NiniaPimp Magazine

Perhaps “Spare Parts” wasn’t the best name for EA Bright Light’s newest downloadable platformer. The name all too often highlights the clunky way this online and offline cooperative journey borrows liberally from Ratchet Clank and misuses the considerable voice talents of Simon Pegg, resulting in a fairly brief experience that feebly parrots aspects of much better 3D platformers. That’s not to say that Spare Parts lacks charm, but it quickly crumbles under the weight of a lackluster cooperative mode, missed opportunities for humor, and questionable and imprecise controls. Indeed, “spare parts” implies that something is in dire need of repair, and it’s regrettable that this otherwise promising adventure was released without making sure that all of its own pieces fit perfectly in place.

In truth, Spare Parts takes its name from the hundreds of ship components and tokens littered across an alien world filled with jungles, mountains, and ancient temples. A pair of potentially lovable automatons named Mar-T and Chip–think WALL-E after a tune-up and long sessions at the robo gym–must use these parts to repair a damaged spaceship (controlled by an affable AI voiced by Simon Pegg). But their efforts are constantly thwarted by the headstrong Lord Krung and his minions. It’s enough for a promising start. Mar-T and Chip have a few endearing animations, the minions ooze with diabolical cuteness, and the world is unfailingly colorful and upbeat. Yet the momentum quickly dies. The dry script keeps Pegg from having too much fun with his lines; instead, he often sounds like he’s channeling Stephen Fry’s narrative performance in Little Big Planet. Mar-T and Chip rarely interact with each other in any memorable way, and they end up having all the personality of a flashy cell phone.

Chip and Mar-T prepare to battle for control of the camera.

Mar-T and Chip start their journey with some basic attacks that you never really need to improve on, and they scoop up several upgradable gadgets to help them with the many puzzles sprinkled throughout the world. Need to climb a metallic wall or activate a floor panel? Use the metallic boots. Need to smash or move heavy objects? Equip that power arm. Elsewhere, a nanite glove lets our heroes interface with several control panels, and a pair of rocket boots lets them coast over small gaps or set things on fire. These puzzles often appear when you haven’t yet received the item required to interact with them, so you can get some replay value out of hunting down missed items. The problem is that it’s often impossible to figure out which of these tools you need to use next without resorting to help. That’s where the x-scanner comes in, which is a device that highlights an interactive object with a symbol signifying the item you should use on it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always solve your problems. At worst, it complicates them. At times, the x-scanner shows that you need to move a rock with the power arm, for example, but it may take many frustrating seconds of maneuvering before you get Mar-T or Chip into the inch of space needed to interact with the object. A handful of objects seem like you can’t move them until you use the x-scanners on them (even if the needed interaction is patently obvious), and it’s unclear if this is a bug or intentional design. This imprecision extends to the platforming itself. The fixed camera makes jumping an ordeal, particularly when you must jump toward or away from the camera, and certain moves (like the familiar double jump and smash combo) often appear to miss their mark. And there’s never any real need to use one of the game’s myriad offensive combos because simple button mashing will usually get you through most encounters.

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It’s no lie, we’re fans of thin 13-inch laptops; so much so, we feel like they’re nearly the perfect size for the average portable computer. Unfortunately, the 13-inch landscape is a bit of a minefield for the average consumer: some options have underpowered processors, others lack optical drives. We loved the thin Asus U35JC-A1 when we reviewed it in October, finding it a perfect mix of size and performance. The $999 U36JC-A1 is an update with a few new features, including a faster Core i5 processor, a sleeker design, Nvidia Optimus 310M graphics, and a high-speed USB 3.0 port, making it arguably even better than its predecessor.

Those specs are solid, but this thin laptop still lacks Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors, and its battery life suffers in comparison with other thin laptops. While that may not bother some, it can’t hurt to wait a few months and see what updates might be around the corner, especially since our initial tests of Sandy Bridge laptop CPUs show a great deal of promise, and even some graphics prowess, that could make the successor to the U36J an even better buy. Nevertheless, the U36JC-A1 is a step up from its predecessor, albeit at a slightly higher price. Compared to the Toshiba Portege R700 series, which won a CNET Editors’ Choice, an equivalent CPU, hard drive, and RAM can be had for a similar price. The Portege, however, has an optical drive and lacks discrete graphics; the Asus U36JC-A1 has discrete graphics, but no optical drive.

