivalent modems from Verizon.
* Movies. I bought the Vudu box this year ($300). Its hard drive contains the first 30 seconds of 5,000 movies. When you pick one to watch, it starts playing immediately–and the next section of movie downloads in the background. Great quality, huge selection, elegant software.
The best part: no monthly fees. Movies cost $2 to $4 to rent, or $15 to $20 to buy, meaning that they stay on your Vudu hard drive forever. So when life gets busy, I don’t pay anything.
The service keeps improving since I reviewed this thing last September. More hi-def movies, more TV shows, better features.
I canceled my HBO and Showtime subscriptions–something like $240 a year–which made very little economic sense for us. If I’m lucky, I have time for two or three movies in a month, so it’s much more economical to pay as I go.
* Car. Toyota Prius. Wow, what a great car. In April, I tried to buy a second Prius–and was told there’s a 10-month wait. Thanks a lot, gas crisis.
* TiVo. I bit the bullet and bought the Tivo Series 3, the hi-def masterpiece machine (which has, grrr, already been discontinued). Runs like a Swiss watch, has never let us down. Still the best DVR software and features on the planet. Subscribes to my favorite Web videos. When I’m away, I can program it from across the Internet.
Looking over this year’s Pogue List, I can see that, in my middle age, I’ve gotten fancier in my tastes. A few years ago, you wouldn’t have caught me dead with that $60-a-month cellular modem.
But life is short, travel is hard. And at its best, technology makes the most of both.
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