Clad in a matte black magnesium shell with a smooth finish, the U36JC adopts an all-black, angular look that’s clean and instantly attractive. In several ways, the formal lines resemble those of the Alienware laptops or Asus’ Republic of Gamers laptop, the Asus G73.

It’s also similar in size and design to the Toshiba Portege R700 series, but, as mentioned above, without an optical drive. The upper lid swings open on two raised hinges, floating slightly above the base, and a thick raised back lip partially contains the U36JC’s eight-cell battery. The U36JC is nearly as thin as the recently reviewed ultracompact Lenovo IdeaPad U260, but it has a wider and deeper footprint.

The thin design is admirable and the chassis has a strong, lightweight feel, but the extra-thin body does have its compromises. You can actually see the internal circuit boards through venting grilles on the bottom–this isn’t a laptop you want to accidentally place down on a small puddle. Also, the heat vent on the left side is pushed to the front, resulting in blasts of very warm air on your left palm while typing.

Speaking of typing, the U36JC-A1′s keyboard feels as great as the previous U35JC-A1′s, thanks to solid, raised Chiclet-style keys with very little flex. The keyboard’s not backlit, but it’s perfectly sized and runs nearly edge-to-edge. A right-side column of Page Up/Down function keys, increasingly common on some laptops, makes finding the Enter and Shift keys more challenging than normal. For other functions such as volume or screen brightness, you’ll have to rely on function-combination keys along the top of the keyboard, as opposed to any dedicated keys.

The multitouch touch pad beneath has a smooth response, but is not a more modern-looking click pad. The old-fashioned chromed plastic button bar below isn’t our favorite type of click hardware, but then again we tend to touch-tap on the touch pad anyway. The pad could have been larger, though, and feels last-gen.

Also last-gen, in a matter of speaking, is Asus’ insistence on having two separate power-buttonlike buttons above the keyboard. One actually boots up the U36JC-A1 in Windows 7, as normally expected; the other launches a “quick start” OS for those who don’t have the patience for a full boot of Windows. We never could figure out why quick start is even needed: compared with an iPhone or iPad it’s not a quick start at all, and the weak applications rendered in reduced pixel resolutions aren’t worth the effort. Putting your laptop to sleep instead is the easier and faster answer.

The 13-inch glossy 16:9 screen on the Asus U36JC-A1 has a native resolution of 1,366×768, which is standard for this size. Text and pictures looked reasonably bright and crisp; viewing angles were wide horizontally, but vertically–as in, when opening and closing the laptop lid–the image degraded more quickly. It’s more than serviceable, but isn’t standout.

Integrated stereo speakers offer medium volume but hollow, tinny definition. They’re fine for basic video playback, but aren’t great for music. The integrated Webcam has an LED light to show when it’s operating–a nice touch–but the 640×480 maximum resolution and grainy picture quality won’t make fans of heavy Web-chatters.

Other than a high-speed 7,200rpm 500GB hard drive, the other notable feature of the U36JC is its USB 3.0 port, marked in blue. We haven’t used many of the high-speed drives and peripherals intended for USB 3.0, but it’s a nice forward-looking feature to have.

The 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 M460 CPU in the U36JC is an upgrade from the Core i3 in the U35JC-A1, and unlike in some thin laptops, it’s a full standard-voltage processor. Multitasking and general application performance are excellent, on par with most mainstream to high-end laptops. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of Intel’s next-generation Sandy Bridge processors, which promise even greater boosts in performance.

Our initial tests of Sandy Bridge CPUs seem promising, and could also have a positive impact on battery life. For this reason, we’d recommend waiting until upgraded Intel CPUs become more widely available, if you can–otherwise, don’t worry: this system still provides excellent performance compared with what’s out there.

This laptop also has automatic-switching graphics courtesy of a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 310M CPU with Optimus, which auto-detects which programs require advanced graphics and switches as needed between the dedicated GPU and integrated Intel graphics. Bottom line: basic gameplay is possible, but this is an entry-level graphics processor.

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Unfortunately, no matter what character your disembodied self is currently controlling, movement is stiff and cumbersome. Every character moves in a robotic way that makes you feel disconnected from the action. You move around the battlefield slowly, but when dodging or running, you move with abrupt speed that feels inconsistent with your character’s abilities. The controls feel stilted and unnatural, but since all the characters seem bound by the same restrictions, you can still have some intense firefights. These mostly test your accuracy from behind cover and your ability to dodge incoming rockets, but once you get accustomed to the problematic controls, there is a certain amount of skill at play. Just don’t waste too much time with the melee attack. Landing the one-button combos is incredibly finicky, and if you take a human shield, make sure your enemies fill him with enough bullets to kill him. Otherwise, your only option is to release him and have a close-quarters shoot-out.

Mindjack’s movement awkwardness extends to the enemy AI, which aspires to competence. The best strategy your enemies can manage is shooting at you from behind cover, but it’s not rare to see them running around the battlefield nonsensically as if caught in some broken logic loop. They are fairly good shots, though, so if you occupy some other character, you still need to keep an eye on the two protagonists. A helpful healing ability can save them from incapacitation, but you won’t be able to use this skill as every character. If both protagonists go down simultaneously for 10 seconds, you fail the level and must start again.

Between the clumsy controls and your abundant opponents, Mindjack poses a decent challenge that can get much harder if you choose to let other players join your game. They can come in as allies, but more often than not they enter as invading enemies and make things significantly tougher. Up to six players can be in the same match, though this flexibility can result in some frustratingly lopsided contests unless you limit the number of players that may join. Getting your progress impeded can be vexing, but it can be more satisfying to conquer human enemies than the AI, and if your match is unbalanced, it’s easy to find one that isn’t or just shut out the invaders entirely. Fighting to spoil someone’s progress has a dastardly appeal, and even if you lose during a certain scenario, the next one brings a change of scene and new characters to mindhack.

And to think, she was Voted Least Likely to Curbstomp Someone by her senior class.

Yet even the thrill of being the bad guy dulls before too long because Mindjack’s gameplay mechanics are so inelegant. It’s hard to enjoy a game when you can’t move the way you want to move, and beyond the cool premise and intriguing mindhacking ability, Mindjack doesn’t do you any favors. Whether it’s your friendly AI parking itself in your gunsights, or the dull bosses that can barely muster the energy to dodge your attacks, every part of this game is tainted. Mindjack does have a few bright spots, but they are smothered beneath the weight of the awkward controls and squandered potential.

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Unfortunately, no matter what character your disembodied self is currently controlling, movement is stiff and cumbersome. Every character moves in a robotic way that makes you feel disconnected from the action. You move around the battlefield slowly, but when dodging or running, you move with abrupt speed that feels inconsistent with your character’s abilities. The controls feel stilted and unnatural, but since all the characters seem bound by the same restrictions, you can still have some intense firefights. These mostly test your accuracy from behind cover and your ability to dodge incoming rockets, but once you get accustomed to the problematic controls, there is a certain amount of skill at play. Just don’t waste too much time with the melee attack. Landing the one-button combos is incredibly finicky, and if you take a human shield, make sure your enemies fill him with enough bullets to kill him. Otherwise, your only option is to release him and have a close-quarters shoot-out.

Mindjack’s movement awkwardness extends to the enemy AI, which aspires to competence. The best strategy your enemies can manage is shooting at you from behind cover, but it’s not rare to see them running around the battlefield nonsensically as if caught in some broken logic loop. They are fairly good shots, though, so if you occupy some other character, you still need to keep an eye on the two protagonists. A helpful healing ability can save them from incapacitation, but you won’t be able to use this skill as every character. If both protagonists go down simultaneously for 10 seconds, you fail the level and must start again.

Between the clumsy controls and your abundant opponents, Mindjack poses a decent challenge that can get much harder if you choose to let other players join your game. They can come in as allies, but more often than not they enter as invading enemies and make things significantly tougher. Up to six players can be in the same match, though this flexibility can result in some frustratingly lopsided contests unless you limit the number of players that may join. Getting your progress impeded can be vexing, but it can be more satisfying to conquer human enemies than the AI, and if your match is unbalanced, it’s easy to find one that isn’t or just shut out the invaders entirely. Fighting to spoil someone’s progress has a dastardly appeal, and even if you lose during a certain scenario, the next one brings a change of scene and new characters to mindhack.

Floating drones with guns are good. Floating drones with rockets are better.

Yet even the thrill of being the bad guy dulls before too long because Mindjack’s gameplay mechanics are so inelegant. It’s hard to enjoy a game when you can’t move the way you want to move, and beyond the cool premise and intriguing mindhacking ability, Mindjack doesn’t do you any favors. Whether it’s your friendly AI parking itself in your gunsights, or the dull bosses that can barely muster the energy to dodge your attacks, every part of this game is tainted. Mindjack does have a few bright spots, but they are smothered beneath the weight of the awkward controls and squandered potential.

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Stasis remains an invaluable part of your arsenal, but turnabout is fair play, and the bile of another new necromorph type, the puker, slows you down almost as much as your stasis ability slows the necromorphs down, leaving you extremely vulnerable for a short period of time. All of these new necromorph threats fit in perfectly with all the returning varieties from the first game, creating a diverse and deadly assortment of both short- and long-range attackers to keep you constantly on edge as you make your way across the Sprawl. Unfortunately, as in the first game, the camera sometimes contributes to the challenge. When you’re backed up against a wall and a necromorph gets too close to you, the camera often won’t show you your assailant, and targeting the creature can require you to move around to get a decent angle, which is frustrating when your health is rapidly being slashed away.

6287237NoneWielding the abilities of the different necromorphs to take down humans is tremendously satisfying.

You might think that with no mission captain issuing orders to Isaac, this time your objectives might be more diverse and engaging than the go-here, fix-this tasks Isaac was saddled with in Dead Space. Alas, that’s not the case. Isaac must still play galactic repairman; you need to fix elevators, deactivate AIs, align solar arrays, repair drills, and so on, none of which is terribly exciting. The occasional simple puzzles you encounter and a basic hacking minigame you must frequently complete provide nice little breaks from all the dismembering, though. Solving those puzzles sometimes involves moving through zero-G environments, and the way you do this has changed, for better and for worse. Whereas before, you looked around for a suitable surface to land on and then automatically jumped across the zero-G space, you can now hover in place and move freely in all directions. This added freedom allows for some fun moments in which you must soar around large open spaces to interact with objects. But you can always orient yourself to the ground with the push of a button, so these changes come at the expense of the delightfully disorienting sensation that went with seeing the Ishimura from dizzying new perspectives as you stood on the wall or ceiling of a chamber.

In addition to playing a lot like its predecessor, Dead Space 2 looks a great deal like the visually impressive original. Dead Space cleverly incorporated your health meter and stasis meter into the back of Isaac’s suit, and that’s still the case; there’s no distracting HUD, which lets you feel all the more immersed in the atmospheric environments. But the size and diversity of the Sprawl give Dead Space 2 a very different atmosphere from the original game. Your journey takes you through hospitals, shopping districts, residential quarters, schools, and other locales, all of which are positively packed with details that create a haunting sense that this is a place with history, a place where, up until very recently, people lived normal lives. This variety also means that the Sprawl is not as consistently oppressive a location as was the Ishimura, and at times you may miss all that time spent in the claustrophobic industrial corridors of the planet-cracker. But Dead Space 2′s bigger, more sprawling and action-oriented campaign gives the game its own identity; this is the equivalent of the blockbuster movie sequel Aliens to the first game’s more moody and intimate Alien. The sound design is an absolutely essential part of the immersive spell the game casts. Recorded announcements echo eerily through the empty corridors; each blast of your weapons rings with the convincing pound of a powerful industrial tool; and the terrifying shrieks, screams, and wails of the necromorphs send shivers up your spine and adrenaline coursing through your veins.

The intensity of the necromorph outbreak never lets up when you’re playing as a human in multiplayer.

The single-player campaign clocks in at around 12 hours and offers some solid replay value because you can start new games and carry over all your purchased, upgraded equipment, or even try tackling the “hard core” mode, which restarts you from your last save each time you die and permits you to save only three times over the course of the entire campaign. But the real draw to returning to Dead Space 2 time and again is its terrific team-based competitive multiplayer. Divided into humans and necromorphs with up to four players on each side, the multiplayer gives the human team a series of objectives they need to complete within a time limit–interacting with consoles, carrying items, destroying objects, and so on–while the necromorphs’ only goal is to stop the humans. The humans all play exactly like Isaac in the single-player, and the opposing players get to choose one of four necromorph types each time they spawn: the elusive pack; the long-range, wall-crawling lurker; the resilient puker; and the hard-hitting spitter.

The setup will feel immediately familiar to those who have played Left 4 Dead 2′s competitive multiplayer, but the Dead Space trappings make it a wholly different experience, and an exhilarating one at that. While the mood of the single-player campaign is one of sustained tension and dread, broken frequently by necromorph attacks, multiplayer games create the frantic sense of a constant, desperate fight for survival against an unending onslaught. Humans are individually tougher than the necromorphs, and they have the advantage of spawning with a health pack in their inventories. But unlike the humans, necromorphs can choose where to spawn, making it possible for them to split the humans up and overpower them. Teams alternate once on each map so all players play both sides, and regardless of which side you’re playing on, the mode strongly encourages coordinating with team members; taking down humans as part of an organized necromorph assault is immensely rewarding, as is completing an objective as a human player in the final few seconds of a hard-fought match. You earn experience points and level up as you play, gaining access to new weapons, more stasis power, and other benefits as a human and more powerful attacks as a necromorph, which, while nothing new, makes this multiplayer even more addictive.

Necromorphs may be undead mutations but they still manage to look pretty sharp.

Dead Space 2 doesn’t bring with it the same sense of experiencing something utterly new and innovative that its predecessor did. But it’s nonetheless a terrific game, with a campaign that simultaneously leaves you satisfied and eager for more, and intense multiplayer that gives you a great reason to keep coming back to this terrifying universe. Unless you’re just plain chicken, this is a sci-fi horror adventure you definitely want to suit up for.

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TerreStar Genus

Satellite phones have been around for a long time, but their expense (usually several hundred dollars to buy) and the broad availability of regular cell phones have kept them out of the hands of most consumers. But even as wireless networks continue to grow, the need for something different hasn’t gone away completely. Though cell phone carriers don’t like to admit it, their networks don’t reach everywhere. And those rural locations are often the place where you need a phone most.

To help reduce that coverage gap, TerreStar’s Genus is a dual-mode cellular-satellite smartphone. In civilization it uses ATT’s standard cellular network, but when off the map you can connect to a satellite. You should get coverage in just about any corner of America, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. The feature set isn’t bad, either, with Windows Media Player, Bluetooth, 3G, and Wi-Fi, and the design is relatively straightforward. On the downside, you will have to use Windows Mobile 6.5.3, but we suppose you can suffer through it for more connectivity.

Unfortunately, the Genus’ jaw-dropping price remains a barrier. The starting MSRP is $799, though it can go as high as $1,069, and that comes before the high cost of satellite calls. But if you can afford it, the Genus will serve you well.

Design
The Genus reminded us immediately of a cross between a BlackBerry and a Samsung BlackJack. With its chunky, rectangular body and black color, this is a no-nonsense handset. Style, however, isn’t meant to be part of the equation, so we’re willing to stick to the basics if it means we can make calls in more places. Our only real complaint about the design is that some elements, particularly the plastic skin around the display and the chrome border on the phone’s rim, feel a bit cheap. We’re not worried that it would break, but we don’t want to take the chance. And considering that this is a device you’ll take into the wild, we expect it to take some abuse.

The touch screen measures 2.6 inches. That’s smaller than we’d prefer, but the resolution (320×240 pixels; 16 million colors) is easy on the eyes. There’s no accelerometer, but the display has an ambient light sensor. As mentioned, the Genus runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Professional. It’s not a terrible OS by any means, but it’s far from being our favorite. It will take a lot of acclimation if you’re switching from Android, iOS, or even Windows Phone 7. The touch interface is responsive, and you get a stylus for poking at small items.

Immediately below are the navigation controls. You’ll find a circular toggle with a central select button, two soft keys, an OK control, shortcuts for the camera and the satellite calling feature, and the Talk and End/Power key. The keypad buttons sit further down. There are three rows, so numbers and letters share space. That’s not our ideal scenario, and the keys are rather small, but we appreciate that they’re raised above the surface of the phone. Also, there are a fair number of shortcuts, and the spacebar is large enough even if it’s set slightly off-center.

On the left side are a screen lock key and the microSD card slot. There you’ll also find the Micro-USB charger port (good) and the 2.5mm headset jack (bad). Over on the right side are the volume rocker and a mute key. The camera lens sits on the rear side between the speaker grille and a port for attaching the extra antenna.

Features
The Genus isn’t the most powerful smartphone around, but it offers enough features to keep you busy when not making calls. Each contact in the phone book holds multiple entry fields. Other essentials include a calendar, an alarm clock, a calculator, a notepad, a task list, a task manager, and a file manager. You’ll also find Bluetooth, PC syncing, USB mass storage, text and multimedia messaging, Wi-Fi, and a dedicated app for searching files stored on the phone.

As a Windows Mobile device, the Genus has all the productivity apps you’d expect. You can use instant messaging and sync the Genus with Outlook and POP3 e-mail accounts like Yahoo. And of course, you can sync the handset with your Outlook calendar. You’ll also find an Internet Explorer Mobile browser, Microsoft ActiveSync, and Microsoft Office Mobile for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.

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   Usually, cops discover a grow house because of electricity use, or a tip. But a guy in Lakeland was outed by an inept car thief, TheLedger.com reports.

   The thief had jumped into an idling car, but police quickly gave chase. And after a 3-mile chase, the car ran into a house, knocking a hole in the wall.

   The hole was big enough (8 feet high and 10 feet wide) that cops noticed several marijuana plants after arresting Dustin McDowell, 18, of Winter Haven. It tool several months to build the drug case against Christopher Michael Blagg, who rented the house.

   Okay, maybe it’s not that odd that someone would pay a record $10,000 for a cake at the Polk County Youth Fair auction, even though the normal range in $200 to $500. Or when the second-highest bid is $600.

   But TheLedger.com noted a couple of things about the auction that do raise some eyebrows. The successful bidder was the Mosaic Co., a fertilizer company that is in the news periodically, often for environmental issues. And the 9-year-old baker is Abigail Putnam, who coincidentally is the daughter of Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

   Putnam described the situation as “awkward,” particularly for his daughter, who promptly donated $9,000 of it to the youth fair. Mosaic, also a bit red-faced, admitted the amount was “outside of the normal range” and said an employee who was given a lump sum for the auction made the bid. (That employee also spent $17,000 on pigs; their meat will be given to charity.)

   Burmese pythons are bad enough, but a 14½-foot African rock python was captured Thursday in Tarpon Springs, in densely populated Pinellas County.

   Why are rock pythons even less desirable than Burmese? Because (quoting Wikipedia, but we’ve read similar things from other sources), “This species is noted for its bad temperament and readiness to bite if harassed. This is in contrast to the Burmese python, P. molurus, which is typically docile except when food is near.”

   It took three cops to carry the 150- to 200-pound snake.